A world-famous singer and actor, a trained lawyer, an early star of American professional football and a polyglot who spoke over a dozen languages: these could be the crowning achievements of a life well-lived. Yet for Paul Robeson the higher calling of social justice led him to abandon both the NFL and Hollywood and become one of the most important political activists of his generation, a crusader for freedom and equality who battled both Jim Crow and Joseph McCarthy.   In Paul Robeson, Gerald Horne discovers within Robeson’s remarkable and revolutionary life the story of the twentieth century’s great political struggles: against racism, against colonialism, against poverty—and for international socialism. This critical and searching biography provides an opportunity for readers to comprehend the triumphs and tragedies of the revolutionary progressive movement of which Robeson was not just a part, but perhaps its most resonant symbol.

Product Description: A leading African American Communist, lawyer William L. Patterson (1891–1980) was instrumental in laying the groundwork for the defeat of Jim Crowby virtue of his leadership of the Scottsboro campaign in the 1930s. In this watershed biography, historian Gerald Horne shows how Patterson helped to advance African American equality by fostering and leveraging international support for the movement...read more

Product Description: Based on archival research on three continents, this book addresses the interpenetration of two closely related movements: the struggle against white supremacy and Jim Crow in the U.S., and the struggle against similar forces and for national liberation in Colonial Kenya.

Product Description: Powerful labor movements played a critical role in shaping modern Hawaii, beginning in the 1930s, when International Longshore and Warehousemen’s Union (ILWU) representatives were dispatched to the islands to organize plantation and dock laborers...read more

Product Description: Martin Luther King Jr.'s adaptation of Gandhi's doctrine of non-violent resistance is the most visible example of the rich history of ties between African Americans and India. In "The End of Empires", Gerald Horne provides an unprecedented history of the relationship between African Americans and Indians in the period leading up to Indian independence in 1947...read more

Product Description: What does it mean that Lawrence Dennis—arguably the “brains” behind U.S. fascism—was born black but spent his entire adult life passing for white? Born in Atlanta in 1893, Dennis began life as a highly touted African American child preacher, touring nationally and arousing audiences with his dark-skinned mother as his escort...read more

Product Description: During the heyday of the U.S. and international labor movements in the 1930s and 1940s, Ferdinand Smith, the Jamaican-born co-founder and second-in-command of the National Maritime Union (NMU), stands out as one of the most—if not the most—powerful black labor leaders in the United States...read more

Product Description: Focused on the region as a whole and drawing from archives in Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados, Guyana, St. Kitts, Antigua, the U.S. and U.K., this book details the region's impact on the U.S. (particularly  on Jim Crow), as it charts the British Empire's retreat in the face of a challenge from Washington...read more

Product Description: As the US Civil War dragged on, freebooters took advantage of the development of new sources for sugar & cotton to establish an alternative slave trade in Melanesians & Polynesians. This book tells the story of the South Seas slave trade.

During its heyday in the nineteenth century, the African slave trade was fueled by the close relationship of the United States and Brazil. The Deepest South tells the disturbing story of how U.S. nationals - before and after Emancipation -- continued to actively participate in this odious commerce by creating diplomatic, social, and political ties with Brazil, which today has the largest population of African origin outside of Africa itself.Proslavery Americans began to accelerate their presence in Brazil in the 1830s, creating alliances there—sometimes friendly, often contentious—with Portuguese, Spanish, British, and other foreign slave traders to buy, sell, and transport African slaves, particularly from the eastern shores of that beleaguered continent. Spokesmen of the Slave South drew up ambitious plans to seize the Amazon and develop this region by deporting the enslaved African-Americans there to toil. When the South seceded from the Union, it received significant support from Brazil, which correctly assumed that a Confederate defeat would be a mortal blow to slavery south of the border. After the Civil War, many Confederates, with slaves in tow, sought refuge as well as the survival of their peculiar institution in Brazil.Based on extensive research from archives on five continents, Gerald Horne breaks startling new ground in the history of slavery, uncovering its global dimensions and the degrees to which its defenders went to maintain it.

Product Description: Japan’s lightning march across Asia during World War II was swift and brutal. Nation after nation fell to Japanese soldiers. How were the Japanese able to justify their occupation of so many Asian nations? And how did they find supporters in countries they subdued and exploited? Race War! delves into submerged and forgotten history to reveal how European racism and colonialism were deftly exploited by the Japanese to create allies among formerly colonized people of color...read more

Presents a biography of the life, politics, and work of Shirley Graham Du Bois, a Harlem Renaissance playwright, biographer, composer, teacher, novelist, proto-feminist, political activist, and wife of W.E.B. Du Bois.

Explores how the American government's relationship with the country of Zimbabwe, formerly Rhodesia, between 1965 and 1980 affected the interracial dynamics in the United States. (view table of contents)

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In August 1965 the predominantly black neighborhood of Watts in Los Angeles erupted in flames and violence following an incident of police brutality. This is the first comprehensive treatment of that uprising.Gerald Horne weaves a compelling account which suggests that crucial developments in the 1960s- including the rise of black nationalism and a white backlash- are grounded in the preceding decades' repression of the interracial left.In Fire This Time Horne delineates the central roles played by important political leaders and organizations. He documents the role of the Cold War in the dismantling of legalized segregation, and he looks at the impact of race, religion, class, gender, and age on postwar Los Angeles.