Steve Fiffer - The Moment: Changemakers on Why and How They Joined the Fight for Social Justice

The Moment

ALSO BY STEVE FIFFER

So Youve Got a Great Idea (1986)

How to Watch Baseball (1987)

Against the Grain

(BY EUGENE MERCURY MORRIS WITH STEVE FIFFER, 1988)

Speed: Baseball in High Gear (1990)

A Season for Justice (BY MORRIS DEES WITH STEVE FIFFER, 1991)

Hate on Trial; The Case against Americas Most Dangerous Neo-Nazi

(BY MORRIS DEES AND STEVE FIFFER, 1993)

50 Ways to Help Your Community

(BY STEVE FIFFER AND SHARON SLOAN FIFFER, 1994)

Home: American Writers Remember Rooms of Their Own

(EDITED BY SHARON SLOAN FIFFER AND STEVEN FIFFER, 1995)

Family: American Writers Remember Their Own

(EDITED BY SHARON SLOAN FIFFER AND STEVEN FIFFER, 1996)

Three Quarters, Two Dimes and a Nickel:

A Memoir of Becoming Whole (1999)

Body (EDITED BY SHARON SLOAN FIFFER AND STEVEN FIFFER, 1999)

Tyrannosaurus Sue: The Extraordinary Saga of the Largest,

Most Fought Over T-Rex Ever Found (2000)

Work Hard, Study... and Keep Out of Politics!

(BY JAMES ADDISON BAKER WITH STEVE FIFFER, 2006)

Fred Who? Political Insider to Outsider

(BY FRED KARGER AND STEVE FIFFER, 2011)

Arctic Bears Chase (BY STEVE FIFFER AND KEILER ROBERTS, 2012)

Jimmie Lee & James: Two Lives, Two Deaths, and the Movement That Changed America (BY STEVE FIFFER AND ADAR COHEN, 2015)

Desert Diplomat: Inside Saudi Arabia Following 9/11

(BY ROBERT W. JORDAN WITH STEVE FIFFER, 2015)

Its in the Action: Memories of a Nonviolent Warrior

(BY C. T. VIVIAN WITH STEVE FIFFER, 2021)

Changemakers on Why and How They Joined the Fight for Social Justice

STEVE FIFFER

NEWSOUTH BOOKS

an imprint of

The University of Georgia Press

Athens

N S B

Published by NewSouth Books

an imprint of the University of Georgia Press

Athens, Georgia 30602

www.ugapress.org/imprints.newsouthbooks/

2022 by Steve Fiffer

All rights reserved

Designed by Randall Williams

Cover designed by Laura Murray

Printed and bound by Friesens

The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book

Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.

Most NewSouth/University of Georgia Press titles are available from popular ebook vendors.

Printed in Canada

22 23 24 25 26 P 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022944344

ISBN 9781588384751 (paperback : alk. paper)

ISBN 9781588384850 (ebook)

To Sharon, for all the moments

To read the stories of other

changemakers who are not in

the book, to share the story of your

own moment, and to view dis

cussion questions for classrooms,

book groups, and workshops,

please visit our website:

themoment-thebook.com.

I can come pretty close to pinpointing the moment I had the idea for this book. It came shortly after the March 2021 publication by NewSouth Books of Its in the Action: Memories of a Nonviolent Warrior, the posthumous memoir of civil rights icon Dr. C. T. Vivian. Id had the privilege of collaborating on the book, and in the course of my involvement had become good friends with one of Dr. Vivians daughters, Denise Morse.

The light bulb went off after Denise sent me a copy of a sermon her father had given. Dr. Vivian, whom Martin Luther King Jr. once called the greatest preacher ever to live, had typed the text. But on several pages of the sermon, he had handwritten his mantra, Its in the action. The good doctor had wanted to remind himself to stress to his audience that justice and equality will never be achieved if all we do is wring our hands or complain. We must act.

In July, I acted, sending a memo to my publisher Suzanne La Rosa that read in part:

I would interview peoplewell known and little known, of all ages, races, and backgroundsand record their stories of the moment they realized, as C. T. always said, Its in the action and became involved in the social justice movement....

Im interested in learning and conveying: What specific event/experience or series of events/experiences moved these individuals to get involved in social justice activism? So, in these interviews Id ask, among other things, what their life was like before they got involved; what moved them to take action; how they weighed the decision to actpros and cons; what form their action took; what the experience is/was like; how it impacted and changed them and others; what advice theyd give to others who have yet to act/may be considering acting.

Suzanne was enthusiastic, and thus began one of the most enlightening and fulfilling journeys of my life.

I will be forever grateful to the changemakers whose words follow for their thoughtful, candid, and, often, poignant responsesnot to mention their own efforts. Those responses were as varied as the changemakers themselves, but there was one theme that arose over and over again: the importance of storytelling.

Telling ones own story can be healing to the storyteller in addition to moving an audience to act or legislate. And it can certainly open the listeners eyes. This particular listener, for example, never gave enough thought to how important it was for black parents to give their children black dolls or Santas that couldnt be found in stores and to expose them to books by or about African Americans that couldnt be found in schools. I didnt fully understand the psychological damage that appropriated team mascots can inflict on indigenous people, particularly children. And I never gave much thought to how much architecture and design can result in injustice and inequality. I promise that your eyes, too, will be opened, thanks to these stories.

The interviews for this book were conducted during a less than sunny period. The nation was in the middle of the Covid crisis and still dealing with effects of the January 6 insurrection, the murder of George Floyd (and others). Congress was unable to pass criminal justice reform legislation or a voting rights bill to preempt actual election steals plotted by undemocratic state legislators. Local school boards were banning books. Even the baseball season was delayed.