Freedomways Reader: Prophets in Their Own Country

by Esther Cooper Jackson, Constance Pohl

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 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 honored 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.

416 pages, Paperback

First published January 11, 2000

About the author

Esther Cooper Jackson (born August 21, 1917) is an African-American civil rights activist, communist, former social worker and, along with Shirley Graham Du Bois, W. E. B. Du Bois, Edward Strong, and Louis E. Burnham, was one of the founding editors of the magazine Freedomways, a theoretical, political and literary journal published from 1961 to 1985. She was married to James E. Jackson (1914–2007), an influential labor activist.

Reviews

[Sean Mulligan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great collection of articles from the Civil Rights/Black Liberation journal Freedomways, which operated from the 1960's to the 1980's but unfortunately is no longer around. The journal was a strong advocate for full Civil Rights for Blacks and opposition to Western Imperialism especially as it affected Africa. This collection, contains articles mostly by those of African descent, including, Black Americans and people from the rest of the African Diaspora and Africa itself. The authors are political activists, national leaders and artists. It has articles/ or letters by Paul Robeson, W.E.B. Dubois, Martin Luther King jr, James Baldwin, Pablo Naruda, Alice Walker, Ossie Davis, Julian Bond and Kwame Nkrumah.

The book tackles a number of important themes, such as the history of attempts to create strong interracial labor unions, how racism is used to keep both Blacks and Whites in poverty, the contributions of Blacks to American freedom during the American Revolution and Civil War and how the labor of the poor, especially Blacks both free and slave, as well as immigrants of different races built America.

Many of the issues raised in this volume, such as racism in American justice system, how Western, especially American imperialism profits from the Third World and hinders democracy there and how history is distorted to protect the powerful are still relevant today. Included is Dr. King's speech denouncing American involvement in Vietnam and an article on the now largely forgotten GI anti-war movement.

This book also has some interesting literary criticism, reviews of television and music and poems by various authors including Pabloc Naruda and Alice Walker.