Forbes, Flores A.

PERSONAL: Education: New York University, Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service, M.S.

ADDRESSES: Home— NY. Office— Abyssinian Development Corporation, 4 W. 125th St., New York, NY 10027.

CAREER: Abyssinian Development Corporation, New York, NY, chief strategic officer.

WRITINGS

Will You Die with Me? My Life and the Black Panther Party (memoir), Atria Books (New York, NY), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS: Flores A. Forbes is an expert in urban planning policy and economic and community development, and serves as the chief strategic officer for the Abyssinian Development Corporation. Forbes spent his early years as a pivotal member of the radical separatist Black Panther Party, joining in the late 1960s and working as a bodyguard, enforcer, and an inner circle gunman. He eventually killed a friend, went on the run, then finally turned himself in for sentencing. In his book, Will You Die with Me? MyLife and the Black Panther Party, Forbes writes about his experiences during that period of his life and how he broke free of the Black Panthers. He also offers readers an inside look at the development of the organization. Stanley Crouch, in a review for the New York Times, remarked of Forbes’s effort: “Part of the power of the book is seeing this man slowly shocked free of the iceberg of ideology to which he had submitted and for which he was willing to achieve goals ‘by any means necessary.’ Much of its value is that it helps to make up for a decided shortcoming of our national literature, which has never sufficiently examined the radical politics of the 60’s.” A contributor for Kirkus Reviews called the book “a dark and disturbing read,” while Francisca Goldsmith, writing for the School Library Journal, found it to be “a compelling nonfiction read.”

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES

BOOKS

Forbes, Flores A., Will You Die with Me? My Life and the Black Panther Party, Atria Books (New York, NY), 2006.

PERIODICALS

Kirkus Reviews, June 1, 2006, review of Will You Die with Me?, p. 555.

New York Times, September 10, 2006, Stanley Crouch, “By Any Means Necessary,” review of Will You Die with Me?

San Francisco Chronicle, July 9, 2006, Austin Consi-dine, review of Will You Die with Me?, p. M1.

School Library Journal, November, 2006, Francisca Goldsmith, review of Will You Die with Me?, p. 172.

ONLINE

New York Public Radio Web site, http://www.wnyc.org/ (July 26, 2006), author biography.

Turnstile Web site, http://turnstile.cssny.org/ (January 21, 2007), author biography.*