Will You Die with Me? My Life and the Black Panther Party

"By the time Flores Forbes was twenty-five years old, he had just a GED and sixty college credits to his name. But he had gone far in his chosen profession as a revolutionary. In 1977, Forbes had been in the Black Panther Party for almost a decade and had become the youngest member of the organization's central committee. In this memoir, Forbes describes his transformation from an angry youth into a powerful partisan in the ranks of the black liberation movement. Disillusioned in high school by the racism in his native San Diego, he began reading Black Panther literature. Drawn to the Panthers' mission of organizing resistance to police brutality, he eagerly joined and soon found himself immersed in a culture of Mao-inspired rigor. His dedication ultimately earned him a place in the Party's elite inner circle as assistant chief of staff, charged with heading up the "fold" - the heavily armed military branch dubbed by Huey P. Newton the "Buddha Samurai.""--BOOK JACKET.

Flores A. Forbes, recently profiled in Crain's New York Business, is the chief strategic officer of the Abyssinian Development Corporation in New York City.