If We Don’t Get It

A People’s History of Ferguson

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

“If We Don’t Get It will demonstrate, in vivid, personal terms, what those who study the history of Black freedom have always known: that there is no nice way for one to demand one’s rights, that fighting for justice is unpopular, and above all, that young people have most often stood at the forefront of social change.” —from the introduction

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.

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Praise

“If We Don’t Get It couldn’t be more vital to the resistance pages of history. What a powerful centering and championing of the young Black activists who forged the Ferguson Uprising’s thunderous call for racial justice.”
—Ibram X. Kendi, New York Times bestselling author of Stamped From the Beginning and How to Be an Antiracist
“What a gift it is to have a Black freedom historian like Stefan Bradley turn his talents to documenting the contemporary history of the Ferguson movement. This is the book we need for today to learn the history of struggle of our times.”
—Jeanne Theoharis, author of King of the North: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Life of Struggle Outside the South
“In vivid prose and with a storyteller’s keen eye for detail, Stefan Bradley makes clear the Ferguson movement’s foundational place in the modern freedom struggle. An indispensable story of political courage in dark times.”
—Michael Eric Dyson, New York Times bestselling author of Tears We Cannot Stop
“An honest, incisive, personal account of those fateful weeks following Michael Brown’s death. Refusing to evade difficult questions and criticism, Stefan Bradley crafts a compelling portrait of a movement the media missed: a multigenerational, multiclass, politically sophisticated community in action, not just in the streets but against a rapacious and racist system. A powerful reminder of why all roads from our current struggles for Black freedom and abolition lead back to Ferguson.”
—Robin D.G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination
“An invigorating and insightful grassroots history of the Ferguson movement for racial justice that reverberated around the world. With care and compassion, Bradley illustrates the way in which social movements are transformed by local people whose lives are indelibly changed through the process of achieving social change. A stunning achievement.”
—Peniel E. Joseph, author of The Third Reconstruction and The Sword and the Shield

Goodreads Reviews