Eyes Have Seen

By (author): Fred Anderson

At the age of fifteen, Fred Anderson left home and was sucked into the maelstrom of the U.S. southern civil rights movement. He became active with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and other civil rights organization, working with some of the well-known leaders including John Lewis, Bob Moses, Stokely Carmichael, Fannie Lou Hamer and more. As the movement voiced opposition to the Vietnam War and support for liberation movements in Africa and other Third World countries, including Palestine, the FBI targeted it, while military draft boards systemically and disproportionately inducted social activists and poor Blacks, including Fred Anderson. When he refused to go to war, he chose ‘Flight to Canada,’ where he became Clifford Gaston, the name he went by until the amnesty granted draft dodgers in 1977.

Eyes Have Seen: From Mississippi to Montreal is a memoir about embracing the racial and tyrannical crosswinds of Hattiesburg and the south of the 1960’s and riding the tailwinds of SNCC, civil rights, anti-Vietnam War activism and reimagining the underground railroad to Canada.

From the author: “Little did I know that the internal and public outcomes of the waning Mississippi Freedom Summer and my personal fate would collide with my ancestral struggles and hurl me into the narrative of runaway fugitives seeking exile in Canada.”

Reviews

The captivating story of Fred Anderson aka Clifford Gaston is rooted in the AfricanAmerican traditions of the American South These traditions whether mystical familial or political inform a meandering journey that took him from Hattiesburg Mississippi to Montreal Quebec As a young activist with the SNCC Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Fred Andersons life has been shaped by the great moments of North American history from the AfricanAmerican civil rights movement and the mobilization against the Vietnam war to on our side of the border the Montreal Congress of Black Writers the Sir George Williams affair and the October Crisis of 1970 Eyes Have Seen is a fascinating read that leaves you awed and inspired Aly Ndiaye aka Webster

Congratulations Fred Anderson one of the bravest men I have ever known He was a favorite of Ms Ella Gaston Justice for Ella for his courage against the deadly odds of the 1960s Civil Rights fight in Mississippi Pam Johnson author of Justice for Ella Story That Needed to Be Told

Fred Andersons Eyes Have Seen is a masterpiece It is brilliant erudite storytelling in welllimned at times lyrical cinematic prose These days as the USA endeavours to lie about its white supremacist legacy this memoir is a searing reminder of Jim Crow and its cost in lives in property psychological terror and even exile for those who endured or fought it The latter half of the memoir which depicts Andersons life as a VietnamWar draft resister in Montreal is an invaluable contribution to historyNigel Thomas author of A Different Hurricane

Fred Andersons story is a gripping tale that maps the terrain of Black family and exile at a moment of a certain Black becoming The Civil Rights Movement and Black Power continue to reverberate for all of us and Andersons intimate account of his experience through the movement and exile to Canada is not just one of triumph but a reckoning with a past that is not yet behind us Andersons memoir is a guide to what we must now live too His account of the 1960s spans Mississippi to Montreal and Black metropolitan life and politics is laid bare We need accounts like these to fill the voids in the official archives and more importantly to puncture the myths of national difference Read this memoir and sit with its many truths and its difficult triumphs Rinaldo Walcott is Professor and Chair of Africana and American Studies at the University at Buffalo His last book is The Long Emancipation Moving Toward Black Freedom



Awards

There are no awards found for this book.
Excerpts & Samples ×
There are no other resources for this book.

Reader Reviews

Details

Dimensions:

220 Pages
8.00in * 5.00in *
350.00gr

Published:

April 01, 2025

Publisher:

Baraka Books

ISBN:

9781771863780

Book Subjects:

BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Memoirs

Language:

eng

No author posts found.

Related Blog Posts

There are no posts with this book.