Books by Robyn C . Spencer
In The Revolution Has Come Robyn C. Spencer traces the Black Panther Party's organizational evolu... more In The Revolution Has Come Robyn C. Spencer traces the Black Panther Party's organizational evolution in Oakland, California, where hundreds of young people came to political awareness and journeyed to adulthood as members. Challenging the belief that the Panthers were a projection of the leadership, Spencer draws on interviews with rank-and-file members, FBI files, and archival materials to examine the impact the organization's internal politics and COINTELPRO's political repression had on its evolution and dissolution. She shows how the Panthers' members interpreted, implemented, and influenced party ideology and programs; initiated dialogues about gender politics; highlighted ambiguities in the Panthers' armed stance; and criticized organizational priorities. Spencer also centers gender politics and the experiences of women and their contributions to the Panthers and the Black Power movement as a whole. Providing a panoramic view of the Party's organization over its sixteen-year history, The Revolution Has Come shows how the Black Panthers embodied Black Power through the party's international activism, interracial alliances, commitment to address state violence, and desire to foster self-determination in Oakland's black communities. Duke University Press, November 2016.
Journal Articles by Robyn C . Spencer
Meridians, 2020
This special issue began as a set of overlapping conversations among an interdisciplinary group o... more This special issue began as a set of overlapping conversations among an interdisciplinary group of feminist scholars whose work centered political economy and performance; postcoloniality and empire; racialization and indigeneity; as well as traversed borders of nation, ideology, space, and time. Our intellectual praxis unfolded at the intersections of transnationalism and feminisms, yet the field of “transnational feminism” as it has been defined and institutionalized in the academy in the 1990s conjured frameworks and definitions that were ill-suited to contain the scope of our inquiries. Many of the questions we asked individually and collectively—How did transnational feminism relate to women of color and black feminist genealogies? Could transnational feminism decenter the Global North as a touchstone or default comparative for women’s experiences worldwide and include geographies that were Pacific, African, Latin American, and Caribbean? What was the potential of transnational feminism to shed light on ongoing settler colonialism in North America?—stretched the boundaries of transnational feminism. Our conversations grew as new people from graduate students to activists to senior scholars from a multiplicity of places and fields brought new questions from different sites of engagement.
This roundtable describes the creation and evolution of the Intersectional Black Panther Party Hi... more This roundtable describes the creation and evolution of the Intersectional Black Panther Party History Project (IPHP), a feminist collective created by Angela D. LeBlanc-Ernest, Tracye A. Matthews, Mary Phillips, and Robyn C. Spencer, four Black women historians who have spent decades researching and writing about Panther women’s lives. Our discussion centers the intellectual legacy of the Combahee River Collective to explore the utility of Black feminist methodologies in studying the BPP; the state of the field; silences in the historiography around queer identities, pleasure, and gendering men; and the impact of the crisis facing Black women in the larger society on our work as scholar-activists.
Journal of Civil and Human Rights, 2017
We five scholars saw Fire!!!’s call to rethink and revisit the Black freedom movement as a challe... more We five scholars saw Fire!!!’s call to rethink and revisit the Black freedom movement as a challenge. Not only were we inspired by the call, but we wanted to share how we learned from and had been challenged by one another’s work, as we rethought and rewrote freedom movement narratives over the last decade. We each picked primary sources we believe are undervalued and rarely taught in the mainstream narratives of civil rights. We all wrote short descriptions of our submissions: what do these documents teach us about the movement? Then, to invoke the power of group-centered leadership, or the movement idea of call and response, two of us responded to each scholar’s piece. We hope the result enriches and challenges the teaching and sharing of the movement.
Journal of Women's History, Jan 1, 2008
This article explores how black women who joined the Black Panther Party, one of the leading Blac... more This article explores how black women who joined the Black Panther Party, one of the leading Black Power organizations in the 1960s and 70s, were empowered to challenge racism and sexism in society, in the Panthers, and in themselves. Using oral history and archival sources, it examines such issues as formal and informal leadership, state political repression, gendered guerilla imagery, and debates around child rearing and birth control to reveal how these women were able to shape the Panthers' organizational evolution, even as they struggled against misogyny. This article contributes to historical understanding of the Black Power movement from the bottom up.
Souls, Volume 13, Issue 4, 2011
The Journal of Negro History, Jan 1, 1994
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
Book Chapters and Essays by Robyn C . Spencer
“Our Struggle is Merely One Link in the Worldwide Revolution”: Internationalism, State Repression... more “Our Struggle is Merely One Link in the Worldwide Revolution”: Internationalism, State Repression, and the Black Panther Party, 1966-1972,” Book Chapter in From Toussaint to Tupac: The Black International Since the Age of Revolution edited by Michael O. West, William Martin and Fanon Wilkins. University of North Carolina Press, 2009.
On September 27, 2013 TNI co-sponsored the one-day conference “Said is dead. Long live Said!” at ... more On September 27, 2013 TNI co-sponsored the one-day conference “Said is dead. Long live Said!” at City College that marked a decade since Edward Said’s passing. Collected here are some of the talks, graciously provided by the speakers and organizers.
From: Radical Teacher
Number 85, Fall 2009
pp. 67-69 |
After decades of scholarship on the civil rights movement at the local level, the insights of bot... more After decades of scholarship on the civil rights movement at the local level, the insights of bottom-up movement history remain essentially invisible in the accepted narrative of the movement and peripheral to debates on how to research, document, and teach about the movement. This collection of original works refocuses attention on this bottom-up history and compels a rethinking of what and who we think are central to the movement.
In the aftermath of the Vietnam War, a large portion of the population had become disenchanted wi... more In the aftermath of the Vietnam War, a large portion of the population had become disenchanted with the American way of life that they did not feel they belonged to. While some openly revolted in the streets, others took to turning away from the mainstream and headed toward a new world. Utopian visions, manifesting themselves in the form of communes, were aimed at breaking the bonds of capitalism, big business, and the reigning oligarchy and were popping up throughout the country. The San Francisco Bay Area was the hotbed of these communes, and from the Height-Ashbury in San Francisco, east to Berkeley’s protest hub at Sproul Plaza, and south to Oakland’s Black Panther’s communal households, this is an exploration of this unique cultural revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. The history and vision of communal living is investigated in a series of essays aimed at explaining just what these communes were, how lives were lived within them, and what their goals entailed.
Groundwork: Local Black Freedom Movements in …
The Journal of American History, Jan 1, 2007
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
The Journal of American History, Jan 1, 2003
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
Videos by Robyn C . Spencer
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Books by Robyn C . Spencer
Journal Articles by Robyn C . Spencer
Book Chapters and Essays by Robyn C . Spencer
Videos by Robyn C . Spencer
Each episode will feature an interview with an activist about their political awakening and biography of activism. We seek to:
1) educate and document social justice activism
2) humanize activists and inspire others to become active in changing the world
3) learn the lessons of struggle
4) connect activists and build a culture of resistance
5) build awareness about a cross section of social struggles
The first episode of Inside the Activist Studio will feature political prisoner, Sekou Odinga, on Nov. 10, 2015 at Medgar Evers College.
Inside the Activist Studio aims to raise the profile of political prisoners and build the movement to end mass incarceration. It is rooted in the tradition of Mumia Abu-Jamal's groundbreaking political journalism.