Freedom North: Black Freedom Struggles Outside the South, 1940-1980

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Summary: Freedom North, the politics of liberation
Review: Freedom North contains some of the breakthroughs in new scholarship on the black freedom movement. On the one hand there is cutting edge research assessing the dynamics of the Illinois Black Panther Party, the legal, health, and political gains made by the New York Young Lords Party, the political contours of the controversial Los Angeles US Organization, gender relations in the Nation of Islam, and the development of Detroit's Shrine of the Black Madonna. On the other hand, the book traces the rise of grassroots movements such as the 1940s March on Washington Movement in Detroit, the freedom movement in Oakland before the Black Panther Party, the protest dynamics of the National Welfare Organization, the rise of Black Power politics in Newark, and the strength of black women's leadership in the Boston Busing Crisis. Did you know that parallel to the Little Rock Nine, there was a Harlem Nine school movement led by women in the 1950s? That history, and more, is in Freedom North. Not only does this volume explore the power of local movements, but it also examines the public policy impact of Grassroots organizing. Above all, we learn that the freedom movement in the North was not an afterthought of the Southern movement, and there was no Chinese Wall between civil rights and black power. Freedom North is a glimpse of the new paradigms being developed to understand the black liberation movement.