About the Book
From 1961 to 1985, a period of massive social change for African Americans, Freedomways Quarterly published the leaders and artists of the black freedom movement. Figures of towering historical stature wrote for the journal, among them Paul Robeson, W.E.B. Du Bois, President Kwame Nkrumah and Julius Nyerere. Three Nobel Prize laureates appeared in its pages,Dr. Martin Luther King, Pablo Neruda, and Derek Walcott, and several Pulitzer Prize winners, Alice Walker and Gwendolyn Brooks. No other journal could boast such a long list of names from the civil rights movement: Freedomways was like no other journal. It was unique. Yet despite the well-known names, few Americans have heard of this national treasure. Why? Simply put, the United States was not ready for this journal in 1961. Today, many Americans cannot remember a United States where racial segregation was legal, but in 1961, many of the battles for integration were still to be won. This book is subtitled Prophets in their Own Country because the editors and contributors to Freedomways were not honoured at the journal's inception. Eventually, however, much of their vision did come to pass. Until now, these documents, which show the depth and breadth of the struggle for democracy, had been lost to the public. The publication of the Freedomways Reader restores this lost treasury. It contains what amounts to an oral history of the liberation movements of the 1960s through the 1980s. Through the reports of the Freedom Riders, the early articles against the Vietnam War and South African apartheid, the short stories and poems of Alice Walker, and the memoirs of black organizers in the Jim Crow south of the Thirties, one can walk in the footsteps of these pioneers.
Table of Contents:
* Foreword Julian Bond * Introduction Esther Cooper Jackson Origins of Freedomways * Behold the Land, No.1, 1964 W.E.B. Du Bois * The Battleground Is Here, No. 1, 1971 Paul Robeson * Southern Youth's Proud Heritage, No. 1, 1964 Augusta Strong * Memoirs of a Birmingham Coal Miner, No. 1, 1964 Henry O. Mayfield * Not New Ground, but Rights Once Dearly Won, No. 1, 1962 Louis E. Burnham * Honoring Dr. Du Bois, No. 2, 1968 Martin Luther King, Jr. * Ode to Paul Robeson, No. 1, 1976 Pablo Neruda Reports from the Front Lines: Segregation in the South J. H. O'Dell * The Negro People and the United States, No. 1, 1961 W.E.B. Du Bois * A Freedom Rider Speaks His Mind, No. 2, 1961 Jimmy McDonald * What Price Prejudice? On the Economics of Discrimination, No. 3, 1962 Whitney M. Young Jr. * The Southern Youth Movement, No. 2, 1962 Julian Bond * Nonviolence: An Interpretation, No. 2, 1963 Julian Bond * Lorraine Hansberry at the Summit, No. 4, 1979 James Baldwin * "We're Moving!" No. 1, 1971 Paul Robeson * Birmingham Shall Be Free Some Day, No. 1, 1964 Fred L. Shuttlesworth * Tremor in the Iceberg: The Mississippi Summer Project, No. 2, 1965 Eric Morton * The Freedom Schools: Concept and Organization, No. 2, 1965 Staughton Lynd * Life in Mississippi: An Interview with Fannie Lou Hamer, No. 2, 1965 J. H. O'Dell * The Politics of Necessity and Survival in Mississippi, No. 2, 1966 Lawrence Guyot and Mike Thelwell International Solidarity * The American Negro and the Darker World, No. 3, 1968 W.E.B. Du Bois * Address to The United Nations, No. 1, 1961 Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah * What Happened in Ghana? The Inside Story, No. 3, 1966 Shirley Graham Du Bois * Kwame Nkrumah: African Liberator, No. 3, 1972 Shirley Graham Du Bois * Socialism Is Not Racialism, No. 2, 1970 Hon. Julius K. Nyerere THE ANTIWAR MOVEMENT * Selections from Robeson's Writings and Speeches: On Peace, No. 1, 1971 Paul Robeson * The Giant Stirs,No. ?, 19?? W.E.B. Du Bois * The Freedom Movement and the War in Vietnam, No. 4, 1965 Robert S. Browne * A Time to Break Silence, No. 2, 1967 Martin Luther King Jr. * Editorial: