"Moving." — Essence
"An incredible insight into not only how these activists planned and strategized around police lies, but it also revealed the daily trauma they endured due to the police officers." — Forbes
"Powerful." — Atlanta Journal-Constitution
"The heavy toll exacted by the fight against Jim Crow is tallied in this gripping memoir. . . . A remarkably intimate and vivid portrait of the human side of the civil rights movement." — Publishers Weekly
"Timely in an era of renewed disenfranchisement and an instructive, important addition to the literature of civil rights." — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Moving, evocative, and haunting, this father-son perspective on the civil rights movement is a necessary read and a great addition for all library collections." — Library Journal (starred review)
“One of the most important books about the civil rights movement I have ever read. In interviewing his father, who was on the front lines of the Black freedom struggle—and who was close friends with so many of its most recognized names—you get as intimate a view of the movement as you will ever encounter. It’s a brilliant behind the scenes account of one of our country’s most important eras. It strips the civil rights movement of caricature and treats those who were a part of it as the three-dimensional people they were. This book is special.” — Clint Smith, author of How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America
"Captivating from the opening sentence, David J. Dennis, Jr., proves that he is not only a great writer, but he is also a great witness. In The Movement Made Us, Dennis, through a thoughtful and unsparing recalibration of history, captures all of the terrors of being Black in the United States, the diligence of our resistance work, the nuances of our existence, and the miracle of our survival. These are integral testimonies, these vivid, harrowing, and moving remembrances passed from ancestor to elder to son. The Movement Made Us is a stunning chronicle of defiance." — Robert Jones, Jr., author of The Prophets
"A memoir in two voices, crossing generations, and binding them together: The Movement Made Us is beautiful, searing, tender, brilliant. It offers a wholly new way of thinking about the inheritances we are born into and must grow and live with: familial, historic, traumatic, and triumphant inheritances. If you have any interest in the history of the Civil Rights Movement, the struggle for racial justice, and African American life, this book is for you. And even if you think you know the history of the movement, this book will astonish you in moving and transformative ways." — Imani Perry, author of Breathe and South to America
“The Movement Made Us hit me hard, deep in my gut . . . David Dennis, Sr. has always been a hero of mine, but I never knew his story; I only knew the intensity of his eyes, the quiver in his voice as he eulogized James Chaney. Now his son has brought the painful details of his life—of their life—to the page. This is a story of courage, sacrifice, loss, survivor’s guilt, and redemption. But, most importantly, it is a story of love . . . of us and of that between a son and his father.” — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., author of Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own
“In this searing memoir of the civil rights movement, a father and son reckon with the costs exacted in that struggle—to the nation, to the movement, and most of all, to themselves and their relationship. The Movement Made Us is a must-read work for anyone seeking to understand the past and present of the fight for racial equality.” — Kevin M. Kruse, professor of History, Princeton University
"I learned a lot from this deep and lively memoir of the struggle to improve America. It is especially striking for its quick, graceful portraits of key figures such as Medgar Evers, Fannie Lou Hamer, and James Baldwin." — Thomas E. Ricks, author of Fiasco and Waging a Good War: A Military History of the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1968
“The Dennises’ remarkable, beautifully written oral history and memoir sparks a long overdue reckoning. It is the most raw, intimate accounting and recounting of the civil rights era I’ve ever read. What was sacrificed? What was lost? What does trauma do to a body, a family? The Movement Made Us takes us to the intersections of history, memory, activism, and parenthood, where tenderness lives alongside the terror and violence of America’s broken promises—yesterday’s and today’s. Here, we travel the emotional distance between a son’s searching and a father’s regrets to arrive ultimately, hopefully, to a healing place.” — Deesha Philyaw, author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies
"The Movement Made Us takes literature to a momentous Southern Black space I honestly never thought a book could take us. This is literally the movement that made us and both Davids love us whole here with a creation that is as ingenious as it is soulfully sincere. Stunning." — Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy
"Captivating from the opening sentence, David J. Dennis, Jr., proves that he is not only a great writer, but he is also a great witness. In The Movement Made Us, Dennis, through a thoughtful and unsparing recalibration of history, captures all of the terrors of being Black in the United States, the diligence of our resistance work, the nuances of our existence, and the miracle of our survival. These are integral testimonies, these vivid, harrowing, and moving remembrances passed from ancestor to elder to son. The Movement Made Us is a stunning chronicle of defiance."
