In the crowded field of books about social activism, truth is the element that distinguishes good from great. In his first book, David Dennis Jr has mastered the process.
The Movement Made Us: A Father, a Son, and a Legacy of a Freedom Ride is written with his father, David Dennis Sr, a hero of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. The book opens with raw truth and maintains that standard, never using ambiguity as a shield against accountability.
Dennis Sr never intended to be involved in the movement. In fact, the life he dreamed of when he went to Dillard University in New Orleans had nothing to do with activism at all. He wanted to be an engineer.
When he started attending meetings of the Congress of Racial Equality (Core, which he would direct in Mississippi), he did so not out of bravery, nor driven by a desire to fight for a better world for Black people. Nor was he driven by a refusal to stand idle against white nationalism. At first, he was driven by motives familiar to any freshman who finds himself the first in his family to attend college. He wanted to meet attractive girls, keep his head down, finish school and get a job.
Whether you consider that selfish, or self-preservation, it is unmistakably human. The Movement Made Us never shies away from the humanity of our civil rights heroes and heroines and the truth about a country that forced even the least prepared “soldiers” to fight a war that still hasn’t ended.
In a chapter entitled God and Fear, Dennis Sr and Jr invite readers to experience the tension in the room as figures including John Lewis, Dr Martin Luther King Jr, Andrew Young, CT Vivian, Wyatt Tee Walker and the director of Core, James Farmer, discuss whether a freedom ride – an organized incursion into the south, by public transport and in support of voting rights – should be cancelled because of extreme threats and the promise of jail on arrival.
King objects. Questions arise about whether he is too important to the movement to ride. “He ain’t special,” one attendee shouts. King’s commitment was never in question but something far worse was being projected to other leaders: his assumed “superiority”. Dennis Sr and Jr draw readers into such tensions, allowing them to sit with the fear, anger and authenticity of the moment.
Describing pivotal historic moments, the authors use truth as their compass, unafraid of where it may lead. No subject is above examination. The truth of our country is far more brutal than many Americans want to believe.
Americans often see their history through rose-colored glasses. The Movement Made Us holds history to the sun, willing to let the rays burn. In a chapter entitled A Weekend in Jackson, the young activist Joan Johnson is questioned by the police who want to know about the “leaders” of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
“Lil’ [n-word] you in the NAACP,” the cop spat.
“Yes,” she declared.
Her words met with a beating. She fell to the floor, tried to protect her head. The police kicked her and demanded to know “who runs the NAACP?”
“The people.”
Each time she was asked the same question, Johnson gave the same answer. She was beaten unconscious, left in a pool of her own blood. The authors reveal that she was 16 years old at the time. The rawness of the image leaves no room to pretend that such domestic terrorism precluded the torture of women and children.
America and the police force it protects and serves are not alone in being held to the light. The authentic life of David Dennis Sr, college student turned civil rights veteran, is examined closely too.
After his close friend Medgar Evers was shot dead on his own front lawn, Dennis Sr nearly succumbed to survivor’s guilt and grief. The trauma and turmoil he describes will pose questions in the mind of the reader. Questions like, “What becomes of those who survive when their fellow soldiers are murdered with impunity? Where do their bodies and minds store the pain from the emotional and physical violence inflicted? What happens to marriages and families when one spouse promises for ever but can barely imagine a world beyond tomorrow?”
This book addresses these questions with truth. Father and son wrestle with their answers. There are no clear winners. Noting how the family became an unwilling casualty in the war, Dennis Jr shares what it was like to be the son of a civil rights legend who barely escaped his own share of assassination attempts:
The white men who fired shots at your back may have missed you but they hit our lineage. They left bullet holes in the foundation upon which your future families are built.”
The Movement Made Us is not for those unprepared for veracity. Readers will experience a father sometimes reluctant to revisit the past and a son navigating his identity as a griot, recording history while protecting the father he loves.
At its core, The Movement Made Us is about legacy, leadership, healing and accountability. It is more than a story about a father and his son. It is more than a story about the civil rights movement. It is a master class on allowing truth to anchor you and finding the balance between accountability and honoring. This is a lesson that should be replicated in America as a whole.
Dennis Jr states: “This is the part where we break and tear the things that have been fixed in place.” His words are directed towards his father, but for a country in need of real healing, it is an evergreen declaration.
The Movement Made Us is published in the US by Harper
