On May 18, 2022, David J. Dennis Jr. and David J. Dennis Sr. discussed their new book The Movement Made Us: A Father, a Son, and the Legacy of a Freedom Ride as part of the History Is Lunch series.
Part oral history and part memoir, The Movement Made Us spans the Civil Rights era of the 1960s to Black Lives Matter. The book pivots between the voices of the father-and-son duo of David Dennis Jr. and David Dennis Sr. The senior Dennis was a core architect of the movement, and the book contains his recollections—both harrowing and joyful—to his son, a journalist working on the front lines of change today.
“My father rode from Montgomery to Jackson in 1961 as one of the original Freedom Riders. Later he was field secretary for the Congress of Racial Equality and co-director with Bob Moses of the Voter Education Committee of the Council of Federated Organizations,” said David Dennis Jr. “He helped organize Freedom Summer, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, and the challenge to the National Democratic Party in 1964. But this is the first time the full story of his life in and out of the Movement has been told.”
Author Deesha Philyaw wrote of the book, “It is the most raw, intimate accounting and recounting of the civil rights era I’ve ever read. What was sacrificed? What was lost? What does trauma do to a body, a family? The Movement Made Us takes us to the intersections of history, memory, activism, and parenthood, where tenderness lives alongside the terror and violence of America’s broken promises—yesterday’s and today’s. Here, we travel the emotional distance between a son’s searching and a father’s regrets to arrive ultimately, hopefully, to a healing place.”
David J. Dennis Jr. is a senior writer at Andscape (formerly The Undefeated). His work has been featured in Atlanta magazine, The Atlantic, the Washington Post, and Huffington Post, among other publications. Dennis is the recipient of the 2021 American Mosaic Journalism Prize, is a National Association of Black Journalist Salute to Excellence award winner, and was named one of The Root’s 100 Most Influential African Americans of 2020. He lives in Georgia with his wife and two children and is a graduate of Davidson College.
David J. Dennis Sr. is a civil rights veteran. He attended Dillard University and earned his law degree at the University of Michigan. In 1972, he co-directed the challenge to the Louisiana Democratic structure that resulted in an African American chairman and a majority African American delegation being sent to the national convention, the first time since Reconstruction. He is the executive director of the Southern Initiative Algebra Project, Inc., a nonprofit organization that works to ensure a quality education for all children, especially children of color and the chronically underserved.
History Is Lunch is sponsored by the John and Lucy Shackelford Charitable Fund of the Community Foundation for Mississippi. The weekly lecture series of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History explores different aspects of the state's past. The hour-long programs are held in the Craig H. Neilsen Auditorium of the Museum of Mississippi History and Mississippi Civil Rights Museum building at 222 North Street in Jackson.
