Freedom: A history of African American struggle

New Crisis, The, Nov/Dec 2002

As African Americans sought to forge themselves as a people in the leviathan of slavery, and in the process expand democracy for all Americans, the concept of freedom has been central to our struggle. Though freedom has meant different things, at different times, to different people, it has nonetheless been the golden thread in the tapestry of African American history. In the 1960s "freedom now" was the ringing cry of the civil rights movement. Two of its principal expressions where the "freedom riders" - black and white young people who rode integrated buses through the segregated South in 1961, and "Freedom Summer" -- the legendary summer of 1964 when several hundred northern college students headed south to work with local black leadership and SNCC activists to help register voters in Mississippi.

...In pursuit of freedom African Americans have frequently differed in their views concerning timing, strategies, and tactics. ...But within this rich diversity, the voices from the pages of black history have produced a common cry of freedom - a freedom to live and pursue their grandest hopes for themselves and their children, to serve others, and to build a nation dedicated to justice.

-from the introduction by Manning Marable and Leith Mullings