Forbes wasn't the first 16-year-old boy to be smitten by the romance of revolution, but he is among the handful in recent American history who became top-ranking members of the Black Panther Party. His autobiography reads like a modern-day Crime and Punishment
, tracking Forbes's evolution from a comrade who thought he could "do almost anything" to achieve a revolutionary objective to a prisoner in existential crisis. Unlike Dostoyevski's protagonist, Forbes does not generally regret his past, but reproaches himself for his vulnerability to "years of ideological and philosophical conditioning," despite the worthiness of the Panther cause. A survivor above all, Forbes straddles passion and cynicism with equanimity, and is as willing to demythologize major figures as he is to canonize them. He treats Huey P. Newton with particular subtlety, alternately revering the Black Panther founder and cult hero as a genius of realpolitik and criticizing him as a cocaine-snorting, iron-fisted gangster. When Newton is accused of murdering a 17-year-old prostitute and Forbes risks assassinating the star witness to save him, one realizes that Forbes's story is really a case study of power's allure and attendant moral compromise, no matter how righteous its origin. Photos. (July)
