| Description | In the new book, Stayed on Freedom: The Long History of Black Power through One Family’s Journey, University of Washington-Bothell Professor and historian Dan Berger provides the life stories of Zoharah Simmons and Michael Simmons, two unheralded Black Power activists who dedicated their lives to the fight for freedom. The story of the Simmons family shows the enormous breadth and influence of the Black freedom struggle, spanning the world and across the United States, from organizing tenants in the American South in the 1960s, to struggling with construction workers in Seattle in the 1970s, and beyond. Join author Dan Berger, activist Michael Simmons, and Washington State Labor Council President April Sims for an evening reflecting on the power of the Black freedom struggle, past and present. "Stayed On Freedom is a movement story and a love story all wrapped together. It does not avoid or elide the problems and contradictions of a movement life—the traumas and costs, disappointments and betrayals. Dan Berger assembles a sensitive, honest, and beautiful intergenerational account of the extraordinary lives of Michael and Zoharah Simmons, their kin and comrades, and the worlds they dreamed and, still, try to create. Stayed On Freedom not only compels us to rethink the Black freedom movement but radically alters our understanding of love and struggle." — Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams and Thelonious Monk |
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