At a time of renewed activism, the story of the young people who bravely turned a local issue into a national movement for justice, from a professor of Black studies at Amherst who participated in the Ferguson uprising

Stefan M. Bradley was a young professor in Saint Louis University when Black teenager Michael Brown was shot and killed in Ferguson, Missouri, by a local white police officer. Bradley quickly became a key media activist during the protests that ensued, giving on-the-ground interviews to Chris Hayes, CNN, Al Jazeera, the BBC, and others.

In If We Don’t Get It, Bradley, now a named professor of Black studies at Amherst College, shows how Brown’s murder sparked a grassroots movement for democracy, led by Black youth, which transformed the way we talk about race, justice, and policing in the United States.

Bradley conducted over two dozen oral history interviews with young Black protesters. Through the authentic voices of the movement’s participants, Bradley describes the motivation and tensions coursing through the uprising’s early days and weeks, the problems of media representation (and misrepresentation), intergenerational conflict over protest tactics, clashes with the police and politicians, and much more. If We Don’t Get It also explores the new generation of elected officials, including Congresswoman Cori Bush, who emerged from the local movement’s ranks.

A rich story with deep relevance for the protests of our own time, If We Don’t Get It offers a gripping account of how young activists, without previous political experience, succeeded in changing our national political narrative.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Stefan M. Bradley is the Charles Hamilton Houston ’15 Professor of Black Studies and History at Amherst College. He has appeared on C-SPAN Book TV, NPR, PRI, as well as in documentaries on the Oprah Winfrey Network and the History Channel. The author of several prizewinning books, including Upending the Ivory Tower and Harlem vs. Columbia University as well as If We Don’t Get It: A People’s History of Ferguson (The New Press), he lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.