Book Description

Outspoken, accomplished, and frequently controversial, physician and political leader Ewart F. Brown has been a longtime champion of racial equality, human rights, and economic and social justice. In this event-filled memoir, the former Premier of Bermuda shares the experiences that shaped him as a physician-politician committed to progressive change and that defined his often tumultuous time in office.Brown's journey began with a childhood in a politically engaged family in a Bermuda then still legally segregated. He spent his pivotal high school years in Jamaica, where he excelled in both academics and athletics, then rose to national U.S. media attention as a leader of civil rights-based student activism at Howard University in the late 1960s and early 1970s. After practicing as a physician in inner-city Los Angeles in the 1970s and 1980s, Brown entered electoral politics in Bermuda in the 1990s as a member of the Progressive Labour Party (PLP) and served as Premier from 2006 to 2010. Brown explains how he fought for human rights and racial equality in the face of intense push-back from racist forces of entrenched financial and political power. These conflicts made global headlines in June 2009, when Brown's administration gave asylum to four innocent Uighurs being released from the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay. Brown's account of that decision includes his secret negotiations with President Barack Obama's White House as well as the opposition campaign to discredit him that followed.Enlivened by memorable interactions with figures as varied as activists Stokely Carmichael, Cleve Sellers, Minister Louis Farrakhan, and Rev. Al Sharpton, music legend Bob Marley, leading members of the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus, senior officials in the administrations of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama and the U.K. governments of Prime Ministers Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, and David Cameron, as well as a vividly drawn cast of Bermudians from all walks of life, Whom Shall I Fear? tells a story rich in human and political insight that will fascinate readers interested in the global African diaspora and its continuing quest for racial justice and equality.