We Are Worth Fighting For

This riveting, exceptionally well-written book is a major contribution to Black Power historiography and the history of Black student activism. Featuring appearances by future mayors of Newark and Atlanta and pioneers of hip hop, this study holds important lessons for today. ~Gerald Horne, author of Fire this Time: The Watts Uprising and the 1960s

Like the students whose stories populate its pages, We Are Worth Fighting For provides a challenge. It challenges conventional narratives about Howard. It challenges understandings of Black student protest in the ’80s. And it challenges the reader to wrestle with the uses and meaning of history. Cover to cover, this book reflects the state of Black Studies—a discipline that has come of age. ~Jonathan Fenderson, author of Building the Black Arts Movement: Hoyt Fuller and the Cultural Politics of the 1960s

We Are Worth Fighting For is a book about the problematics of, and is a writing against, the terms of American order that elaborates their relation to Black radicalism. The 1989 student occupation at Howard is part of the genealogy, the tradition, of Black radical struggle. It is necessary and urgent for understanding that which American order responds to, the ongoing nature of Black radical struggle. It is a radicalism worth cultivating, tending to, and fighting for. ~Ashon Crawley, author of Blackpentecostal Breath: The Aesthetics of Possibility

We Are Worth Fighting For reminds us of the insurgency of Black college students in the late 1980s and early 1990s that inspired a generation. Thoroughly researched and well constructed, this book illuminates how Howard students inspired the political and cultural rebellion of the time and shines light on this period of the Black freedom struggle. ~Akinyele Umoja, author of We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement