About this Event
Celebrate the release of Dr. Say Burgin's first book, , at a special book launch event at Bluestockings.
The event will begin with a brief talk from Dr, Burgin about the book, followed by a conversation and Q&A moderated by Dr. Theoharis.
Join us as we learn about this important history and discuss its relevance to the present!
About :
In the mid-1960s, as the politics of Black self-determination gained steam, Black activists had a new message for white activists: Go into your own communities and organize white people against racism. While much of the media at the time and many historians since have regarded this directive as a “white purge” from the Black freedom movement, Say Burgin argues that it heralded a new strategy, racially parallel organizing, which people experimented with all over the country. Organizing Your Own shows that the Black freedom movement never experienced a “white purge,” and it offers a new way of understanding Black Power’s relationship to white America.
By focusing on Detroit from the mid-1960s through the mid-1970s, this volume illuminates a wide cross-section of white activists who took direction from Black-led groups like the Northern Student Movement, the City-Wide Citizens Action Committee, and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. Organizing Your Own draws on numerous oral histories and heretofore unseen archives to show that these white activists mobilized support for Black self-determination in education, policing, employment, and labor unions. It was a trial-and-error effort that pushed white activists to grapple with tough questions – which white people should they organize and how, which Black-led groups should they take direction from, and when did taking Black direction become mere sycophancy. The story of Detroit’s white fight for Black Power thus not only reveals a broader, richer movement, but it carries great insight into questions that remain relevant.
DR. SAY BURGIN is a historian of the 20th century US focusing on social movement and African American history. She is an assistant professor in the Department of History and contributing faculty to Africana Studies at Dickinson College. Her first book, Organizing Your Own: The White Fight for Black Power in Detroit, was published by New York University Press in April 2024. It provides a new way of understanding the Black Power movement’s relationship to white America. Her publications have appeared in the Journal of Civil and Human Rights, Women’s History Review, the Journal of American Studies, The Nation, the Washington Post, and elsewhere. She has helped to develop numerous lesson plans and open-platform materials that allow educators to teach the fuller, more radical history of Rosa Parks and the Black freedom movement.
JEANNE THEOHARIS is Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College of City University of New York and the author or co-author of eleven books and numerous articles on the civil rights and Black Power movements and the contemporary politics of race in the United States.. Her widely-acclaimed biography The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks appeared on the New York Times bestseller list and won a 2014 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work Biography/Autobiography. It has been adapted into a documentary of the same name, directed by Johanna Hamilton and Yoruba Richen and executive produced by Soledad O’Brien for NBC-Peacock where she served as a consulting producer. The film won a Peabody Award, a Television Academy Honor Award, a Gracie Award for Historical Documentary, and a Webby. Her book A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History won the 2018 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize in Nonfiction.
"For anyone interested in Northern liberalism and the Black freedom struggle, this is a must-read. Burgin's study of white anti-racist organizing in Detroit shows how groups of white Detroiters took up the Black Power imperative and challenged the structures of job discrimination, media bias, political power, and policing in the city." -- Jeanne Theoharis, author of A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History
"Few have explored how white allies worked in solidarity with Black Power activists to develop campaigns parallel to their Black comrades’ organizing.. As white allies wonder how they can best work in solidarity with struggles for Black Freedom today, the larger questions that Say Burgin asks remain urgent. How, she wonders, might we learn from these activists’ successes and challenges?" -- Karen Miller, author of Managing Inequality: Northern Racial Liberalism in Interwar Detroit
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Bluestockings Cooperative Bookstore, 116 Suffolk Street, New York, United States
USD 0.00 to USD 35.00