ABSTRACT
I once thought I could never imagine what it would have been like to be among the newly freed slaves after the shock of it all when the word finally came down, after the Juneteenth celebrations, after the pained attempts to locate lost family and loved ones, when the difficult work of reconstruction sat there waiting to be done. Same thing with those who helped to build Black lives and opportunities anew after the decades long struggle of African American leftists, moderates, liberals, and conservatives resulted in the temporary victories of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. It all seemed so basic when I learned bits of the histories of those moments: how could we not have gotten further? How could the rare coalescence of a national political will to change and legislation attempting to make that will some kind of reality not result in more tangible progress? How could Washington and DuBois still be debating what should have been obvious more than 30 years after emancipation? How could activists be left with such shambles of an education system 50 years after Brown v. Board when Blackfolk were infected with a euphoria that had them chanting “free by 63!”?
