Power Hungry, Suzanne Cope
Power Hungry, Suzanne Cope
List: $20.00 | Sale: $14.00
Club: $10.00

Power Hungry
Women of the Black Panther Party and Freedom Summer and Their Fight to Feed a Movement

Author: Suzanne Cope

Narrator: Karen Murray

Unabridged: 10 hr 21 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/09/2021


Synopsis

Two unsung women whose power using food as a political weapon during the civil rights movement was so great it brought the ire of government agents working against them.

In early 1969 Cleo Silvers and a few Black Panther Party members met at a community center laden with boxes of donated food to cook for the neighborhood children. By the end of the year, the Black Panthers would be feeding more children daily in all of their breakfast programs than the state of California was at that time.

More than a thousand miles away, Aylene Quin had spent the decade using her restaurant in McComb, Mississippi, to host secret planning meetings of civil rights leaders and organizations, feed the hungry, and cement herself as a community leader who could bring people together—physically and philosophically—over a meal.

These two women’s tales, separated by a handful of years, tell the same story: how food was used by women as a potent and necessary ideological tool in both the rural south and urban north to create lasting social and political change. The leadership of these women cooking and serving food in a safe space for their communities was so powerful, the FBI resorted to coordinated extensive and often illegal means to stop the efforts of these two women, and those using similar tactics, under COINTELPRO--turning a blind eye to the firebombing of the children of a restaurant owner, destroying food intended for poor kids, and declaring a community breakfast program a major threat to public safety.
 
But of course, it was never just about the food. 

Reviews

Goodreads review by Rebecca on May 14, 2022

I found this book to be excellent. I checked it out because I've been wanting to learn more about the Black Panther movement. The additional info on activists in Mississippi was an added bonus for me. I am grateful to be introduced to the names of women I've never heard of before through this schola......more

Goodreads review by Lanie on August 15, 2022

3.75 ⭐️ 3 stars is not enough but 4 would be too much. I really enjoyed the first half of this book but a lot of it wasn’t well connected. At times what the writer chose to talk about in a chapter felt out of place and very sporadically written.......more

Goodreads review by Laura on December 31, 2021

A new perspective on the Black Panther Party and activism in Macomb, Mississippi in the 1960's. I enjoyed the book, but it was a little confusing as she jumped between the stories of two women: Cleo Silvers and Aylene Quin. However, it was nice to hear about some of the work Black women did during t......more

Goodreads review by Leo on August 22, 2022

A wonderful weaving of activist stories that inspire a new kind of change. It leaves us wondering, what do we not know, who’s stories are yet to be heard? It’s also interesting to hear that many of the people she interviewed feel hopeful, not distraught, by the fact that they are seeing many of the......more

Goodreads review by Melanie on December 03, 2021

Often history is seen through a male perspective, and this history book offers a woman’s perspective on two very important events in the Civil Rights movement. Aylene Quin and Cleo Silvers played a vital yet often forgotten role in 20th Century history, and thanks to this book, I feel as if I have g......more