Malkia Cyril

The story of the quiet revolutionaries who made a simple idea of a public library happen. From the pioneering women behind the "Free Library Movement" to today's librarians who service the public despite working in a contentious age of closures and book bans, meet those who created a civic institution where everything is free and the doors are open to all.

They are the children of the Black Panther party – the self-styled Panther cubs. Born into the 1970s revolutionary movement for Black equality and self-determination, they have lived in the shadows of a promised land that was never attained. We join them as they continue to wrestle, 50 years later, with the dichotomy of their extraordinary childhoods: the enormous pride and love it gave them as members of the Black Panther family, and the booming loss they endured – of parents, of security, and of the hope for radical change that did not materialise. That hope lives on in the cubs, and their reflections on America’s current crisis offers burning lessons for today.