"Excellent. . . . Without sacrificing historical rigor, [Whitaker] writes with the eye of a journalist and ear of a poet. . . . A refreshing history of the Black Freedom Struggle during the year when the dominant idea about racial progress transitioned from an emphasis on non-violent direct action toward a demand for Black self-determination, Black consciousness, and Black pride."

– Ousmane Power-Greene, The Boston Globe

"Throughout this important, well-researched historical study, Whitaker makes a convincing case for 1966 as one of the most important years in the history of Black liberation. The author expertly examines the roots and resistance to the advancement of Black Americans, which are as relevant as ever. An essential volume in the history of Black liberation movements."

– Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Throughout this important, well-researched historical study, Whitaker makes a convincing case for 1966 as one of the most important years in the history of Black liberation. The author expertly examines the roots and resistance to the advancement of Black Americans, which are as relevant as ever. An essential volume in the history of Black liberation movements."

– Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Eye-opening history. . . . A comprehensive and character-driven portrait of the 'first Black Power generation.'"

– Publishers Weekly

“I was in high school in 1966, and it felt like the edge of history. In his brilliant new book, Saying It Loud, Mark Whitaker has taken me back there, and the journey is both enthralling and a riveting reminder of the tumult, inspiration, and potent possibilities of the Black Power movement. It's also novelistic in its fully realized human portraits of the movement's backstory. I can't say it any louder: this is not only a compelling read; it's essential for understanding where we started and where we might find lessons in determining where we go from here.”

– Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Harvard University

“The years that Mark Whitaker chronicles in Saying It Loud were years I well knew as a young reporter and also as a Black Southerner who came out of the Civil Rights Movement when much of the complicated (and yes sometimes disturbing) history he delves into was being made. . . . What Saying It Loud provides, especially for the Black Lives Matter generation, is history that will help them avoid the pitfalls of their predecessors as well as a road map to the more perfect union this country has long promised but has not yet achieved."

– Charlayne Hunter-Gault, journalist and author of My People: Five Decades of Writing About Black Lives

“At once eloquently intimate and bracingly expansive, Saying It Loud is a tour de force. Mark Whitaker has produced a provocatively eloquent and original work of narrative history that inspires us to look upon the past with new eyes. The heroically flawed lives of the generation that shaped the year 1966 and the rise of Black Power will never look the same after reading this insightful, challenging, and thought-provoking book.”

– Peniel E. Joseph, author of The Third Reconstruction: America’s Struggle for Racial Justice in the Twenty-First Century

“With surgical precision and poetic verve, Mark Whitaker’s Saying It Loud limns the anatomy of racial chaos, group conflict and organizational convulsion that transformed 1966 into a seminal year of Black resistance. By untangling fact from myth, and in contrasting transcendent heroism and star-struck hagiography, Whitaker brilliantly tracks the rise and fall of Black Power and how its lessons echo across the decades and thunder in today’s headlines.”

– Michael Eric Dyson, author of Long Time Coming: Reckoning with Race in America