Black Samson: The Untold Story of an American Icon

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· Highbridge Audio · Narrated by David Sadzin
Audiobook
5 hr 18 min
Unabridged
Eligible
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About this audiobook

Before Harriet Tubman or Martin Luther King was identified with Moses, African Americans identified those who challenged racial oppression in America with Samson. In Black Samson: The Untold Story of an American Icon, Nyasha Junior and Jeremy Schipper tell the story of how this biblical character became an icon of African American literature. Along the way, Schipper and Junior introduce listeners to a cast of historical characters—many of whom became American icons themselves—including Fredrick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Malcolm X, Huey P. Newton, and others.



From stories of slave rebellions to the Harlem Renaissance to the civil rights era and the Black Power movement, invoking the biblical character of Samson became a powerful way for African American intellectuals, activists, and artists to voice strategies and opinions about race relations in America. As this provocative book reveals, the story of Black Samson became the story of our nation's contested racial history.

About the author

Jeremy Schipper is a professor in the Department of Religion at Temple University, as well as a prolific and critically acclaimed author. Nyasha Junior is associate professor in the Department of Religion at Temple University in Philadelphia. An award-winning author and expert on feminist, womanist, and African American biblical interpretation, she writes for scholarly and general audiences at a variety of media outlets. When he was seven, David Sadzin's first grade teacher gave him a paragraph to read out loud. She interrupted him halfway to proclaim him "The Ringmaster" in his class's musical extravaganza about the circus. He's been using his voice to get out of trouble ever since.

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