Organizing Your Own: The White Fight for Black Power in Detroit

White solidarity with the Black Power movement in the mid-1960s led to racially parallel organizing, which was a new strategy for Black self-determination. Organizing Your Own shows that the Black freedom movement never experienced a white purge and offers a new way of understanding Black Power's relationship to white America. It draws on oral histories and archives to show that white activists mobilized support for Black self-determination in education, policing, employment, and labor unions, pushing them to grapple with tough questions.

Format: Hardback
Length: 304 pages
Publication date: 09 April 2024
Publisher: New York University Press

The fascinating history of white solidarity with the Black Power movement in the mid-1960s offers a new perspective on the relationship between Black Power and white America. While often portrayed as a white purge from the Black freedom movement, Say Burgin argues that it heralded a new strategy, racially parallel organizing, which people experimented with all over the country. Organizing Your Own: The Black Freedom Movement and White Solidarity in Detroit, 1960s-1970s, illuminates a wide cross-section of white activists who took direction from Black-led groups like the Northern Student Movement, the City-Wide Citizens Action Committee, and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. By focusing on Detroit, the volume reveals a broader, richer movement that pushed white activists to grapple with tough questions such as which white people should they organize and how, which Black-led groups should they take direction from, and when did taking Black direction become mere sycophancy. The story of Detroit's white fight for Black Power thus not only reveals a broader, richer movement, but it carries great insight into questions that remain relevant today.

Weight: 644g
Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781479814145