Red Emma’s

In the mid-1960s, as the politics of Black self-determination gained steam, Black activists had a new message for white activists: Go into your own communities and organize white people against racism. While much of the media at the time and many historians since have regarded this directive 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_ _shows that the Black freedom movement never experienced a “white purge,” and it offers a new way of understanding Black Power’s relationship to white America.

By focusing on Detroit from the mid-1960s through the mid-1970s, this volume 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. ORGANIZING YOUR OWN draws on numerous oral histories and heretofore unseen archives to show that these white activists mobilized support for Black self-determination in education, policing, employment, and labor unions. It was a trial-and-error effort that pushed white activists to grapple with tough questions – 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.

Say Burgin is a historian of the 20th century US focusing on social movement and African American history. She is an assistant professor in the Department of History and contributing faculty to Africana Studies at Dickinson College. Her first book, ORGANIZING YOUR OWN: THE WHITE FIGHT FOR BLACK POWER IN DETROIT, was published by New York University Press in 2024. It provides a new way of understanding the Black Power movement’s relationship to white America. Her publications have appeared in the Journal of Civil and Human Rights, Women’s History Review, the Journal of American Studies, The Nation, the Washington Post, and elsewhere. She has helped to develop numerous lesson plans and open-platform materials that allow educators to teach the fuller, more radical history of Rosa Parks and the Black freedom movement. Follow her on Bluesky @sayburgin.bsky.social.

Lester Spence is a Professor of Political Science and Africana Studies at Johns Hopkins University. He specializes in the study of black, racial, and urban politics in the wake of the neoliberal turn, and is the author of KNOCKING THE HUSTLE: AGAINST THE NEOLIBERAL TURN IN BLACK POLITICS.