ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book would not have been possible without substantial financial and institutional support from numerous sources, including the History Department at Binghamton University, the Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation, the Partnership Trust and the New York State Archives, Bloomfield College, and a two-week National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) workshop on the Jim Crow North created by Jeanne Theoharis and Komozi Woodard. Ireton Consulting improved the revision and editing of this work in every possible way. Michael McGandy at Cornell University Press showed an interest in this work before the research had really begun. For his willingness to stick with the project through its completion, I am so very grateful.

Archival staff from the University of Illinois Chicago Special Collections, Rochester Public Library, Rochester Museum and Science Center, King Center for Research, Sanford Historical Society, Rochester Municipal Archives and Record Center, the New York State Archives, the Ryerson Image Centre, and the University Archives of the State University of New York at Buffalo assisted with locating materials and making the most productive use of them. Chris Christopher generously shared her research and connections from the film July ’64 with me, while city historian Christine Ridarsky connected me to several archives and collections. Portions of this work appeared earlier as “FIGHTing for the Soul of Black Capitalism: Struggles for Black Economic Development in Postrebellion Rochester,” in The Business of Black Power: Community Development, Capitalism, and Corporate Responsibility in Postwar America, 45–67, edited by Laura Warren Hill and Julia Rabig (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2012, reprinted with permission; and “ ‘We Are Black Folks First’: The Black Freedom Struggle in Rochester, NY and the Making of Malcolm X,” The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics, and Culture 3, no. 2 (December 2010): 163–185, reprinted with permission of Taylor and Francis (http://www.informaworld.com). Kevin Heard, the associate director of Binghamton University’s GIS Campus Core Facility, created the demographic map in chapter 1, which is printed with permission. Many thanks to the Eastman Kodak Company, the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle (the USA Today Network), the Werner Wolff family, and the Xerox Corporation, Xerox Historical Archives, for permission to print images in the text.

This research was made infinitely more fruitful by the staff of University of Rochester’s Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries. Richard Peek, Nancy Martin, Melissa Mead, Melinda Wallington, and, most especially, Phyllis Andrews supported me throughout this project. With institutional support from the UR, Phyllis and I collaborated on the Rochester Black Freedom Struggle Oral History Project, which underscores every portion of this book. Phyllis’s capable student assistants further transcribed hundreds of hours of interviews. I am forever indebted to the participants of that interview project, most especially Dr. Walter Cooper, Minister Franklin Florence, Clarence Ingram, Horace Becker, Connie and John Mitchell, Charlie Price, the Reverend Marvin Chandler, Minister Raymond Scott, Herb White, and Daryl Porter, many of whom offered their personal archive collections for my use. All of these interviewees imbued this book with honesty, humility, joy, heartache, and faith that in telling their stories, their contributions to the struggle would continue. I deeply regret that so many of them transitioned before its publication.

I have been blessed with exceptional mentors, teachers, and advisers who have shaped my intellectual and personal development, including Emilye Crosby, Joe McCartin, Anne MacPherson, Jamie Spiller, the late Akbar Muhammad, Diane Sommerville, John Stoner, Mark Reisenger, Jeanne Theoharis, Komozi Woodard, Brian Purnell, Sandy VanDyk, and Paul Genega, among others. My companions in the 2015 NEH workshop and the subsequent North East Freedom North Studies Writing Collective—Kristopher Bryan Burrell, Crystal Moten, Say Burgin, and Peter Levy—inspired and guided the final revisions to this work. More importantly, their generous spirit and collaboration make scholarship production so much more fulfilling and enjoyable.

In many ways, my grandparents Irene and Bernie taught me my first history lessons, sharing with me stories, photos, and even their early marital correspondence from the farm in upstate New York. My parents, Don Warren and Susan Ahouse, provided me a firm intellectual foundation upon which to build. My sisters and lifelong companions, Lisa Aulgur and Emily Gilbert, have always been my home. I am blessed with cousins who often feel more like siblings: Brandy, Stephen, Joe, Jill, Kari, and Alana, thank you for the laughter—always the laughter.

The most incredible group of comrades has sustained me in every way. For their lifetime of love, kindness, support, intellectual engagement, childcare, laughter, tears, and most importantly, their companionship, I thank Holen Robie, Melody Ross Wilson, Mark Schmidt, Sarah Hillman, Erica Ellison Konopski, Emily Hill Mehlenbacher, Geoff Schutte, Andrew Dudley, Sandra Sanchez-Lopez, Carlos Cortissoz Mora, Jodie Broecker Taylor, Janelle Edwards, the late Karen Clark, Kikuyu Mau Calhoun, Julia Rabig, Nishani Frazier, Shannon King, Brandon Fralix, Freddie Harris Ramsby, Jonterri Gadson, Nixon Cleophat, Nora McCook, and Michelle Chase. Two individuals have carried so much of this load, and they deserve more credit than this humble offering can provide. Denise Ireton demonstrated numerous acts of friendship and kindness both to me and to my son Liam on a daily basis. Additionally, this experience has been improved in every way by the love, support, and intellectual engagement of Michael O. West. My constant companion, Liam, had just learned to walk when I started down this path. Now a junior in high school, he is still quick to remind me, and anyone who will listen, that his mother is “not like a real doctor or anything.”