Murder in the Model City
The Black Panthers, Yale, and the Redemption of a Killer
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- $22.99
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- $22.99
Publisher Description
May 20, 1969: Four members of the revolutionary Black Panther Party trudge through woods along the edges of the Coginchaug River outside of New Haven, Connecticut. Gunshots shatter the silence. Three men emerge from the woods. Soon, two are in police custody. One flees across the country. Nine Panthers would be tried for crimes committed that night, including National Chairman Bobby Seale, extradited from California with the aide of Panther nemesis, California Governor Ronald Reagan. Activists of all denominations descended on the New England city -- and the campus of Yale. The Nixon administration sent 4,000 National Guardsmen. U.S. military tanks lined the streets outside of New Haven. In this white-knuckle journey through a turbulent America, Doug Rae and Paul Bass let us eavesdrop on late-night meetings between Yale President, Kingman Brewster, and radical activists, including Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman, as they try to avert disaster. Meanwhile, most heartrending of all is the never-before-told story of Warren Kimbro -- star community worker turned Panther assassin -- who faces an uphill battle to turn his life around.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Against the backdrop of an era when the Nixon administration and the FBI encouraged discord among dissident groups through informants and phone tapping, Rae and Bass recount the circuslike trial of eight Black Panthers accused of killing a suspected spy among them. After the body of Alex Rackley was discovered near New Haven, Conn., on May 21, 1969, Bobby Seale, the Black Panther Party's National Chairman, and seven others were called to court. Rae, a professor at the Yale School of Management, and Bass, a local journalist, write with a keen eye for detail, juxtaposing the events in New Haven with the story of Warren Kimbro, the man who was sentenced to life for Rackley's killing. A community leader whose Panther associations were "a short-lived aberration," Kimbro served less than four years before being released, and graduated from Harvard shortly afterward, dedicating himself to assisting people leaving prison. The authors succeed in crafting an unbiased and clear account of the Panther trials, yet it is the quietly moving story of Kimbro's redemption that will affect readers long after the book is finished. Photos.
