Before Harriet Tubman or Martin Luther King was identified with Moses, African Americans identified those who challenged racial oppression in America with Samson. In Black Samson: The Untold Story of an American Icon, Nyasha Junior and Jeremy Schipper tell the story of how this biblical character became an icon of African American literature. Along the way, Schipper and Junior introduce readers to a cast of historical characters -- many of whom became American icons themselves -- including Fredrick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Malcolm X, Huey P. Newton and others.

From stories of slave rebellions to the Harlem Renaissance to the civil rights era and the Black Power movement, invoking the biblical character of Samson became a powerful way for African American intellectuals, activists, and artists to voice strategies and opinions about race relations in America. As this provocative book reveals, the story of Black Samson became the story of our nation's contested racial history.

Dr. Nyasha Junior is Associate Professor in the Department of Religion at Temple University in Philadelphia. She holds a Ph.D. in biblical studies from Princeton Theological Seminary. An award-winning author and expert on feminist, womanist, and African-American biblical interpretation, she writes for scholarly and general audiences at a variety of media outlets.

Dr. Jeremy Schipper is a Professor in the Department of Religion at Temple University in Philadelphia. He holds a Ph.D. in biblical studies from Princeton Theological Seminary. A prolific and critically acclaimed author, he has published widely on the use of the Bible in discussions of identity, including ethnicity, gender race, and disability, in ancient and contemporary contexts. He was awarded a 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship for Denmark Vesey's Bible: Biblical Interpretation and the Trial that Changed a Nation.

Introduction

Chapter One: Black Samson in the Temple of Liberty
Chapter Two: Black Samson of Brandywine
Chapter Three: Samson and the Making of American Martyrs
Chapter Four: Black Samson and Labor Movements
Chapter Five: The Samson Complex
Chapter Six: But Some of Us are Strong Believers in the Samson Myth
Chapter Seven: Visual Representations of Black Samson
Epilogue: Black Samson, an American Icon

Appendix
Bibliography