Ordinary black Americans have historically transformed US ideas of freedom

Evidence

We need a powerful expression of black politics today: everyday people engaged in concerted efforts to rebuild black communities, and movements to shake the country out of its current racial morass. We’ve done it before. The twentieth century is filled with examples of ordinary black folk, along with other concerned Americans, transforming our national ideas of freedom and democracy. We’ve paid the price too. The country’s soil is soaked with the blood of black martyrs who turned their backs on the status quo and risked everything for a more expansive idea of what this country could be. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 571

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Black institutional separatism aimed at transforming, not escaping, America — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 245; Black Americans were foundational to American freedom, not just its economy — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project: A New American Origin…, 83; Newly freed Black Americans embraced democracy instead of seeking revenge — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project: A New American Origin…, 143 (+6 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Black institutional separatism aimed at transforming, not escaping, America — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 245; Black Americans were foundational to American freedom, not just its economy — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project: A New American Origin…, 83; Newly freed Black Americans embraced democracy instead of seeking revenge — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project: A New American Origin…, 143 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Black Americans’ freedom struggles have been the nation’s defining but unwritten tradition. #corroborates (0.92) — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 1310
• Black bodies in national celebrations exposed the lie of American freedom #complicates (0.72) — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 126