The River of No Return: The Autobiography of a Black Militant and the Life and Death of Sncc

by Cleveland Sellers

Book Overview

Among histories of the civil rights movement of the 1960s there are few personal narratives better than this one. Besides being an insider's account of the rise and fall of the Student Nonviolent... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 087805474X
• ISBN13: 9780878054749
• Release Date: October 1990
• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Length: 296 Pages
• Weight: 2.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.6" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

from Generation X . . . my, how he inspires us.

This is a well written account of someone who was on the front lines of the Civil Rights Movement. As Dr. Sellers recounts his life as a "black militant", he gives us first hand insight of not only his, but "others" involvement in this historical movement. His details caputured my soul and touch my heart. Not only did I have the opportunity to read the autobioraphy of Dr. Cleveland Seller, he was also my long time advisor and professor at The University of South Carolina. This book is as well written as his first hand accounts.

Valuable Memoir

I know Cleve Sellers quite well, he's currently a history professor at the University of South Carolina and his students are fortunate to get firsthand accounts of the Civil Rights movement from a lesser-known, but NOT a lesser player in these events. Readers of his book are forutante too, for here you have verfiable firsthand accounts from a man who lived through this stuff and paid heavily for it. In about 40 years, the generation who lived through the Civil Rights movement will no longer be with us, and it is good that documents of this kind will be around to let future generations know what it was REALLY like.However, it's worthy to note that his closing chapter, on the chaotic state of Black leadership after the Civil Rights movement, is still dead-on traget although it was written in 1973.

Civil Rights Was More than a "Dream"

This is a reprint of a well-written personal account by a SNCC member and Howard University student. I am glad to see this book back in print. It will give an insight to the young and not so young who, because of the media's almost exclusive focus on Dr. King, have been lead to believe that the only important aspect of the civil rights movement was the "I Have a Dream" speech. Cleve Sellers gives us an up close and personal report on some of the key leaders of SNCC, especially the late Stokely Carmichael (known later as Kwame Ture), who later became, for a short time, the Prime Minister of the Black Panther Party and for many years the primary organizer of the All African Peoples Revolutionary Party.Sellers shares many of the behind the scenes relationships between SNCC and other organizations and details the tactical and ideological differences which engaged the energies of the SNCC membership.