The Hard Work of Hope: A Memoir

The Hard Work of Hope: A Memoir, by Michael Ansara (Ithaca: ILR Press, 2025)

Critics often dismiss Michael Ansara and other youthful activists of the 1960s and 1970s as “spoiled brats.”  His memoir, The Hard Work of Hope, reveals how unfair such criticism could be.  Ansara sincerely sought to rid the United States of racism at home and abroad and extricate it from the quagmire of a war in Southeast Asia.  As a member of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), he was in the front lines of those who combatted injustice for several decades.

Ansara’s career as an activist began as early as 1960, when, as a young Massachusetts suburbanite, he discovered the extent of Southern racial injustice, and began his career as a civil rights organizer, becoming emotionally attached to the Freedom Riders who challenged Jim Crow at Southern lunch counters.  Admiring them, he helped reorganize Students for a Democratic Society.  The Port Huron Statement, drafted by Tom Hayden in 1962, represented its guiding principles, which called for America to live up to its ideals.   However, in Alabama and elsewhere the response was often negative and violent, resulting in 1963 in a March on Washington.  Indelible to Ansara the following year was the determination of Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to oppose President Lyndon Johnson and obtain proper seating for Black delegates at the Democratic National Convention.

By 1965 Ansara was engaged in another cause, the war in Vietnam, which he and the New Left also regarded as unjust.  Accordingly, Ansara’s activism on behalf of SDS increased and opposition to the war became central to SDS, the New Left and students across the nation.  Thus began “a ten-year effort to do something that had never happened before in American history:  force our nation to stop a war.” (p. 37)  “The weight of that damn war sits heavy on our  young shoulders.” (p. 130) It had become clear that Black Americans were bearing a disproportionate share of the burden for waging this unpopular struggle.  

As the war continued, and reflecting the growth of Black nationalism, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee underwent change.  The leadership of the Civil Rights Movement became predominately Black, significantly shifting away from its interracial character and alienating many Whites.   For many Blacks in particular, “the weight of the war” (p.131) had become too much to endure, especially as “long hot summers” were gripping cities increasingly torn by riots.  As it wore on, its effects were felt even in Ansara’s backyards, in places such as Cambridge, Dorchester and Lowell.  The problem was not only Southern.

As a person of mixed background, whose mother was Jewish and father Syrian Lebanese, Ansara was especially sensitive to the anti-Semitism that splintered the Civil Rights Movement.  In 1967 that issue erupted at a National Conference for a New Politics.  The catalyst was the Six Day War and Israel.  Black activists condemned the war while also expressing hostile feelings regarding Jewish leaders of the movement, even if they did not support Israel.  Anti-Jewish sentiment was evident, and Jews felt rejected.  Ansara was thrust into a mediator’s role, but to no avail.  Feelings were too intense.  Jewish contributions to the civil rights cause seemed to be ignored, and the Jewish role feared, as Black Power became dominant.  In the center of things, Ansara viewed this spectacle as tragic.

His personal quest for social justice had just begun, also including the 1967 participation in the March on the Pentagon to protest the Vietnam War.   Though his book is a memoir, his observations of that event and others of the era also make it a history of the half century of protest and violence.  It is a story of radicalism and reform that concludes in the recent backlash with setbacks of sincere efforts, especially regarding civil rights.  A major problem is immigration and Ansara’s observation that the Republican party has become “the party of white voters.” (p. 257)  Immigration is part of “a changed America” (p.252) requiring new politics.  Accordingly, he observes the presence of “a new wave of activism” (p. 259) encompassing a wide range of issues.  However, he appreciates the difficulty of combining the movement for social justice “with a populism that embraces those left behind and left out.” (p. 259)  Concluding on a hopeful note, he places his faith in the nation’s youth to “fight for their futures.” (p. 259)

Reviewed by Robert D. Parmet, York College of the City University of New York