From #BlackLivesMatter To Black Liberation [Book Summary – Review]


In 1968 Martin Luther King; Jr.’s final article “A Last Will to Hope”, pointed at “a more thrusting diplomatic inclusion”, thinking that this might lead to black freedom. A huge development has been achieved starting with the Movement for Civil Rights. Yet, according to the explanation in this summary, there remains a far route to take to say that we have a real equal community.

Starting from black need’s roots down to enslavement to cops brutality to black people, you can wander in a trip to diplomacy and ethnic and racial discrimination that has driven the US to the current situation: in a community that some consider as “color-blind”, however, it’s where daily discrimination may be seen in several spots, starting from financial penalties for suppression on blacks – a different black freedom act is now forming.

Buy this book from Amazon



Chapter 1 – Issues in black societies are usually misknown to be a societal problem instead of a systematic one. 


Perhaps you’re familiar with the idea that enslavement ended around southern parts of America in the War of Civils. Notwithstanding this turning point episode, President Johnson, in his speech almost one century after the War, stated that freedom cannot be sufficient and we yet demand as the outcome “equality”.

In Johnson’s time, in 1964, the Act of Civil Rights was signed into law, and it condemned all kinds of discrimination of ethnicity and skin color. However, it achieved less to mitigate the troubles, like corruption, crime, and financial hardship, which stayed present everywhere in the whole African-American societies.

A cause such issues constantly spread is due to their being criticized for their cultural frailties.

At times Paul Ryan, the Republican Representative, talks of increased unemployment numbers in poor African-Americans areas, he nailed it as a “societal issue”. Ryan says that inhabitants in such societies are unaware of the worth of the job.

At times President Obama talked of the brutality in Chicago districts, he said these were outcomes of bad decisions taken by African-American young people, suggesting we needed to come up with better examples than gangsters from corners.



The idea develops the issue to African-Americans and their shortage of control instead of confronting the actual reasons for indigence and disparity all over the states. It even eternizes the misconception of African-Americans as careless gangsters who are against the law and pedagogy.

Yet, the fact is that African-American indigence has been found in the US community since the ages of enslavement, which is a true issue we’re encountering.

Most of the diplomacy and economy upon which the US was found counted on enslavement to strengthen the country’s tobacco, sugar, cotton, and rice shareholders. Then, after the destruction of enslavement and the struggle for civil liberties, African-Americans distress didn’t stop.

In the years of economic hardship, African-Americans have been without jobs and underemployed, poorly housed, and improperly educated. In Reagan and Nixon presidential, social welfare projects had their support severed, the impacts of that are yet destructing African-American societies now.

The coming sections will demonstrate racism as yet there even beyond the Rights of Civil Act of 1964. And it’s feeding a different black freedom act.


Chapter 2 – People in politics have persisted in the wrong word of the “color-blind” community to promote a dangerous plan.


That is a huge slip to believe that any policy approved in Congress will clear the situations off clean and switch American to an “after-discrimination” community. 

However, such an idea is precisely the picture few people have attempted to rise. During the 1970s, legislators started to name the US the “color-blind” country, in the time when racism progressed to split the nation.

Naming the US “color-blind” was beyond mere rejection of the discrimination that obviously there. Such an expression is even meant for the big picture – it adjusts the scene for harmful political plans prepared to sustain poor African-American societies.

To think that discrimination is not a problem in the US anymore is to state that discrimination cannot be the main reason for the US’s poor societies. This is why indigence, assaults, and joblessness need to be the outcome of the African-American society and not an issue that might be done by governmental financial programs in societal assistance projects.

Such a concept was especially the heart of the presidency of Nixon, which set a chain of racist financial systems in its years of service in the Office from 1969 to 1975.

Nixon named the US “an independent and free society” for a method to put the responsibility for any kind of indigence or assault that might happen to the people and their wrong options. He aimed to set a clear message that such problems are more than financial support and social laws, thus, ameliorative standards don’t yet deserve the try.

Thus, rather than rising funding on financial aid, Nixon built up the country’s police centers, with a purpose to ensure that African-American societies stayed supervised and any opponents to stay in prison. So, they started an abiding heritage of public imprisonment that has seriously damaged African-American people.



At the time when the authorities during the 70s were focusing on all left-wing institutions with their more police centers, the “rebellious” black societies were the most difficult.

In the coming section, we’ll check how the beginning of a fresh black aristocracy during the 80s didn’t succeed to nail the end of progressive imprisonment of the African-American people.


Chapter 3 – In spite of the developments of the African-American politicians, crucial reform has not succeeded to occur.


If you care about the rights of civilians, you might remember the 19th April of 2015: the memory of Freddy Gray, a young man at the age of 25, who passed away after his wounds he endured getting captured and brutally hit by Baltimore cops. 

There could not be justification for this dramatic loss; Gray was not carrying a weapon nor an aggressive assault. That was a very familiar event of a teenage person whose way was interrupted by the cops only for he had black skin and was in need.

