A taste of power : a Black woman's story / Elaine Brown.

1. Assumption -- 2. York Street -- 3. "We are the girls who don't take no stuff" -- 4. Some other life -- 5. The child has died -- 6. Getting Black -- 7. Living for the people -- 8. January 17th -- 9. Postmortem -- 10. Dying for the people -- 11. Where is the love? -- 12. Becoming Huey's queen -- 13. Kiss of the Panther -- 14. Sanctuary -- 15. A new wave to ride -- 16. Chairman -- 17. A woman's revolution -- 18. Alpha and omega -- 19. Friends and enemies -- 20. Enemies and friends -- 21. "I'll change the world for you".

"'I have all the guns and all the money. I can withstand challenge from without and from within. Am I right, comrades?' With these words, Elaine Brown proclaimed to the assembled leadership of the Black Panther Party that she was now in charge. It was August 1974. The Panthers had grown from a small Oakland-based cell to a national organization that had mobilized black communities throughout the country. The party's achievements had won the support of millions of white liberals, but the violent assaults on the party by the police had brought death or imprisonment to many of its prominent members. Now its charismatic leader, Huey Newton, heading for refuge in Cuba, asked Elaine Brown to hold together a party threatened by internal conflict and the FBI. How she came to that position of power over a paramilitary, male-dominated organization and what shed did with that power is an unsparing story of self-discovery. Growing up in Black Philadelphia ghetto and attending a predomintely white school, Elaine Brown learned firsthand the pain and powerlessness of being black and female. The Panthers held the promise of redemption, Elaine's account of her life at the highest level of the Panthers' hierachy illuminates more than the pain of sexism and the struggle against racism. The male rituals she recounts carried the seeds of the Black Panther Party's destruction. Nowehere was this undertow more evident in the compex character of Huey Newton, who became Elain's lover and ultimately her nemesis. More than a journey through a turbulent time in American history, this is a story of a black woman's battle to define herself. Freedom, Elaine Brown discovered, may be more than a political question." -- from the dust jacket.

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