Eyes Have Seen

Eyes Have Seen, From Mississippi to Montreal is a vivid and searing memoir about growing up black in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. In the difficult and often dangerous years of ubiquitous racism, Anderson recounts how family, good neighbours and the cultural underpinnings of Newman Quarters kept him grounded and capable of embracing the racial and tyrannical crosswinds of the American South of the 1950s and 60s. With electric candour, Anderson writes about joining the Mississippi civil rights movement at the age of fifteen, the burgeoning anti-Vietnam War activism, and reimagining the underground railroad to Canada. “Little did I know that the internal and public outcomes of the waning Mississippi Freedom Summer and my personal fate would collide with my ancestral struggles and hurl me into the narrative of runaway fugitives seeking exile in Canada.” It is also a story of exile, of living under the assumed name of Clifford Gaston from 1966 until 1977 when amnesty was granted to draft dodgers, of dodging arrest and deportation, of forging a new home in another country so far away from family and friends. Fred Anderson was born 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) in the Mississippi Delta, Alabama, and Southwest Georgia. He fled in the winter of 1966, to Montreal as a Vietnam war resister. He attended Sir George Williams University and was awarded the 1973 Board of Governors Medal for Creative Expression in Literary Arts. Fred was instrumental in co-founding two black research institutes and a Black literary forum and is a member of the Quebec Writers’ Federation. He was employed as program manager, overseeing gender-specific therapeutic interventions for several English-speaking rehabilitation centres for adolescent girls. Later, he would assume the same responsibility in Northern Quebec in the service of Inuit and Cree adolescent girls. Fred Anderson lives in Montreal. REVIEWS AND PRAISE “There are still a few—maybe only two—generations of people in North America who might recognize some of the history that anchors this memoir; the Civil Rights movement in the United States, the anti-war efforts of the 1960s led by students, the international liberation movements, the names of famous Black leaders. There are, sadly, already several generations who have no clue. The barely told story of Afro-Caribbean immigrants in Montreal and the shaping of Black consciousness across borders successfully moves the story of Afro-descendants in Canada beyond that of the Underground Railroad and the Sleeping Car Porters, revealing how Black political thought has flourished in community organizing and in the arts. Eyes Have Seen grants necessary access to how ordinary people living full lives—as children, parents, grandparents, farmers, churchgoers, educators, friends, artists, lovers, sisters, and brothers—become compelled to respond to acts and systems harmful to the fulfilment of their humanity, resulting in extraordinary actions for the greater good of so many who will be the unknowing beneficiaries of their sacrifices.” — Nantali Indongo, Host-Producer of CBC’s The Bridge, Current Affairs Arts and Culture Contributor “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. As a young activist with the SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), Fred Anderson’s life has been shaped by the great moments of North American history, from the African-American civil rights movement and the mobilization against the Vietnam war to, on our side of the border, the Montreal Congress of Black Writers, the Sir George Williams affair, and the October Crisis of 1970. Eyes Have Seen is a fascinating read that leaves you awed and inspired.” — Aly Ndiaye, aka Webster “A masterpiece. Eyes Have Seen is brilliant, erudite storytelling in well-limned, lyrical and cinematic prose. 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, its psychological terror, and the exile suffered by 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.” — Nigel Thomas, author of A Different Hurricane “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. His account of the 1960s spans Mississippi to Montreal and Black metropolitan life and politics is laid bare. We need accounts like these to fill the voids in the official archives and more importantly to puncture the myths of national difference. Read this memoir and sit with its many truths and its difficult triumphs!” — Rinaldo Walcott, Professor and Chair of Africana and American Studies at the University at Buffalo. Author ofThe Long Emancipation: Moving Toward Black Freedom. “Congratulations, Fred Anderson is one of the bravest men I have ever known. He was a favourite of Ms Ella Gaston @Justice for Ella for his courage against the deadly odds of the 1960’s Civil Rights fight in Mississippi.” — Pam Johnson, author of Justice for Ella, A Story that Needed to be Told.