Stayed on Freedom: The Long History of Black Power Through One Family’s Journey

Reviewed by Josh Davidson

Review Source: Teaching for Change
Book Author: Dan Berger

Zinn Education Project communications associate Josh Davidson highly recommends this book.

Historian Dan Berger has called the Black Power Movement “a love story,” and nothing illustrates this point more than his latest book, Stayed on Freedom: The Long History of Black Power Through One Family’s Journey. This book reads like a novel, telling the fascinating stories of Zoharah and Michael Simmons from their early days as organizers with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to their ongoing international struggles 60 years later to make the world a better place than they found it.

Berger’s masterful storytelling brings the reader to the heart of the Black Freedom Struggle, highlighting the tireless work, endless love, and unswerving commitments to justice and freedom that are central to movements for liberation across the globe.

Do yourself a favor and read this book now.

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Stayed On Freedom by Dan Berger
Published by Basic Books on January 24, 2023
Genres: Biography and Autobiography, Civil Rights Movement
Pages: 400
Reading Level: Adults
ISBN: 9781541675377
Review Source: Teaching for Change

Publisher's Synopsis: A new history of Black Liberation, told through the intertwined story of two grassroots organizers.

The Black Power movement, often associated with its iconic spokesmen, derived much of its energy from the work of people whose stories have never been told. Stayed On Freedom brings into focus two unheralded Black Power activists who dedicated their lives to the fight for freedom.

Zoharah Simmons and Michael Simmons fell in love while organizing tenants and workers in the South. Their commitment to each other and to social change took them on a decades-long journey that traversed first the country and then the world. In centering their lives, historian Dan Berger shows how Black Power united the local and the global across organizations and generations.

Based on hundreds of hours of interviews, Stayed On Freedom is a moving and intimate portrait of two people trying to make a life while working to make a better world.