NDG Book Review: ‘Black Arms to Hold You’ is a tough but insightful read

By Terri Schlichenmeyer

This week, you plan on acting up.

In a good way, of course. You’ll make a cardboard sign and march with others for your beliefs. You’ll shout and dance, walk and make noise. You’ll get into “good trouble” and yes, you might get arrested for it. You do what you need to do to make politicians and others know how you feel and that you mean business. As in the new book, “Black Arms to Hold You Up” by Ben Passmore, you have history at your back.

There was violence just down the street when Ben’s father showed up on his doorstep with two bags of books. He hadn’t been much of a father, so when he started pushing Ben to pay attention to history, Ben wasn’t having any of it.

They argued. Ben’s father hit him in the head with a book – and the next thing he knew, Ben was standing on a street corner somewhere, and there were policemen; nearby was a man named Robert Charles, and the year was 1900. Ben was about to witness a deadly gunfight over Jim Crow laws, Black Code, “Christian Black identity,” and inequality in New Orleans.

He ran for safety and landed at the foot of a stage, where activist Marcus Garvey was giving a speech at a Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) rally. Ben ran, and found himself in a church, at Emmett Till’s funeral. He sat in a movie theater and learned about Robert E. Williams, a man whom “both the whites and the NAACP made… out to be an angry and violent brute.” Ben received a new name to reflect the Republic of New Afrika, and he hid upstairs in a house in Philadelphia, as MOVE fought with police in 1985.

The journey was wild and terrifying, and his eyes were opened. Yes, he wanted liberation, but it could kill him. So could just walking around his neighborhood.

Were these things inevitable? He wondered – until his father told him what “Black liberation is really about.”

Your young adult needs to know their history. You might need the same. And you both might find it inside “Black Arms to Hold You Up,” but there are a few things you need to know first, before you pick it up.

Deeply researched, very thought-provoking, and including a bibliography for more information, this book hits a lot of major points in Black history, many of which today’s schoolbooks don’t tell. Author Ben Passmore proves that Black activism didn’t just start during the Civil Rights Movement, or five years ago, or last year. Such reminders make this book relevant.

Just know this: violence literally colors every page of this book. It’s relentless. It’s loud and shocking, with illustrations tinted blood-red throughout, which will properly and righteously shock anyone who’s unaware.

That may trigger a sensitive reader, but it may wake up folks ages 16-to-adults, too. Just be mindful and know who’s doing the reading. Having “Black Arms to Hold You Up” around might be a good action.