The loss of him triggered a surge of rallies opposing Baltimore’s city authorities, several of those who were African-Americans. Actually, both the governor and the chief of cops are African-Americans.

Sadly, such an event demonstrates to us that also black US citizens have earned an existence in the elitist ranks of the American cops, the states have yet declined to develop the standards of its people in their most need.



African-Americans have been achieving prominent invasions in law since 1967, the times when Stokes was chosen to be Cleveland Ohio’s governor and turned out to be the initial African-American governor in an American city. At the end of the eighties, places such as Detroit, New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago were to be governed by African-American leaders, somehow.

So, for sure, Barack Obama entered the administration in 2009 as the US first African-American President. In 2005, there employed a complete number of 46 African-American staff in the White House Representatives in addition to two African-American senators. 

Such a thing could be viewed as a significant development, however, many have seen that the method is yet jammed in front of them at times it relates to assisting African-American societies.

During the eighties, Reagan’s government severed the resources for social projects, making each state’s mayor with no federal support and little luck to fight indigence and joblessness in dark-skin districts.

To initiate campaign support from domestic stakeholders, each governor, regardless of his skin color, made to empose taxes, contributing to the social services obstacle to flourish.

The government body has dramatically blocked the African-American officials, thus, there has not been any progress in demolishing indigence and joblessness or advancements in sheltering and well-being aspects. Consequently, dark-skin US people are merely had enough with the dark-skin officials as the laters support the white-skin ones.


Chapter 4 – The law and justice mechanism have maintained black citizens as criminals. 


The 13th Amendment of the American Constitution prohibited slavery all around the states since 1865, yet, Southern states proceeded forward to seek alternatives for holding their black subjects as bondage.

Several districts implemented Black Codes, like the Black Code in Louisiana that says; “every black needs to serve a white”, otherwise they will be held, prisoners.

In the time when these codes were forbidden during 1866, the concept of containing the liberty of the African-Americans would continue. Most of the wish to maintain African-Americans in jail came from the financial urgency to get inexpensive – or, at those conditions, without charge – workers. And criminal wage turned into a legitimate way to achieve this.

The criminal wage was a shape of a prison work that permitted agricultural holders and other fields to “lease” condemned African Americans for 24 hours work. As the economy of the South was dependent on this methodology prior to the wartime, they stayed dependent on criminal wages.

During 1898, mines of coal were producing more than 70% of Alabama’s whole income and they depended on criminal waging to sustain the progress of this sector.

At the beginning of the 2000s, the grand bulk of Southern jails were African-American. And issues weren’t that good for the other parts of America, as well.

African-American societies stayed inappropriately in the security check and they went on to confront a duel normals of law and court bodies in America.

In the early 2000s, Detroit was an official police process to arrest African-American people into confinement and capture them for many nights until they sealed their fate to accuse them of a violation or not.



In this time, the security authority would not succeed on a daily basis to provide any kind of preservation to the African-Americans, precisely when they were getting assaulted by white Americans.

In 1919, that was the case around Chicago, at the time an African-American juvenile, Eugene Williams, had been killed by a racist citizen at the moment Williams didn’t make it to cope with the discrimination rules at the coast area. Despite the murderer’s name was revealed to the cops, they never take any arrangement against him.

News of USA Today in 2015 reviewed 70 police centers all over America and saw that African-Americans were still ten multiple above normal to be held in custody than other skin.


Chapter 5 – The progressive claims of police aggression, and the decline of African-American power, emerged a new time of activism.


Several individuals had faith in the models of “aspiration” and “transformation” which came with Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and final gain of the office in 2008. It was a first in US history, that more than 60 percent of qualified voters with black skin voted, which was an unusual output.

However, the interest of those who vote would end in disappointment, as Obama’s service in office was found to be unable to shift the constant aggression and racial discrimination in America.

In 2009, right after the Great Depression that came upon the African-American labor societies in precise harsh, the beginnings of depressed voters started to appear. The unemployment scale of African0American laborers rose to more than 13 percent. Nonetheless, Obama agreed that banks’ financial aid was behind it. 

The boundaries of Obama’s authority were yet more obvious in 2012 after Trayvon Martin was killed.

Martin, an African-American juvenile, was going back home on foot from a luxury shop while using his mobile. George Zimmerman, the district supervisor, realized Martin was coming he tracked Martin’s way just like that. Afterwise, facing Martin, Zimmerman fired his gun aiming for the chest, murdering Martin. When the cops came to the place, Zimmerman said that Martin was the one who attacked him.

Rallies occurred all over the states, and within a month and half of accumulating pressures, Zimmerman was eventually captured, just to be released with no charges for killing Trayvon Martin. By default, several people were radically frustrated with the result, and Obama attempted to put the public at ease by calling the Americans to think of their country as the “country of laws”. Yet, what are African-Americans thinking of ding at the time the legislation and court systems are obviously not on their side?



It was clear that African-American political figures were unsuccessful in making any development possible. Yet, this indifference led to a whole other movement to emerge.

