Sunday Night Story Time: The Ballad of Sekou Odinga, pt. 1

I’m spending most of my time working on two bigger projects, so I thought I would read you a little story tonight. In fact, if you guys like this, I might make Sunday Night Story Time a new tradition here at the Substack.

All the readings are from Bryan Burrough’s great book, Days of Rage. Some of it you’ll be familiar with from God’s Socialist, but since this story takes part during the Lindsay administration shortly after the 1968 New York City teachers’ strikes, this will provide some more depth on what was going down at the time. Many of the neighborhoods mentioned also came up in the Blacks & Jews series, including Brownsville (in Brooklyn), where the school that sparked the teachers’ strikes was located, and where Norman Podhoretz had grown up back when it had been a mixed area.

Thanks for listening.