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"Sometimes Farmgirls Become Revolutionaries is the story of an unsung civil rights organizer, Black Power activist, and barrier-breaking Black woman, Florence Louise Tate (1931-2014). Tate was close to the young leaders of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. She became a mentor, a mother-of-the-movement, and a target of J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI. Tate defied stereotypes of the 1960s, playing key roles in the lives of an astonishing number of high-profile leaders of the most influential social-change organizations and events of the twentieth century. An accomplished activist, most people never knew that Tate was bravely fighting chronic depression. Farmgirls is an engaging collage of Tate's life, woven together from her journal entries, memories from people who knew her, and excerpts from her FBI files. These multiple perspectives bring into focus the complex and complicated saga of a public persona engaged in private struggle, defying and overcoming the odds."--
About the author
Florence Tate, was former communications director/press secretary to both Marion Barry and Jesse Jackson, and was under FBI investigation for over two decades -- considered a radical black activist deserving of her own "FBI file" due to her close personal relationship to Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) and work with SNCC during the early 60s. As the FBI followed Carmichael's rise to power during his transition from head of SNCC to Black Power Movement leader, Hoover was to personally target Tate and her with work with DARE (Dayton Alliance for Racial Equality), which she helped to found, and Dayton's Afro American Cultural Center, which she started.
