Nonviolence before King

“A sweeping synthesis. . . . This is an important and provocative book that deserves to be widely read.”—Journal of Social History

“Siracusa . . . considers the importance of historical legacy in focusing on the genealogy of nonviolence as a political tool in the ongoing struggle for freedom and equality.”—CHOICE

“Compelling. . . .  Siracusa’s monograph represents a decisive contribution to our understanding of the Black freedom movement.”—Reading Religion

“Remarkable. . . . [I]ts recognition of the vital contributions made by Black intellectuals to the language, practice, and institutions that established nonviolence as a revolutionary force in American society marks its significance and makes it a must-read by students of civil rights history and Black intellectual history, to name a few.”—Journal of Southern History

“Siracusa offers a thorough exposition of some Black activists’ embrace of nonviolence as an ethical and political strategy for challenging Jim Crow from the 1920s through the early 1960s.”—Journal of African American History

“Reading Siracusa’s Nonviolence Before King will provide a much deeper dive into lesser-known early leaders of the push toward nonviolent resistance. . . . [A]n important piece of historically grounded scholarship that reminds us that ‘the politics of being was not simply a protest’ (6) but rather had far-reaching implications for the way we act in the world.”—Peace & Change

“Siracusa has undertaken a remarkably rich excavation of the evolution of nonviolent thought in the decades leading up to the modern civil rights movement and Dr. Martin L. King Jr. As deftly demonstrated here, the genealogy of nonviolent thought in the context of black freedom movements has deep roots…. Through thoughtful, sharp analysis and archival work, this history provides an important complement to the expansive corpus of scholarship on civil rights and nonviolence.”—Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, professor of history at the University of Connecticut and author of Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap

“This book is sorely needed to understand the centrality of nonviolence in the Black freedom struggle and as a corrective to the current state of civil rights historiography.” — Clarence Taylor, author of Black Religious Intellectuals: The Fight for Equality from Jim Crow to the 21st Century

“There are other books and articles that cover particular parts of the story of nonviolence but none pieces together the whole story in the way done here.” — Paul Harvey, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs