New York, NY: Harper Collins (May 10, 2022)

Hardcover.

New in dust jacket.

“The Movement Made Us takes literature to a momentous Southern Black space to which 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

A dynamic family exchange that pivots between the voices of a father and son, The Movement Made Us is a unique work of oral history and memoir, chronicling the extraordinary story of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and its living legacy embodied in Black Lives Matter. David Dennis Sr., a core architect of the movement, speaks out for the first time, swapping recollections both harrowing and joyful with David Jr., a journalist working on the front lines of change today.

Taken together, their stories paint a critical portrait of America, casting one nation’s image through the lens of two individual Black men and their unique relationship. Playful and searching, anxious and restorative, fearless and driving, this intimate memoir features scenes from across David Sr.’s life, as he becomes involved in the movement, tries to move beyond it, and ultimately returns to it to find final solace and new sense of self—revealing a survivor who travels eternally with a cabal of ghosts.

A crucial addition to Civil Rights history, The Movement Made Us is the story of a nation reckoning with change and the hopes, struggles, setbacks, and triumphs of modern Black life. This is it: the extant chronicle of why we live, why we move, and for what we are made. The Movement Made Us features an 8-page photo insert.

David J. Dennis, Jr. is a freelance writer, editor, educator, and social commentator, and a visiting professor of journalism at Morehouse College. His work has been featured in Atlanta magazine, the Atlantic, ESPN’s The Undefeated, the Washington Post, Huffington Post, and on Medium. He lives in Atlanta with his wife and two children.

David J. Dennis, Sr. is a civil rights veteran and one of the original Freedom Riders who rode from Montgomery to Jackson in 1961. He served as field secretary for the Congress of Racial Equality and co-director of the Council of Federated Organizations and helped organize the Freedom Summer in 1964. He attended Dillard University and earned his law degree at the University of Michigan. In 1972, he became an organizer challenging the Louisiana Democratic structure that resulted in an African American chairman and a majority African American delegation being sent to the national convention, the first time since Reconstruction.