Julius B. Fleming Jr., "Black Patience: Performance, Civil Rights, and the Unfinished Project of Emancipation" (NYU Press, 2022)

New Books in African American Studies · Aug 17, 2022 · 36m

“Freedom, Now!” This rallying cry became the most iconic phrase of the Civil Rights Movement, challenging the persistent command that Black people wait—in the holds of slave ships and on auction blocks, in segregated bus stops and schoolyards—for their long-deferred liberation. In Black Patience: Performance, Civil Rights, and the Unfinished Project of Emancipation (NYU Press, 2022), Julius B. Fleming Jr. argues that, during the Civil Rights Movement, Black artists and activists used theater to energize this radical refusal to wait. Participating in a vibrant culture of embodied political…