The Missing Link and the Evolution of Black Radicalism
No event in history happens in a vacuum, Dr. Hasan Kwame Jeffries examines how in 1966 the Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO), in Lowndes County, Alabama, bridged the gap between the nonviolent strategies used by groups like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), to radical and uncompromising approaches to advancing civil rights employed by groups like the Black Panthers for Self Defense.
Dr. Hasan Kwame Jeffries is an Associate Professor in the History Department at Ohio State University. Dr. Jeffries specializes in 20th century African American history and has an expertise in the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements. He is the author of the newly released BLOODY LOWNDES: CIVIL RIGHTS AND BLACK POWER IN ALABAMA’S BLACK BELT (New York University Press, 2009). BLOODY LOWNDES tells the remarkable story of the local people and SNCC organizers who ushered in the Black Power era by transforming rural Lowndes County, Alabama from a citadel of violent white supremacy into the center of southern black militancy by creating the Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO), an all-black, independent, political party that was also the original Black Panther Party.