The popular media have portrayed the Black Panthers mainly for the rhetoric of violence some members employed and for the associations between the Panthers and a black militancy drawing on racial hostility to whites in general. Overlooked have been the efforts that branches of the organization undertook for practical economic and social progress within African-American neighborhoods, frequently in alliance with whites. Yohuru Williams' study of black politics in New Haven culminating in the arrival of the Panthers argues that the increasing militancy in the black community there was motivated...