In this searing memoir of the civil rights movement, a father and son reckon with the costs exacted in that struggle—to the nation, to the movement, and most of all, to themselves and their relationship. The Movement Made Us is a must-read work for anyone seeking to understand the past and present of the fight for racial equality.
"A memoir in two voices, crossing generations, and binding them together: The Movement Made Us is beautiful, searing, tender, brilliant. It offers a wholly new way of thinking about the inheritances we are born into and must grow and live with: familial, historic, traumatic, and triumphant inheritances. If you have any interest in the history of the Civil Rights Movement, the struggle for racial justice, and African American life, this book is for you. And even if you think you know the history of the movement, this book will astonish you in moving and transformative ways."
One of the most important books about the civil rights movement I have ever read. In interviewing his father, who was on the front lines of the Black freedom struggle—and who was close friends with so many of its most recognized names—you get as intimate a view of the movement as you will ever encounter. It’s a brilliant behind the scenes account of one of our country’s most important eras. It strips the civil rights movement of caricature and treats those who were a part of it as the three-dimensional people they were. This book is special.
The Dennises’ remarkable, beautifully written oral history and memoir sparks a long overdue reckoning. It is the most raw, intimate accounting and recounting of the civil rights era I’ve ever read. What was sacrificed? What was lost? What does trauma do to a body, a family? The Movement Made Us takes us to the intersections of history, memory, activism, and parenthood, where tenderness lives alongside the terror and violence of America’s broken promises—yesterday’s and today’s. Here, we travel the emotional distance between a son’s searching and a father’s regrets to arrive ultimately, hopefully, to a healing place.
"The Movement Made Us takes literature to a momentous Southern Black space I honestly never thought a book could take us. This is literally the movement that made us and both Davids love us whole here with a creation that is as ingenious as it is soulfully sincere. Stunning."
The Movement Made Us hit me hard, deep in my gut . . . David Dennis, Sr. has always been a hero of mine, but I never knew his story; I only knew the intensity of his eyes, the quiver in his voice as he eulogized James Chaney. Now his son has brought the painful details of his life—of their life—to the page. This is a story of courage, sacrifice, loss, survivor’s guilt, and redemption. But, most importantly, it is a story of love . . . of us and of that between a son and his father.
★ 05/01/2022
David Dennis Sr. has a unique story to tell. As an organizer of the Freedom Rides, lunch counter sit-ins, and voter registration drives in the American Deep South in the early 1960s, he saw firsthand the cruelty of white Southerners during the civil rights movement and lived to tell the tale. He experienced frustration and anger at higher-ups in the movement, who he perceived weren't in the trenches and putting their lives on the line for Black rights. He grieved for friends who lost their lives fighting for their rights. He feared for his own life, and feared for who he was becoming. This oral history is recorded by his son, Dennis Jr., who also chronicles how his own work as a journalist at Andscape is influenced by that of his father. This memoir of survival is critical to understanding the movement from the perspective of the people on the ground. VERDICT Moving, evocative, and haunting, this father-son perspective on the civil rights movement is a necessary read and a great addition for all library collections.—Ahliah Bratzler
★ 2022-02-25
A young Black activist revisits his father’s role in the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
“How many bubbles are on a bar of soap?” That was a typical Mississippi voting-eligibility question during the late Jim Crow era—impossible to answer but sufficient to deny Black citizens the right to vote. “Wrong answer, no voter registration,” recalls Dennis Sr., who had significant involvement in key historical moments, often at great danger. He came into the movement reluctantly, determined to become an engineer and settle into an ordinary life. Instead, drawn into it at a time of lunch-counter protests and marches for justice, he faced down the violence of police and White supremacists. “I was aware of racial terror, like any Black kid, especially in the South,” he writes. “I sat in the back of buses. I picked cotton for white men who owned the land we sharecropped on. I heard them call me 'boy' and [N-word] and I knew that speaking up would get me and my family killed.” Cultivating friendships with James Baldwin, Fannie Lou Hamer (“a product of everything Mississippi could do to Black folks, especially Black women”), and other leading lights of the movement, Dennis Sr. continued his activism into the 1970s, when, weary (and none too impressed with many clueless White would-be allies), he slipped into despair and drugs, “lost in his own fury,” as his son describes it. Reinvigorated by the example of Robert Moses, he regained his lost idealism in time to see the necessary revival of civil rights activism in a time of retrograde violence and oppression. Writes Dennis Jr., “Growing up with these people taught me that to be Black in America and part of the Movement was to have fought a war on American soil.”
Timely in an era of renewed disenfranchisement and an instructive, important addition to the literature of civil rights.
