Shattered Dreams, Infinite Hope

Brandon Terry has written a book that will change how the civil rights movement is thought about and mobilized in our scholarship and in our politics. He engages the historiography of the movement with philosophical sophistication and with an eye toward keeping emancipatory possibilities alive. He refuses the comfort of romance, rejects the conclusions of pessimism, and embraces the tragic as a way of telling a richly textured story about this extraordinary moment in history. In every sense of the phrase, this book is a tour de force! -- Eddie S. Glaude Jr., author of <i>We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For</i> A major achievement. Through a deeply engaging and necessary critique of Civil Rights paradigms that represent the contemporary orthodoxy in academic discourse, Brandon Terry forwards a bracing reconsideration of Black political thought itself. Terry’s debut book as a solo author promises to transform how we will think about the Civil Rights Movement over the course of the next generation. -- Peniel E. Joseph, author of <i>The Third Reconstruction</i> Brandon Terry’s magisterial study of the example of the Civil Rights Movement is a field-defining intervention. With remarkable beauty and clarity, Terry reveals the ethical, philosophical, and political stakes of the genres through which we narrate the most consequential episodes of twentieth-century American history. -- Adom Getachew, author of <i>Worldmaking after Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination</i> Brandon Terry gives us a masterful account of how the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s serves as a touchstone for competing visions of race, political possibility, and human agency. Was it, as the dominant narrative assumes, a redemptive episode in Americaʾs unfinished journey toward racial equality? Or was it, as revisionist critics suggest, a moment of false hope in the face of persistent, unalterable racial subordination? Terry offers a compelling critique of both accounts, arguing instead for a chastened, tragic, but ultimately hopeful vision of political action and spiritual striving. Ranging impressively across philosophy, history, and Black political thought, this brilliant work shows how contested interpretations of the past shape political argument in the here and now. -- Michael J. Sandel, author of <i>Democracyʾs Discontent: A New Edition for Our Perilous Times</i> Brandon Terry is one of the very few great intellectuals of his generation. His long-awaited book is an instant classic that provides in a profound and poignant manner a glimpse of costly hope in our bleak times. His philosophical erudition, historical scholarship, and deep moral grounding in the Black freedom struggle put a smile on the faces of W. E. B. Du Bois, Toni Morrison, and Martin Luther King, Jr.! -- Cornel West