In 2010, the Carolina Panthers hit rock bottom—they were a 2-14 team that had become an NFL joke. But an extraordinary turnaround over the next five years culminated in a 15-1 record in 2015 and a berth in Super Bowl 50. Fueled by charismatic quarterback Cam Newton and a host of other big personalities, the Panthers staked their place in NFL history. Panthers Rising is the inside story of this remarkable turnaround. Author Scott Fowler has covered the Panthers for The Charlotte Observer since the team's inception in 1995. He writes from an insider's perspective about what really led to Newton's rise to NFL Most Valuable Player and the controversies that surrounded the best season the quarterback has ever played. Head coach Ron Rivera, a linebacker on the legendary 1985 Chicago Bears, told his players all season to let their personalities shine through like that squad once did 30 years earlier. Carolina responded with a 14-game winning streak to open the season and an unprecedented run through the NFC playoffs. Based on exclusive interviews with many Panthers stars and Fowler's behind-the-scenes access to the team, Panthers Rising is the inside story of the Panthers' rise to the NFL's elite.

In 2010, the Carolina Panthers hit rock bottom--they were a 2-14 team that had become an NFL joke. But an extraordinary turnaround over the next five years culminated in a 15-1 record in 2015 and a berth in Super Bowl 50. Fueled by charismatic quarterback Cam Newton and a host of other big personalities, the Panthers staked their place in NFL history. Panthers Rising is the inside story of this remarkable turnaround. Author Scott Fowler has covered the Panthers for The Charlotte Observer since the team's inception in 1995. He writes from an insider's perspective about what really led to Newton's rise to NFL Most Valuable Player and the controversies that surrounded the best season the quarterback has ever played. Head coach Ron Rivera, a linebacker on the legendary 1985 Chicago Bears, told his players all season to let their personalities shine through like that squad once did 30 years earlier. Carolina responded with a 14-game winning streak to open the season and an unprecedented run through the NFC playoffs. Based on exclusive interviews with many Panthers stars and Fowler's behind-the-scenes access to the team, Panthers Rising is the inside story of the Panthers' rise to the NFL's elite.

Documents the origins, actions, and impacts of the Black Student Union in the state of Washington during the tumultuous late 1960s. Washington State Rising documents the origins, actions, and impact of the Black Student Union (BSU) in Washington from 1967 to 1970. The BSU was a politicized student organization that had chapters across the West Coast and played a prominent role in the student wing of the Black Power Movement. Through accounts of Black student struggles at two different college campuses in Washington, one urban and one rural, Marc Arsell Robinson details how the BSU led highly consequential protest campaigns at both institutions and beyond, which led to reforms such as the establishment of Black Studies programs, increased hiring of Black faculty and staff, and new initiatives to recruit and retain students of color. Washington State Rising is the first book to document 1960s Black student activism in the Pacific Northwest and includes extensive oral history interviews with former BSU members. Robinson uncovers new insights into Black politics, locating the Black Power Movement in Seattle, Washington, a city and state not typically associated with 1960s black protest. At once fascinating and revelatory, Washington State Rising provides historical insights for current and future social justice activism.

The founder of the Black Panther Party’s Seattle chapter recounts his life on the frontlines of the Black Power Revolution. Growing up in Seattle in the 1960s, Aaron Dixon dedicated himself to the Civil Rights movement at an early age. As a teenager, he joined Martin Luther King on marches to end housing discrimination and volunteered to help integrate schools. After King’s assassination in 1968, Dixon continued his activism by starting the Seattle chapter of the Black Panther Party at the age of nineteen. In My People Are Rising, Dixon offers a candid account of life in the Black Panther Party. Through his eyes, we see the courage of a generation that stood up to injustice, their political triumphs and tragedies, and the unforgettable legacy of Black Power. “This book is a moving memoir experience: a must read. The dramatic life cycle rise of a youthful sixties political revolutionary, my friend Aaron Dixon.” —Bobby Seale, founding chairman and national organizer of the Black Panther Party, 1966 to 1974

Ultimately, Black Power reveals a black freedom movement in which the ideals of desegregation through nonviolence and black nationalism marched side by side.

In this comprehensive history of the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party (ILBPP), Chicago native Jakobi Williams demonstrates that the city's Black Power movement was both a response to and an extension of the city's civil rights movement. Williams focuses on the life and violent death of Fred Hampton, a charismatic leader who served as president of the NAACP Youth Council and continued to pursue a civil rights agenda when he became chairman of the revolutionary Chicago-based Black Panther Party. Framing the story of Hampton and the ILBPP as a social and political history and using, for the first time, sealed secret police files in Chicago and interviews conducted with often reticent former members of the ILBPP, Williams explores how Hampton helped develop racial coalitions between the ILBPP and other local activists and organizations. Williams also recounts the history of the original Rainbow Coalition, created in response to Richard J. Daley's Democratic machine, to show how the Panthers worked to create an antiracist, anticlass coalition to fight urban renewal, political corruption, and police brutality.

The civil rights movement occupies a prominent place in popular thinking and scholarly work on post-1945 U.S. history. Yet the dominant narrative of the movement remains that of a nonviolent movement born in the South during the 1950s that emerged triumphant in the early 1960s, only to be derailed by the twin forces of Black Power and white backlash when it sought to move outside the South after 1965. African American protest and political movements outside the South appear as ancillary and subsequent to the 'real' movement in the South, despite the fact that black activism existed in the North, Midwest, and West in the 1940s, and persisted well into the 1970s. This book brings together new scholarship on black social movements outside the South to rethink the civil rights narrative and the place of race in recent history. Each chapter focuses on a different location and movement outside the South, revealing distinctive forms of U.S. racism according to place and the varieties of tactics and ideologies that community members used to attack these inequalities, to show that the civil rights movement was indeed a national movement for racial justice and liberation.