Muhammad Ali-The Measure of a Man, No. 2, 1967 * The GI Movement vs. the War: A Symposium, No. 4, 1970 Ralph David Abernathy, Howard Levy, and J. H. O'Dell SOUTHERN AFRICA * Three African Freedom Movements, No. 4, 1962 Special Correspondent * The African-American Manifesto on Southern Africa, No. 4, 1976 * Editorial: South Africa and the USA, No. 4, 1976 * Northern Ireland Through Black Eyes, No. 1, 1982 Jean Carey Bond * Moving North * Anti-Semitism and Black Power, No. 2, 1967 Ossie Davis LABOR * Address to Labor: Who Built This Land? No. 1, 1971 Paul Robeson * Three Challenges to Organized Labor, No. 4, 1972 Jesse L. Jackson EDUCATION * Education and Black Self-Image, No. 4, 1968 Alvin F. Poussaint * School Desegregation: Seeking New Victories Among the Ashes, No. 1, 1977 Derrick A. Bell * The Bakke Case and Affirmative Action: Some Implications for the Future, No. 1, 1978 Haywood Burns WOMEN * Negro Women in Freedom's Battles, No. 4, 1967 Augusta Strong * Racism and Contemporary Literature on Rape, No. 1, 1976 Angela Y. Davis * Biology and Gender: False Theories About Women and Blacks, No. 1, 1977 Dorothy Burnham PRISON AND THE COURTS * Bangs and Whimpers: Black Youth and the Courts, No. 3, 1975 Bruce McM. Wright * Pages from the Life of a Black Prisoner, No. 4, 1971 Frank E. Chapman Jr. * The Death Penalty: Continuing Threat to America's Poor, No. 1, 1971 Lennox S. Hinds Pioneers of Black Studies * Ernest Kaiser, Conference of Encyclopedia Africana, No. 4, 1963 W.E.B. Du Bois * Negroes in the American Revolution, No. 2, 1961 Shirley Graham Du Bois * Black/Indian Origins of the Fight for Democracy, No. 2, 1984 William Loren Katz * The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, No. 1, 1969 Ernest Kaiser Culture and the Cause of Black Freedom * Ruby Dee, The Negro Woman in American Literature, No. 1, 1966 Alice Childress, Paule Marshall, and Sarah E. Wright POETRY * Paul Robeson, No. 1, 1971 Gwendolyn Brooks * Prologue, No. 1, 1971 Audre Lorde * Rites of Passage, No. 1, 1971 Audre Lorde * The Lion in Daniel's Den, No. 1, 1971 Nikki Giovanni * For Beautiful Mary Brown: Chicago Rent Strike Leader, No. 2, 1971 June Jordan * Rock Eagle, No. 4, 1971 Alice Walker * Facing the Way, No. 4, 1975 Alice Walker * The Abduction of Saints, No. 4, 1975 Alice Walker * My Early Days in Harlem, No. 3, 1963 Langston Hughes * Langston Hughes: He Spoke of Rivers, No. 2, 1968 Arna Bontemps * An Old Woman Remembers, No. 3, 1963 Sterling A. Brown * A Letter from Brooklyn, No. 3, 1964 Derek Walcott * Poems of Agostinho Neto: "Struggle" and "We Must Return," No. 1, 1976 translated by Marga Holness * Eventide, Kumasi, No. 2, 1970 Keith E. Baird FICTION AND DRAMA * We Are of the Same Sidewalks, No. 3, 1980 Lorraine Hansberry * Lorraine Hansberry: On Time! No. 4, 1979 John Oliver Killens * The Once and Future Vision of Lorraine Hansberry, No. 4, 1979 Alex Haley * At the Emmy Time! No. 1, 1980 Ruby Dee * The Welcome Table, No. 3, 1970 Alice Walker * The First Day(A Fable After Brown), No. 4, 1974 Alice Walker * A Review of God's Bits of Wood by Ousmane Sembene, No. 2, 1978 Loyle Hairston MUSIC * Jazz, No. 2, 1962 Max Roach * Black Women Singers-Artists, No. 1, 1966 Abbey Lincoln * Will Jazz Survive? Thoughts on the State of the Great American Art, No. 4, 1983 Playthell Benjamin * Martin Luther King: A Personal Tribute, No. 1, 1972 Harry Belafonte * Afterword David Levering Lewis
About the Author :
Esther Cooper Jackson was part of the nucleus around W.E.B. Du Bois that founded the Freedomways Quarterly in 1961, a periodical devoted to furthering the civil rights struggle. As managing editor, Esther Cooper Jackson shepherded the magazine for twenty-five years until it ceased publication in 1986. She is also the co-editor of W.E.B. Du Bois: Black Titan and Paul Robeson: The Great Forerunner. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
