We’re not always taught to have those tough conversations with our loved ones, but it would be a surprise to see the things and lessons that can be taken away from those moments. That’s what David Dennis Jr. got from collaborating with his father, David Dennis Sr., on the book The Movement Made Us: A Father, a Son, and the Legacy of a Freedom Ride, where they talk about the Movement and where the world is today in terms of making change.
David Dennis Jr. spoke with rolling out about what inspired him to write the book, having tough conversations, and some of the things he and his father discussed throughout writing the book.
What inspired you to write this book?
I always wanted to do this book. This is something that I wanted to do about my story and about my dad’s life. I wanted to do it when I was a kid. I’ve been telling folks since I was basically in high school that I wanted to write this book about my dad. It’s our history and our family history. It’s his history. The movement is something that has evolved a lot in those 20-some-odd years since I started talking about it, but it was something I always knew I wanted to do, basically a lifelong dream thing that I wanted to have happen.
Why is it important to have those tough conversations in the household?
It’s vastly important. My dad and I had come to a good place. Like a lot of men and their fathers do. We were going to be fine. We didn’t have the tough conversations that we needed to have, but we came to a good place. And often, those tough conversations get you to a better place. Me and my dad ended up in a place that was better than what I had ever dreamed that we could have. I had the luxury of this being part of a book, but I would encourage everybody to have those conversations, to force those conversations, and to try to heal in that way. Otherwise, it can be hard to deal with, it can be hard to deal with you as a child, it can be hard to deal with as a parent where there’s that gap between that space, and you don’t want to lose a parent without having had that conversation to just leave things in the air.
Do you remember a specific conversation that maybe your father spoke about or wrote about that left you mind-boggled?
To me, it was the realization of how young he was. I knew he was young, and I knew the people in the movement were young. At the time, I was teaching at Morehouse, and I was working on this book, and I was looking at these students, 19, 20, and 21-year-old students, and thinking they were the age that my dad was when they were doing the Civil Rights Movement. For me to think about it as I’m writing this book, and I’m 10 years, 15 years older than he was at the time, that was jarring to me to see that this was something that kids did.
The Civil Rights Movement was something that a lot of kids put their lives on the line for, and to see what he was doing at the age of 20 and 21 was unbelievable. The thing that I think about is whether I would want to be able to do that at that age. My son, that’s only a few years from now where he would be in that position to be to be doing those things. That’s the part that makes it difficult to comprehend and understand how you can be how you are at that age.
