Book picks similar to
The Willie Lynch Letter: aka The Making of a Slave (Annotated) by Willie Lynch
black-liberation
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Huey: Spirit of the Panther
David Hilliard - 2005
Newton remains one of the most misunderstood political figures of the twentieth century. As cofounder and leader of the Black Panther Party for more than twenty years, Newton (1942-1989) was at the forefront of the radical political activism of the 1960s and '70s. Raised in poverty in Oakland, California, and named for corrupt Louisiana governor Huey P. Long, Newton embodied both the passions and the contradictions of the civil rights movement he sought to advance. In this first authorized biography, Newton's former chief of staff David Hilliard teams up with best-selling authors Keith and Kent Zimmerman to tell the whole story of the man behind the organization that FBI director J. Edgar Hoover infamously dubbed "the greatest threat to the internal security of the country."
Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism
Kwame Nkrumah - 1965
This is the book which, when first published in 1965, caused such an uproar in the US State Department that a sharp note of protest was sent to Kwame Nkrumah and the $25million of American "aid" to Ghana was promptly cancelled.
The Adventure Gap: Changing the Face of the Outdoors
James Edward Mills - 2013
But not all of us use these resources equally. Minority populations are much less likely to seek recreation, adventure, and solace in our wilderness spaces. It's a difference that African American author James Mills addresses in his new book, The Adventure Gap: Changing the Face of the Outdoors.Bridging the so-called "adventure gap" requires role models who can inspire the uninitiated to experience and enjoy wild places. Once new visitors are there, a love affair often follows. This is important because as our country grows increasingly multicultural, our natural legacy will need the devotion of people of all races and ethnicities to steward its care.In 2013, the first all-African American team of climbers, sponsored by the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS), challenged themselves on North America's highest point, the dangerous and forbidding Denali, in Alaska. Mills uses Expedition Denali and its team members' adventures as a jumping-off point to explore how minority populations view their place in wild environments and to share the stories of those who have already achieved significant accomplishments in outdoor adventures from Mathew Henson, a Black explorer who stood with Peary at the North Pole, to Kai Lightner, a teenage sport climber currently winning national competitions. The goal of the expedition, and now the book, is to inspire minority communities to look outdoors for experiences that will enrich their lives, and to encourage them toward greater environmental stewardship.
Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity
Dan Berger - 2005
A meticulously researched and well-referenced study of the Weather Underground. . . . A gripping story, drawing important lessons for the younger generation of activists.”—Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of Outlaw Woman: A Memoir of the War Years, 1960–1975Outlaws of America brings to life the motivations and actions of America’s most famous renegades, who bombed their way into history. Through detailed and original research, Dan Berger offers a nuanced and compelling portrait of the group that risked everything in opposition to war and racism.This explosive, engaging, and timely book uncovers the untold story of the Weather Underground, from its incendiary beginning to its tumultuous ending—never sparing a critical analysis of the group. Especially noteworthy is Berger’s groundbreaking discussion of the infamous 1981 Brinks case, where former Weather Underground members allied with the Black Liberation Army in a failed robbery that resulted in the deaths of three men and the longtime incarceration of several activists.Outlaws of America is culled from dozens of in-depth interviews with former Weather Underground members, as well as with civil rights activists, Black Panthers, Young Lords, and others—many of whom speak about their experiences publicly here for the first time. The book also features an extensive appendix including Weather Underground communiqués, a chronology of actions, a collection of rare photographs, and current biographical sketches of many ex-Weather Underground members.Outlaws of America is published at a time of surging interest in the history of the group, immediately following the release of the Oscar-nominated documentary entitled The Weather Underground, of which Outlaws is the essential companion volume.Dan Berger is a writer, activist, and PhD candidate at the University of Pennsylvania. A longtime anti-racism organizer, he is the co-editor of Letters From Young Activists (Nation Books, 2005).
The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution
C.L.R. James - 1938
It is the story of the French colony of San Domingo, a place where the brutality of master toward slave was commonplace and ingeniously refined. And it is the story of a barely literate slave named Toussaint L'Ouverture, who led the black people of San Domingo in a successful struggle against successive invasions by overwhelming French, Spanish, and English forces and in the process helped form the first independent nation in the Caribbean.
