Say Burgin
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sayburgin.bsky.social
Say Burgin
@sayburgin.bsky.social
20th C US Historian. Author of Organizing Your Own: The White Fight for Black Power in Detroit (NYU Press 2024). Bylines @ The Nation, WaPo, HuffPo.
Y’all I have three degrees, a book to my name, and I help run a bail fund. And for the life of me, I cannot trace all the various forms of bond and pretrial detention that the state made H Rap Brown suffer through. This is how the state made very good use of our barbaric cash bail system.
July 22, 2025 at 2:58 PM
Researching efforts by Rap Brown’s (Jamil al-Amin’s) legal team in 1967, who petitioned SCOTUS to review the bail restrictions placed upon him. They argued such conditions not only violated his 1st and 5th Amendment rights but also constituted preventive detention. Just gonna leave this part here.
June 23, 2025 at 7:16 PM
Catch me at the wonderful @redemmas.org at 7pm on Thursday, in conversation with Lester Spence! We’ll be talking Detroit, Black Power, and movement strategy.
April 21, 2025 at 4:07 PM
My book, Organizing Your Own: The White Fight for Black Power in Detroit, turns 1-year-old this week!
Use this discount code (NYUAU30) to get 30% off when you buy it from @nyupress.bsky.social
April 14, 2025 at 1:21 PM
On Wednesday at 5pm, I’ll be speaking on the weaponization of pre-trial detention against Black Freedom activists in SNCC. The event is part of the @mhs1791.bsky.social African American Seminar Series.
Register and join us!
18308a.blackbaudhosting.com/18308a/Afric...
December 9, 2024 at 5:07 PM
In February 1961, as sit-in activists refused to pay fines or post bail after their arrest, they were sent to York County Prison and forced to work on a chain gang. Non-imprisoned activists dramatized these injustices in their ongoing pickets.
Photo: Baltimore Afro-Am, 2/18/1961
November 20, 2024 at 2:02 PM
Happy year of my book coming out to all who celebrate (mostly me and my mother)!

I want to use my book to help multiracial coalitions find ways to work together, fight together, party together, and build a more just world.

Here's to learning, organizing, and justice in 2024.
January 2, 2024 at 4:21 PM
For my first post on here, I better let you know that my book will be out in less than 6 months! It's about how Black Power activists asked white people to organize in white communities against racism -- and how white Detroiters tried to do just that.
Preorder on Amazon: bitly.ws/XVAP
October 20, 2023 at 2:22 PM