In the long decade between the mid-fifties and the late sixties, jazz was changing more than its sound. The age of Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite, John Coltrane's A Love Supreme, and Charles Mingus's The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady was a time when jazz became both newly militant and newly seductive, its example powerfully shaping the social dramas of the Civil Rights movement, the Black Power movement, and the counterculture. Freedom Is, Freedom Ain't is the first book to tell the broader story of this period in jazz--and American--history.

In this exciting revisionist history, Stephen Tuck traces the black freedom struggle in all its diversity, from the first years of freedom during the Civil War to President ObamaÕs inauguration. As it moves from popular culture to high politics, from the Deep South to New England, the West Coast, and abroad, Tuck weaves gripping stories of ordinary black peopleÑas well as celebrated figuresÑinto the sweep of racial protest and social change. The drama unfolds from an armed march of longshoremen in postÐCivil War Baltimore to Booker T. WashingtonÕs founding of Tuskegee Institute; from the race riots following Jack JohnsonÕs Òfight of the centuryÓ to Rosa ParksÕ refusal to move to the back of a Montgomery bus; and from the rise of hip hop to the journey of a black Louisiana grandmother to plead with the Tokyo directors of a multinational company to stop the dumping of toxic waste near her home. We AinÕt What We Ought To Be rejects the traditional narrative that identifies the Southern non-violent civil rights movement as the focal point of the black freedom struggle. Instead, it explores the dynamic relationships between those seeking new freedoms and those looking to preserve racial hierarchies, and between grassroots activists and national leaders. As Tuck shows, strategies were ultimately contingent on the power of activists to protest amidst shifting economic and political circumstances in the U.S. and abroad. This book captures an extraordinary journey that speaks to all AmericansÑboth past and future.

Elected six times to the House from the state of Georgia, Cynthia McKinney cut a trail through Congressional deceit like a hot ember through ash. She discovered legislators who passed laws without reading them. Party leaders who colluded across party lines against their constituents' interests. Black-skinned individuals shilling for the white status quo. She excoriated government lassitude over Hurricane Katrina, uncovering dark secrets. She held the only critical Congressional briefing on 9/11, introducing counter- testimony of scholars, investigators, former intelligence agents. As a member of the House Armed Services Committee, she held Rumsfeld to account for malfeasance by military contractors and missing billions in the Pentagon’s budget. Then she hammered him on the reasons for the failure of NORAD air defenses on 9/11. She read truth into the Congressional Record, held town halls and hearings, led protests, showed up while others played along to get along, took the side of the people against the will of the Party. And when she got too truth seeking and speaking, the Republicans rigged the Democratic primaries to boot her out, leaving behind a trail of achievements mostly won singlehandedly as a result of her service on the House International Relations, House Agriculture, House Armed Services, and Budget Committees and the Select Committee on Hurricanes Katrina and Rita But McKinney rose again like a Phoenix, answering the call to run as 2008 Green Party candidate for President, challenging the corrupt two-party stranglehold on American democracy. Then it was on to the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza, to be seized on the high seas and imprisoned in Israel. On to Tripoli, to serve as witness to the NATO terror bombing of Libya. On to Malaysia to serve on the War Crimes Commission... Often introduced as the Sojourner Truth, the Harriet Tubman of our age, McKinney reflects here on the Biblical figures of Esther, Deborah and Naomi. This is the Cynthia McKinney saga as it stands to date-- what she saw, what she learned, and how she fought for change.

This book presents an oral, musical, and photographic record of the venerable Gullah culture in modern times. With roots stretching back to their slave forbears, the Johns Islanders and their folk traditions are a vital link between black Americans and their African and Caribbean ancestors.

A detailed look at the life and songs of of the famous folk singer.

In 1957, a young girl is torn between life in the neighborhood she grew up in and fitting in at the school she now attends.