Reflections of a Resolute Radical

Book excerpt: Reflection of a Resolute Radical written by Don Freeman is an exposition of his life and times. This memoir depicts his youth in Cleveland, Glenville High School completion, and years at Case Western Reserve University and being awarded a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) with a History Major in June, 1961. His concurrent involvements in the early Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the co-founding of the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM), the forerunner of the Black Panther Party in 1962-1963, and organizing of the Afro-American Institute, the first Black Nationalist organization in Cleveland since the Universal Negro Improvement Association and the Nation of Islam in 1962, are expressed. His interactions politically with Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Stokely Carmichael, (Kwame Tur�) and Rev. Jesse Jackson are revealed, as well as firing from teaching in the Cleveland City (public) School District and acquittal from threatened imprisonment because of his radical philosophy, and relationship to RAM and Malcolm X. Mr. Freeman's extensive activism while in RAM and later as Neighborhood Worker and the Executive Director of League Park Center, especially his protracted advocacy and struggle, along with his Soulmate, Norma Jean Freeman, to engender genuine education via reform in the Cleveland Public School System are explored, in addition to his writings in Black America, RAM's publication, and Vibration, the political and cultural journal, co-published and edited by him and his Soulmate.