ECU Libraries Catalog

Stayed on freedom : the long history of black power through one family's journey / Dan Berger.

Author/creator Berger, Dan, 1981- author.
Format Book and Print
EditionFirst edition.
Publication Info New York, NY : Basic Books, Hachette Book Group, 2023.
Copyright Notice ©2023
Descriptionx, 375 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 25 cm
Subject(s)
Portion of title Long history of black power through one family's journey
Contents Preface: Everyday people -- Introduction: A love supreme -- Part I: Lift every voice. A Memphis education -- Worldmaking in Philadelphia -- Sneaking to SNCC -- Mississippi Amazon -- Freedom North -- Part II: Say it loud. Freedom is not enough -- The monster we live in -- Black consciousness -- Selling wolf tickets -- Getting our XS -- Prison and other metaphysics -- Part III: The key of life. Friends and comrades -- Watching over -- All of us -- There must be something we can do -- The world and its people -- Epilogue: Many moons.
Abstract "The Black Power movement is usually associated with heroic, iconic figures, like Stokely Carmichael and Malcolm X, but largely missing from stories about the Black freedom struggle are the hundreds of ordinary foot soldiers who were just as essential to the movement. Stayed on Freedom presents a new history of Black Power by focusing on two unheralded organizers: Zoharah Robinson and Michael Simmons. Robinson was born in Memphis, raised by her grandmother who told her stories of slavery and taught her the value of self-reliance. Simmons was born in Philadelphia, a child of the Great Migration. They met in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, where Robinson was one of the only woman project directors in Mississippi Freedom Summer, after she had dropped out of college to work in the movement full-time. Falling in love while organizing against the war in Vietnam and raising the call for Black Power, their simultaneous commitment to each other and social change took them from SNCC, to the Nation of Islam, to a global movement, as they fought for social justice well after the 1960s. By centering the lives of Robinson and Simmons, Stayed On Freedom offers a history of Black Power that is more expansive, complex, and personal than those previously written. Historian Dan Berger shows how Black Power linked the political futures of African Americans with those of people in Angola, Cambodia, Cuba, South Africa, and the Soviet Union, making it a global movement for workers and women's rights, for peace and popular democracy. Robinson's and Simmons's activism blurs the divides -- between North and South, faith and secular, the US and the world, and the past and the present -- typically applied to Black Power. And, in contrast to conventional surveys of the history of civil rights, Stayed on Freedom is an intimate story anchored in lives of the people who made the movements move, where heroism mingles with uncertainty over decades of intensive political commitment. Drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews with Robinson and Simmons, their families and their friends, in addition to immense archival research, Berger weaves a joyous and intricate history of the Black Power movement, providing a powerful portrait of two people trying to make a life while working to make a better world"-- Provided by publisher.
Bibliography noteIncludes bibliographical references and index.
Genre/formBiographies.
Genre/formHistory.
Genre/formBiographies.
LCCN 2022037502
ISBN9781541675360 hardcover
ISBN1541675363 hardcover
ISBNelectronic book
Standard identifier# 40031644771

Available Items

Library Location Call Number Status Item Actions
Joyner Ronnie Barnes African American Collection E185.615 .B455 2023 ✔ Available Place Hold