The Dream Dancers

The Dream Dancers, Volume I: New England Preservers of the Dream (1620-1924), recounts the long struggle to achieve freedom and equality for Americans of color, as experienced by a multicultural New England family. Born at the end of the Civil War, Edwin Bush Jourdain, Sr. (1865-1938) grew up in an American family of African, Native American, and European heritage in New Bedford, Massachusetts, during the turbulent era of unrealized post-Civil War dreams.

In 1905, Edwin, Sr., will assist his friend and colleague W.E.B. Du Bois in the creation of the startling Niagara Movement that will insist upon equal civil rights without further delay for people of color in America, and around the world. The empowering philosophy of the Niagara Movement will motivate Attorney Jourdain's son, Edwin B. Jourdain, Jr., while a student at Harvard in 1921 to ignite a protest for student racial equality soon championed by Harvard alumni nationwide.