Tuck, We Ain't What We Ought To Be - The Black Freedom Struggle From Emancipation To Obama

Abstract

     Stephen Tuck weaves a new tapestry of the African-American freedom struggle from emancipation to the twenty-first century by adding unfamiliar voices to the expected chorus. The voices are demanding freedom in many different ways — the sheer diversity threatens to explode into many disparate fragments. But the song of freedom is held together by Tuck's organizing skills. His main point is that a continuous line of resistance linked the emancipation era to the twenty-first century, with activism, individual and organized, as a hallmark of each generation. The book focuses on the difficulty and uncertainty of the struggle. Like a pendulum, small advances are accompanied by swift backlashes of violence and indifference. With each triumph, the reader braces for the expected brutal backlash and it follows in due course. Yet the direction of the struggle is forward.