This side of glory

This Side of Glory is both a compelling personal narrative and an eyewitness account of the Black Panthers that reclaims a piece of history long obscured and now almost lost. Just as David Hilliard's candid life story illuminates this revolutionary movement, it sheds light on America's present racial and political troubles. Hilliard's experiences encapsulate an entire generation. Born in the forties, the twelfth child in a poor but intact Alabama family, he began life as. The traditional Southern black culture was ending. When the family migrated to the West Coast, Hilliard and his pals hung out on Oakland's streets, exhilarated by the fifties boom, testing their adolescent selves to the fullest, but also learning the limits of blacks' participation in American life. Witnessing the unfulfilled promises of the civil rights movement and an expanding economy, Hilliard joined the rebelliousness of the sixties and the Black Panther Party. Old. Friendships with and tested loyalties to the Party founders, coupled with his intelligence, catapulted him into the position of Chief of Staff. In retrospect, the naivete of these young revolutionaries astounds. Responding to the brutal police bea