University of Arkansas Press Book Explores the Black Panther Party in New Orleans

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – The University of Arkansas Press’ Showdown in Desire: The Black Panthers Take a Stand in New Orleans (cloth, $29.95) looks back at a powerful moment in New Orleans’ history. That powerful moment was the summer of 1970, a summer that included a shootout with the police on Piety Street, the creation of survival programs, and the daylong standoff between the Panthers and the police in the Desire housing development.

In his foreword to the book, Charles E. Jones, editor of Black Panther Party Reconsidered, says that this newbook is distinguished by its variety of perspectives and first-person accounts. Author Orissa Arend, a long-time journalist and lifelong resident of New Orleans, collected interviews with Malik Rahim, a Black Panther; Robert H. King, a Panther and member of the Angola 3; Larry Preston Williams, a black policeman; Moon Landrieu, the mayor; Henry Faggen, a Desire resident; Robert Glass, a white lawyer; Jerome LeDoux, a black priest; William Barnwell, a white priest; and many others.

“Arend’s interviews with both the leaders and rank-and-file members of the New Orleans BPP not only give a voice to former New Orleans Panthers, but to community activists as well. Yet it is Arend’s extraordinary access to prominent officials and law enforcement authorities which differentiates her research,” Jones writes.

Arend, a lifelong resident of New Orleans, brings an intimate knowledge of the city past and present to bear. As she says in her preface, “In New Orleans, the past is never really behind us. It permeates the present in mysterious ways. My hope is that the lessons from this powerful story, which, oddly, has never been told, will rise to instruct us. This is not the whole story. Indeed, several of my sources have stressed that they carry secrets about these events that they will take with them to their graves. But it is my hope that the people in the story, all these years wiser and as determined as ever, will show us the way to the solution of some of our current problems.”

Orissa Arend will be discussing Showdown in Desire at several events in New Orleans, including two community forums made possible by a grant from the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities.