Black Forward: Marching Orders for the Fight Against Jim Crow 2.0

Black Forward is a hard-hitting investigation into what you can do to fight against the new Jim Crow.

Roland Martin argues that if we want to move forward with Black progress against white backlash, we must look back at the civil rights movement and regain some of the independence and interdependence that Blacks used to survive the first Jim Crow.

Black Forward builds off Martin Luther King Jr.’s final book Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?, where King lays out the “structured forces that can serve as the basis for building a powerful, united front” for Black liberation.

With chapters based on each of the pillars of this united front, Martin mixes unforgettable stories from his own life with his inimitable and urgent brand of blistering truth-telling as he lays out marching orders for:

• Black churches
• Black businesses
• Black media
• Black educational organizations
• Black neighborhoods

After reading this book, we don’t get to sit out another election. We stop spending blindly and start supporting Black businesses, build Black institutions, and boycott those that do not align with our ideologies. No more rage without strategy. No more waiting on Washington—it’s time to turn our communities into our battlefield and make change where we stand.

Black Forward maps out a plan for hope starting with your own house, your own block, and your own neighborhood and reaching toward a renewal of Black civic life.