Ricochet Media Summer Fundraising Campaign: https://ricochet.media/donate/ Fred Anderson is a Forest Gumpian type figure, who was present for many of the seminal moments in the history of the civil rights movement. He participated in Freedom Summer, was in the room when it was announced that the three civil rights workers- Mickey Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman- were missing, and attended the historic 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City with the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Towards the end of 1966 Fred Anderson left the United States to avoid being sent to fight in Vietnam. He moved  to Montreal with his friends Herman Carter and Bob Moses,  and for the next 10 years lived underground not revealing his true identity out of fear  that given his role in SNCC he’d be targeted by the FBI, apprehended and sent to prison in the US,  as he had heard had happened to other Black civil rights activists and war resisters who’d escaped to Canada. Anderson became engaged in political organizing and community life in Montreal. He attended the historic Congress of Black Writers Conference at McGill University in 1968- one of the major Black Power gatherings of the decade. During the 1969 Sir George Williams Affair, still the biggest student occupation in Canadian history in which Black, Brown and White students protested against racial discrimination in the classroom at the then Sir George Williams University now Concordia, Anderson played “a critical organizing role” behind the scenes trying to mobilize the community to support the students. He drafted petitions and wrote editorials in community newspapers.  He had close relationships with the prominent Black student leaders Anne Cools, a future Canadian Senator, and Rosie Douglas, future Prime Minister of Dominica, both of whom were jailed for their involvement in the Sir George Williams events. He was close friends with a Who’s Who of the English Canadian literary scene. Novelists Margaret Laurence  , Timothy Findlay, W.O. Mitchell and Mordecai Richler. He considered Austin Clarke, Giller Prize winning author of The Polished Hoe, his best friend. But he also counted many members of Quebec’s literati and radical political community as close confidants. He knew the Quebec independendiste firebrand Pierre Bourgault and had close relationships with Quebec poets Roland Giguere and Victor Levy- Beaulieu. He was very close with physician and Governor General Award-winning novelist Jacques Ferron, Roch Carrier-beloved author of The Hockey Sweater, acclaimed writer Dany Laferrière, and the Quebec historian and author of A People’s History of Quebec, Jacques Lacoursière. He was involved with the NBCC (the National Black Coalition of Canada)- arguably the most significant pan-Canadian Black organization in history - and later helped found the Concordia Summer Institute for community organizers.  Fred Anderson has been a lifelong change agent. His journey has taken him from the Deep South of the United States to the Far North of Canada where he has worked in Cree and Inuit communities.  Fred Anderson is a formidable builder of relationships and institutions, and a bridge between solitudes. He’s just written a memoir that documents his extraordinary life. It’s called Eyes Have Seen: From Mississippi to Montreal.