It was fitting that author and historian Peniel Joseph found himself near the “Embrace” sculpture on a cool Wednesday evening on Boston Common. The bronze monument depicts the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife, Coretta Scott King, clasping arms. For years, Professor Joseph has written about activists such as Dr. King, Malcolm X, and Kwame Ture (formerly known as Stokely Carmichael).
The author, in conversation with Harvard University professors Danielle Allen and Brandon Terry, discussed the topic “Freedom Dreams in America,” a dialogue that encouraged critical and bold thinking about the past, present, and future of American democracy. The discussion coincided with the publication of Professor Joseph’s eighth book, “Freedom Season: How 1963 Transformed America’s Civil Rights Revolution,” which hit shelves May 13. The book focuses exclusively on the year 1963 as a transformative moment in the long Black freedom struggle.
The Monitor spoke with Professor Joseph ahead of the publication of “Freedom Season” and before the event on Boston Common. He talked about how the events of 1963 remain relevant in 2025. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Why We Wrote This
An author’s examination of the Civil Rights Movement shows people coming together to end violence and discrimination against Black people, and also to provide a fuller accounting of American history.
What inspired you to take a deep dive into the year 1963?
It’s a culmination of my research, including my first book on the Black Power movement, along with my work regarding King and Malcolm X. I did an op-ed for The New York Times on [President John F.] Kennedy and his June 11, 1963, speech. I just kept finding more nuggets of research about how important 1963 was, and it was my first time writing a book on just a singular year.
I think 1963 is a pivotal year of the 1960s, and it ushers in this 50-year period of racial justice consensus – rough consensus – and paralleling with mass incarceration and negative things. But those 50 years are the most access and opportunity that Black Americans and people of color, and women, have received up to that point. And I would argue that it’s broken [in 2013] by the [U.S. Supreme Court’s] Shelby County v. Holder decision, among other things. Shelby County v. Holder eviscerates the Voting Rights Act and leads into this period of America, this post-consensus period with the backlash and really virulent anti-Black racism.
Can you discuss the relevance of 1963 to current events?
What’s interesting about 1963 is that there’s so many echoes to what’s happening in 2025 in terms of these debates over what freedom, democracy, and citizenship meant. And they were real debates. I mean, at the March on Washington, the American Nazi Party was there, and civil rights activists said they disagreed with the American Nazi Party, but they supported their right to be there because [the activists] didn’t want to have their freedom of speech and expression curtailed. And you’ve got open white supremacists in 1963, like George Wallace and Strom Thurmond, who are red-baiting [accusing people of being communists] members of the Civil Rights Movement. They’re red-baiting Bayard Rustin, so it’s very, very similar.
The dissimilarity is that the administration in 1963 was open to supporting the Civil Rights Movement, and they believed in democracy. They didn’t necessarily believe in multiracial democracy as much as the activists wanted them to – people like [James] Baldwin and Lorraine Hansberry and [Gloria] Richardson, King, and somebody like Malcolm X, which is why he’s a great figure to look at in 1963. Malcolm X became more powerful as the year went on, even as he became weaker inside the Nation of Islam, because so much of what he predicted was actually happening in terms of the violence and the chaos. At the same time, there are things that push back against what Malcolm X predicted, in terms of things like the March on Washington and the protests that Baldwin and others inspired after the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing [that killed four Black girls]. You do see a coalition of people getting together for dignity and citizenship.
What was the importance of Black studies programs in the 1960s?
I was really interested in showing the panorama of this period and this movement, and I think the young people who were in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee who were connected to Baldwin, connected to Malcolm X, King, Ella Baker, and Howard Zinn, they’re interested in African decolonization. They’re interested in what happened with Patrice Lumumba, [a Congolese politician and nationalist leader] who was assassinated in 1961.
The book started with Baldwin at Howard University, and it started there on purpose to show that so much of this was connected to universities and definitely speaking truth to power in having the accurate history of America, of Black America, and other groups. So you see this push even before Black studies gets institutionalized at San Francisco State University in 1966, you can see it. And obviously the work of Malcolm X and Baldwin and Hansberry is very key here in articulating this different vision, this critique of American exceptionalism that’s global and Pan-African in scope.
You mention so many names and ideas in this book. What brings it all together?
People have asked, “What’s the thing that converges Malcolm X and King? Richardson and Hansberry, what is the thing that converges them?” It’s their personal sincerity, political integrity, and an unapologetic love for Black people and Black culture. It doesn’t mean they think those people are perfect, it doesn’t mean they think those people are God or Jesus, because they’re not. They just love Black culture globally – love Black people globally. Those three things are very important in terms of connecting in this space and ultimately saying, “I want to investigate this space.”
