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James Forman
by Julian Bond

James Forman is one of the under-appreciated figures of the modern civil rights movement. His autobiography - The Making of Black Revolutionaries - is a classic.

In a determined voice, Forman describes his life and activism. He doesn't mince words. Nor is he cautious in his descriptions of those he believes to be enemies of black progress, whether black or white.

Revolutionaries is also precious because it represents one of very few autobiographies by a youthful activist. A small library's worth of book now records and analyzes the modern
civil rights movement, and many adult figures of the activist movement have written their accounts. Among Forman's contemporaries, Cleveland Sellers (The River of No Return), Mary King (Freedom Song), Anne Moody (Coming of Age in Mississippi) Sheyann Webb and Rachel West Nelson (Selma, Lord Selma) , Julius Lester (Lovesong) and Charles Koen (The Cairo Story) are among the few who have written their own narratives of who they were, what they did, what they thought about it then and how they looked back upon it when marches and demonstrations had been stilled and some victories had been won.

James Forman had enormous influence on the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) , the civil rights movement, and on me personally.

He molded SNCC's near anarchic personality into a functioning , if still chaotic, organizational structure, and insured that most of its parts functioned smoothy most of the time.

He brought the trained historian's eye and values to our