In 2013, the society coordinator, Alicia Garza, reacted to the unfairness revolving around Trayvon Martin on Facebook with #BlackLivesMatter.

That hashtag turned into a strong weapon, providing a united rally in front of cops’ aggression and unfairness. Moreover, it generated a whole institution dedicated to standing against African-American discrimination.


Chapter 6 – Rallies and activist institutions increased after Mike Brown was killed in Ferguson.


Unfortunately, the killing of young African-American people by the cops didn’t stop on the 9th of August in 2014, at the time of Mike Brown’s murder in the little district of Missouri in Ferguson.

Darren Wilson, who was a white cop, was reacting to a call of a robbery at the time he came face to face with Mike Brown, the person who had shopped for a box of small cigars from a luxury shop. Wilson fired his gun on Brown and murdered him, whose corp would be remained at the spot for more than four hours, laying there under the burning sun of that summer.

Over again, a well-known story of cruelty and abuse roled in as rallies and disturbances followed. Cops also destructed the flower bouquets which were the grievers presented in the murder spot. The frustrations and aggression just rose when cops shot rubber missiles and tear gas to suppress the rallies.

Yet, this response to the unfairness and chaotic cops’ aggression progressed to rise and expand over the country.

At the time a great jury didn’t succeed in sentencing Darren Wilson of murdering Mike Brown, country-wise rallies facing cops’ aggression exploded in big cities, like Washington DC and New York. Lots of individuals moved in harmony to uncover the national scourge of cops’ barbarity exercised in the African-American communities.  

At the end of December 2014, the memorable phrase #BlackLivesMatter might be watched and listened to all over the nation. Only then, thousands of university campuses even turned to be open floors for rallies and heightened consciousness. 



Everything was motivating other protesting institutions to shape and empower the fresh black liberation act. Of the most popular movements were Hands Up United, Dream Defenders, Ferguson Action, BYP 100, Millennials United, and on top of them, #BlackLivesMatter.

Several people are being driven by a fresh group of diplomatically involved African-American influencers, which put them separately from the conservative after civil rights age institutions. And at the time when they’re all appreciating extras to the new black liberation act, several of them are requesting new political developments, thus they could profit from acting collaboratively to make it better managed.


Chapter 7 – We need to recognize the connection between capitalism and racism and unify the middle-classes.


If we retrieve the rallies that occurred at the time of the Movement for civil rights in the sixties, we can reveal the struggle for fair rights also turned out to be a struggle against the powers of capitalism which sustained African-Americans below.

In the sixties, there existed a plain concept of the way that capitalism caused difficult times for the African-American societies and the way that socialism showed a wishful solution to enhance community and race correlations. 

It’s not difficult to view the way in which involuted capitalism and racism have been all the time.

Deep in its heart, capitalism works by letting the milking the majority by the richest minority. To achieve this disorder, a political mechanism has to be set in a way that provides an ideological reason behind the willingness to sustain specific individuals right below, which is the way we eventually have racist doctrines.

Karl Marx knew the system of capitalism more than everybody and therefore was so familiar with the joints that connect discrimination to capitalism. Marx referred to the manners that involved discriminatory conception that can be utilized through the upper society to maintain the cunny status between the white-Americans and the American-American within the middle-class.

We can understand the way these paths were utilized after the overthrown of enslavement, at the times the African-American and the while middle-class proceeded in their fight instead of sticking together in the face of the exploitation. That’s precisely how the capitalist powers would have wished for.



After the end of slavery, the term “white supremacy” emerged as a straightforward reaction against white’s concern in “Negro domination”, in addition, the danger of the African-American community turning to be the upper elite.

This “danger” was a diplomatic strategy to group the little cultivators and the leading industry figures whose one shared feature was belonging to the same white skin. With purulent racial concerns, the white community with its two classes; the poor and the rich, could cooperate to preserve the upper class.

This idea has put each black liberation act connected to the bigger matter of people’s rights. That was the reason behind us wanting white and black individuals of the middle-class to cooperate and respond towards a true and good development that the authorities will have no choice but to accept.


From #BlackLivesMatter To Black Liberation by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor Book Review


There were several calls that America was a “color-blind” or an “after-discriminatory” nation, yet. Till the moment, racism has stayed rooted in the US. Such a reality turns to be sorely clear in the progressive killing of African-Americans by the cops and the American political order’s uncontrolled carelessness of African-American societies. A different black liberation act is now growing and if that could make it through in grouping white and black individuals of the middle people, that would have the possibility to eventually influence a true shift in the situation.



Download Pdf


https://goodbooksummary.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/From+%23BlackLivesMatter+To+Black+Liberation+Book+Summary+-+Review.pdf


Download Epub


https://goodbooksummary.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/From+%23BlackLivesMatter+To+Black+Liberation+Book+Summary+-+Review.epub


Audiobook


Savaş Ateş

I'm a software engineer. I like reading books and writing summaries. I like to play soccer too :) Good Reads Profile: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/106467014-sava-ate

Recent Posts