Stayed on Freedom: The Long History of Black Power Through One Family’s Journey

Formerly married activists Zoharah and Michael Simmons take center stage in this eye-opening history of the Black Power movement’s global reach. Berger (Captive Nation), a professor of comparative ethnic studies at the University of Washington Bothell, draws on hundreds of hours of interviews with the Simmonses to chart their involvement in civil rights struggles at home and abroad. The two met in 1965 while working for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC, and “their friendship deepened into something more,” as they organized on behalf of Julian Bond after he was denied his duly elected seat in the Georgia state legislature over his opposition to the Vietnam War. Berger pinpoints those efforts—“SNCC’s first sustained foray into organizing in an urban context”—as an inflection point for Black Power, and tracks the movement’s evolution from its seeds in the U.S. to its influence on freedom struggles in Palestine, South Africa, and elsewhere. Along the way, he documents the Simmonses’ interactions with prominent civil rights figures, uplifts their fellow “foot soldiers,” including SNCC organizer Bill Ware, and details Zoharah’s fight against patriarchal attitudes within the movement. Though the couple’s relationship gets somewhat lost in the shuffle, this is an insightful look at “the multitudes of Black Power.” (Jan.)