Max Roach's Freedom Now! Suite: An Early Soundtrack to Black Lives Matter
Months after the so-called Greensboro Sit-In, a staged version appears on the cover of Max Roach’s now classic We Insist – Max Roach’s Freedom Now! Suite. The album stands as an early musical testament to the burgeoning rage, anger and passion that would take the Civil Rights Movement from its early victory in Montgomery in 1955 into a future that would dramatically alter race relations in the United States. And as perhaps fitting, the impetus for Roach’s artist statement came in the aftermath of tragedy.
