Description: The romantic vision of the civil rights movement is exhausted, and its inverse, Afropessimism, offers a self-defeating irony. To resolve this impasse, Brandon Terry transforms the standard story of America's democratic awakening through a tragic reading of the civil rights movement: as an ongoing struggle still worthy of affirmation.
Brief description: Brandon M. Terry is John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University and Codirector of the Institute on Policing, Incarceration, and Public Safety at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. He is the coeditor, with Tommie Shelby, of To Shape a New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr. and editor of Fifty Years Since MLK.
Review Quotes: Part of a growing consciousness that the Obama-era liberal settlement is inadequate for black political thought, and theorizing anew is required.--Vincent Lloyd "Compact Magazine" (10/29/2025 12:00:00 AM)