Being Somebody and Black Besides

The late Chicagoan George Nesbitt could perhaps best be described as an ordinary man with an extraordinary gift for storytelling. In his newly uncovered memoirwritten fifty years ago, yet never publishedhe chronicles in vivid and captivating detail the story of how his upwardly-mobile Midwestern Black family lived through the tumultuous twentieth century. Spanning three generations, Nesbitts tale starts in 1906 with the Great Migration and ends with the Freedom Struggle in the 1960s. He describes his parents journey out of the South, his struggle against racist military authorities in World War II, the promise and peril of Cold War America, the educational and professional accomplishments he strove for and achieved, the lost faith in integration, and, despite every hardship, the unwavering commitment by three generations of Black Americans to fight for a better world. Through all of itwith his sharp insights, nuance, and often humorwe see a family striving to lift themselves up in a country that is working to hold them down. Nesbitts memoir includes two insightful forewords: one by John Gibbs St. Clair Drake (1911-90), a pioneer in the study of African American life, the other a contemporary rumination by noted Black studies scholar Imani Perry. A rare first-person, long-form narrative about Black life in the twentieth century, Being Somebody and Black Besides is a remarkable literary-historical time capsule that will delight modern readers.