A Look Back at a Powerful Moment in New Orleans’s History
By Orissa Arend
Foreword by Charles E. Jones
Introduction by Curtis J. Austin
Showdown in Desire portrays the Black Panther Party in New Orleans in 1970, a year 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. Through interviews with Malik Rahim, the Panther; Robert H. King, Panther and member of the Angola 3; Larry Preston Williams, the black policeman; Moon Landrieu, the mayor; Henry Faggen, the Desire resident; Robert Glass, the white lawyer; Jerome LeDoux, the black priest; William Barnwell, the white priest; and many others, Orissa Arend tells a nuanced story that unfolds amid guns, tear gas, desperate poverty, oppression, and inflammatory rhetoric to capture the palpable spirit of rebellion, resistance, and revolution of an incendiary summer in New Orleans.
Danger . . . read, and you may never think the same.
Showdown in Desire is reviewed by Mary LaCoste and published in the current issue of
The New Orleans Tribune:Don’t read this book unless you want to get angry at our society, the lawless and those who enforce the laws. Do not read Showdown in Desire if you want to remain ignorant of how New Orleans barely escaped what could have become the bloodiest chapter in the history of the city. All this happened less than 40 years ago but has somehow faded from public consciousness. Read more here. (Scroll down)
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