Overview

At the age of fifteen, Fred Anderson left home and was sucked into the maelstrom of the U.S. southern civil rights movement. He became active with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and other civil rights organization, working with some of the well-known leaders including John Lewis, Bob Moses, Stokely Carmichael, Fanni Lou Hamer and more. As the movement voiced opposition to the Vietnam War and support for liberation movements in Africa and other Third World countries, including Palestine, the FBI targeted it, while military draft boards systemically and disproportionately inducted social activists and poor Blacks, including Fred Anderson. When he refused to go to war, he chose ' Flight to Canada, ' where he became Clifford Gaston, the name he went by until the amnesty granted draft dodgers in 1977. Eyes Have Seen: From Mississippi to Montreal is a memoir about embracing the racial and tyrannical crosswinds of Hattiesburg and the south of the 1960's and riding the tailwinds of SNCC, civil rights, anti-Vietnam War activism and reimagining the underground railroad to Canada. Little did he know that the internal and public outcomes of the waning Mississippi Freedom

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9781771863780

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Reviews

""The captivating story of Fred Anderson, aka Clifford Gaston, is rooted in the African-American traditions of the American South. These traditions, whether mystical, familial or political, inform a meandering journey that took him from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, to Montreal, Quebec. . . . Eyes have seen is a fascinating read that leaves you awed and inspired."" --Aly Ndiaye, aka Webster, Historian and Rapper ""Fred Anderson's story is a gripping tale that maps the terrain of Black family and exile at a moment of a certain Black becoming. The Civil Rights Movement and Black Power continue to reverberate for all of us and Anderson's intimate account of his experience through the movement and exile to Canada is not just one of triumph but a reckoning with a past that is not yet behind us. Anderson's memoir is a guide to what we must now live too."" --Rinaldo Walcott, Professor and Chair of Africana and American Studies at the University at Buffalo, and author of The Long Emancipation: Moving Toward Black Freedom. ""Fred Anderson's Eyes Have Seen is a masterpiece. It is brilliant, erudite storytelling in well-limned, at times, lyrical, cinematic prose. These days, as the USA endeavours to lie about its white supremacist legacy, this memoir is a searing reminder of Jim Crow and its cost: in lives, in property, psychological terror, and even exile, for those who endured or fought it. The latter half of the memoir, which depicts Anderson's life as a Vietnam-War draft resister in Montreal, is an invaluable contribution to history."" --H. Nigel Thomas, author of A Different Hurricane and many other novels ""[W]onderful and gripping life odyssey . . . Anderson's recollections, stitched together like his grandmother's patchwork quilts, contribute to an all-too-often erased Afro-American and Afro-Canadian heritage. (. . .) Eyes Have Seen can be viewed as a contribution to alternative or counter-history, a crucial perspective that challenges dominant narratives and illuminates forgotten truths."" --Léa Murat-Ingles, Montreal Review of Books

""Fred Anderson's story is a gripping tale that maps the terrain of Black family and exile at a moment of a certain Black becoming. The Civil Rights Movement and Black Power continue to reverberate for all of us and Anderson's intimate account of his experience through the movement and exile to Canada is not just one of triumph but a reckoning with a past that is not yet behind us. Anderson's memoir is a guide to what we must now live too.""--Rinaldo Walcott, Professor and Chair of Africana and American Studies at the University at Buffalo, and author of The Long Emancipation: Moving Toward Black Freedom. ""Fred Anderson's Eyes Have Seen is a masterpiece. It is brilliant, erudite storytelling in well-limned, at times, lyrical, cinematic prose. These days, as the USA endeavours to lie about its white supremacist legacy, this memoir is a searing reminder of Jim Crow and its cost: in lives, in property, psychological terror, and even exile, for those who endured or fought it. The latter half of the memoir, which depicts Anderson's life as a Vietnam-War draft resister in Montreal, is an invaluable contribution to history.""--H. Nigel Thomas, author of A Different Hurricane and many other novels

Author Information

Fred Anderson was born (1947) in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. He left home at an early age to join the Civil Rights Movement, becoming a field secretary for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), organizing in the Mississippi delta, Alabama, and Southwest Georgia. He refused to be drafted into the Vietnam War and fled to Montreal (Quebec) Canada in November 1966. He attended Sir George Williams University and was awarded the 1973 Board of Governors Medal for Creative expression in Literary arts. He lives in Montreal.

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