For Immediate Release
Aug. 25, 2020
WASHINGTON – Human rights advocate Nkechi Taifa today announced the publication of her debut book, “Black Power, Black Lawyer: My Audacious Quest for Justice.” The work is a nod to the Black Power movement she grew up in, and chronicles how the leaders of that era influenced her thinking, advocacy and life’s work. The tome teaches, preaches, rhapsodizes and tantalizes. In documenting her story, Taifa pauses to highlight the figures that inspired her and that laid the groundwork for today’s Black Lives Matter movement.
“The period that influenced me most was the Black Power era,” said Nkechi Taifa, a human rights advocate, convener of the Justice Roundtable and reparations expert. “But this period of our history has been swept under the rug, and in most cases, outright erased. You do not hear about Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael), Chokwe Lumumba and others. You don’t hear about the Black Liberation Movement of yesterday or the COINTELPRO that led to a number of political prisoners, some of them are still incarcerated today. But the groundwork these freedom-seekers laid impacts us today. The progress we witness today had its roots in the Black Power movement. We would not be where we are today were it not for those early freedom fighters.”
Black Power, Black Lawyer threads critical periods, connecting the dots of the continuum for justice from yesteryear’s freedom fighters to today’s liberationists. The book is a watershed intellectual autobiography and should be required reading for students of history, African American history, law and feminism.
Of “Black Power, Black Lawyer,” noted historian Greg Carr, Phd, said: “One of the many gifts of Black Power/Black Lawyer is that Nkechi sets a roadmap for searching out the lives and memories of the ancestors who trained her. Queen Mother Audley Moore transitioned before she could leave a memoir. She is in these pages, as are Baba Imari Abubakari Obadele, Baba Chokwe Lumumba and Mama Frances Cress Welsing, among so many others. In gifting us with this text, Nkechi brings them and many others along with her, and sparks our memories of each person, demanding that we join her in an exercise of requiem, remembrance and recommitment to principled struggle.”
Taifa’s powerful, passionate and personal memoir adds to the repertoire of civil rights books, but focuses extensively on Black liberation, a critical theme for today’s challenging times. Kirkus Reviews had this to say about the book, “… this is … a powerful, important book. An engaging memoir of not just a fascinating woman, but a history of a movement.”