A SAVING REMNANT

THE RADICAL LIVES OF BARBARA DEMING AND DAVID MCREYNOLDS

BY MARTIN DUBERMAN
THE NEW PRESS / MARCH 15, 2011

“Absorbing dual biography… an evocative rendering of committed lives.”—Kirkus Reviews

From the distinguished Pulitzer-prize finalist, A Saving Remnant: The Radical Lives of Barbara
Deming and David McReynolds is a remarkable tale that at once reveals a vital public sphere of radical
activism and a dramatic private one of coming to terms with homosexuality long before Stonewall.
Barbara Deming and David McReynolds first crossed paths in the 1960s when both emerged as leading
figures on the American left. The two agreed on most of the issues of the day and were especially active
in the Black struggle and the effort to stop the war in Vietnam. Both also maintained an abiding
commitment to the tactic of non-violent direct action. Yet—though they remained friends—Barbara and
David strenuously disagreed about feminism, anti-pornography, and the course of the gay movement,
with David often expressing reservations about all three. Barbara ultimately ended up living in a lesbian
commune and David ran (on the socialist party ticket) as the first openly gay candidate for the
Presidency of the United States. Both are revered figures in the intersecting worlds of pacifism and
feminism.

A Saving Remnant contains an alluring cast of characters that includes intellectuals, artists, and activists
from Bayard Rustin and Quentin Crisp, to Alvin Ailey and Allen Ginsberg. An extraordinary
achievement from one of the most important historians of our time, this gripping dual biography is, in
the words of Harvard historian Timothy Patrick McCarthy, “…the most recent tour de force by Martin
Duberman, America's most daring and creative living biographer.”