The Story of Freedom North

[T]he more I have thought about our past, the more excited I have become over its significance because... Before the Panthers, there was NSM. Before SNCC´s Atlanta project and before Stokely´s media-generated hysteria over "Black Power," there was NSM. Before all of these more recognized historical events, NSM had already initiated a race-conscious strategy to confront american racism.In fact Detroit NSM had formed probably the first
really constructive white organization to combat the monster: PAR,People Against Racism.

What I´ve come to realize is that the NSM story is not just our story. Rather it´s the story of urban organizing in the North...It´s the history of Bayard´s school boycott and the struggle against the racist NY teachers union under Al Shanker and the resultant community strugggle of Ocean Hill-Brownsville.It´s Julius Hobson in DC; the NAACP radical [Cecil Moore) in Philadelphia; and … Stanley Branche in Chester,Pa.  It´s the story of Jesse Gray´s rent strikes, Adam Clayton Powell´s first Black Power conference and of Malcolm´s last years.

Thus NSM is a window on this larger, neglected story of black struggle, the story of Freedom North,the other civil rights movement.It´s the missing chapter of the national struggle without which the history is not whole.

William Strickland

Executive Director, NSM