Steady Hands for Freedom
Book Review
Brewer, Rose M.
http://www.solidarity-us.org/site/node/4160
Date Written: 2014-05-01
Publisher: Against the Current
Year Published: 2014
Resource Type: Article
Cx Number: CX20436
Book Review of "Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC" by Faith S. Holsaert, et. al
Abstract:
-
Excerpt:
In this era of reaction, in this atmosphere of repression, the imperative to re-imagine change is vital. Given this reality and the fact that 2014 represents the 50th anniversary of Freedom Summer, the edited volume Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts By Women in SNCC is supremely timely. It lifts up a still too invisible aspect of 1960s social change embedding radical women, heavily Black and white, at the center of social transformation in the United States.
This rich narrative of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee is rooted in the experiences and expressed in the voices of the women who lived it. The editors assert that in the book they "explain why we did what we did -- why we traveled directly toward danger…how we overcame fear."
The book is lengthy with dozens of voices who share their time in SNCC and its profound impact on their lives. The collection is organized through a periodization that spans 1961 through 1969, with an editors' postscript that ends in 1970. The periodization coincides with the local shifts in SNCC organizing and from the nonviolent movement to Black Power.
Subject Headings
