My good friend Victor Navasky has just released an amazing Kindle single, THE ODELL FILE. Its the untold, inspiring story of Jack ODell, a close confidant of Dr. Martin Luther King. The general public has never heard of Jack O’Dell. But many of those who worked with him in the fifties and sixties consider him the unsung hero of the Black Freedom Movement. Victor Navasky, the longtime editor of The Nation and author of the acclaimed book Kennedy Justice, drawing on secret government files and interviews with ODell himself, seeks to correct that historical oversight. O’Dell was described by J. Edgar Hoover as “the number five Communist in the United States,” cited as a reason for the wiretapping of MLK, and was subsequently forced out of King’s inner circle. In this compassionate and vivid biography, Navasky reveals O’Dell’s unique organizing capacity and brilliant mind, while lamenting what American society, obsessed by the so-called Communist menace, lost by disqualifying him from being an open and visible contributor to the Civil Rights movement. Lucky for us, ODell (now 91 years old), in his own words, keeps on steppin.
Posted on: Tue, 26 Aug 2014 18:13:33 +0000