Книга раскрывает роль клуба Village Gate в формировании дружбы и борьбы за гражданские права пяти афроамериканских женщин

Freedom’s Gate: Maya Angelou, Lorraine Hansberry, Abbey Lincoln, Miriam Makeba, and Nina Simone Live at the New York Nightclub That Shaped the Civil Rights Movement Soyica Diggs Colbert. Norton, $35 (368p) ISBN 978-1-324-08664-2 This outstanding history from Guggenheim fellow Colbert (Radical Vision) spotlights an influential group friendship between five Black female artists and civil rights activists that centered around one Greenwich Village nightclub. Starting in 1959, playwright Lorraine Hansberry, singer Nina Simone, musician and actor Abbey Lincoln, writer and performer Maya Angelou, and exiled South African musician Miriam Makeba made the “dingy” Village Gate into their “training ground” and hub for experimentation. The author follows each woman’s creative and political growth, such as Angelou’s evolution from a dancer who trained with Alvin Ailey into a civil rights organizer, including of a 1960 cabaret benefit for MLK held at the Village Gate. Indeed, Colbert reveals that many of these artists’ landmark moments occurred at the Gate, among them Simone’s first performance of “Mississippi Goddam” in 1964, which marked “a turning point in the... temperament of the movement.” Colbert also poignantly examines these women’s friendships, not only highlighting their instant closeness (as Simone said of Makeba, “Within a few minutes we felt we’d known each other all our lives”) but also how they expanded one another’s political consciousnesses (Makeba educated her friends about the global struggle against colonialism; Hansberry stoked Simone’s “political awakening”). The result is an equally tender and galvanizing portrait of women who used their art and friendships to further Black liberation. (Oct.) Details Reviewed on: 08/12/2026 Genre: Nonfiction