Searching for Sarah Rector: The Richest Black Girl in America
Tonya Bolden - 2014
At the age of eleven, Sarah was a very rich young girl. Even so, she was powerless . . . helpless in the whirlwind of drama—and danger—that swirled around her. Then one day word came that she had disappeared. This is her story, and the story of other children like her, filled with ups and downs, bizarre goings-on, and a heap of crimes. Out of a trove of primary documents, including court and census records, as well as interviews with family members, Bolden painstakingly pieces together the events of Sarah’s life.
The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World
Vijay Prashad - 2007
The Darker Nations traces the intellectual origins and the political history of the twentieth century attempt to knit together the world’s impoverished countries in opposition to the United States and Soviet spheres of influence in the decades following World War II.Spanning every continent of the global South, Vijay Prashad’s fascinating narrative takes us from the birth of postcolonial nations after World War II to the downfall and corruption of nationalist regimes. A breakthrough book of cutting-edge scholarship, it includes vivid portraits of Third World giants like India’s Nehru, Egypt’s Nasser, and Indonesia’s Sukarno—as well as scores of extraordinary but now–forgotten intellectuals, artists, and freedom fighters. The Darker Nations restores to memory the vibrant though flawed idea of the Third World, whose demise, Prashad ultimately argues, has produced a much impoverished international political arena.
The Trail of Tears: The Story of the American Indian Removals 1813-1855
Gloria Jahoda - 1975
She describes the violence, the wars, the meaningless treaties and political double-dealing that spread from Washington to the frontier. She portrays the suffering as thousands of Creeks, Choctaws, Cherokees, Chickasaws, Seminoles, Shawnees, Delawares, Senecas and members of other proud Native American nations perished from cold, hunger and white men's diseases. Here too are the monumental figures of the age, men of greed, hatred, honor and inspiration, including:
Andrew Jackson, who created the policy and presided over its ruthless execution
Sir St. George Gore, an Irish millionaire who, in slaughtering over 2,000 buffalo, helped speed the demise of the Native Americans newly arrived in the Great American Desert
Sam Houston and Davy Crockett, former Indian fighters turned Indian advocates
John Ross, the Cherokee statesman who represented his tribe before the United States government and later bitterly led his people out of Georgia
Osceola, the brilliant military tactician and Seminole chief who gallantly waged war against Winfield Scott and Zachary Taylor.
History comes alive in the vivid prose and fluid anecdotal style of The Trail of Tears. It is a book that must be read by anyone interested in the evolution and development of America's history--and its destiny.
Taboo: 10 Facts You Can't Talk About
Wilfred Reilly - 2020
The police are waging a war on Black people. “White privilege” means minorities never get a fair shake. Although this narrative of oppression is demonstrably fictitious, it is taboo to question it, and those who do so risk being labeled racist or sexist themselves. America needs an honest conversation based on common sense and cold, hard facts. Honesty and respect for the facts are the specialty of Wilfred Reilly, the celebrated author of Hate Crime Hoax. In Taboo, he fearlessly examines ten forbidden truths that have been buried by political correctness. They include: -The Black rate of violent crime is roughly 2.5 times the white rate. When demographic variables are taken into account, there are no racial differences in the rate of police-involved shootings. -Interracial crime is remarkably rare, but 75 to 80 percent of it occurs against white people. -Minorities can be racist—take the Nation of Islam, which holds that white people are an inferior race created by a Black scientist. -Disparities between racial groups in IQ testing and SAT performance are the result of cultural variables, such as the presence of a father in the home, not racism. Reilly goes where most social scientists fear to tread, using objective statistics and common sense to tackle taboo topics. Taboo is an essential takedown of the lies you hear every day from ideological activists and lazy, biased media.
Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat
J. Sakai - 1983
First published in the 1980s by activists with decades of experience organizing in grassroots anticapitalist struggles against white supremacy, the book soon established itself as an essential reference point for revolutionary nationalists and dissident currents within the predominantly colonialist Marxist-Leninist and anarchist movements at that time.Always controversial within the establishment Left Settlers uncovers centuries of collaboration between capitalism and white workers and their organizations, as well as their neocolonial allies, showing how the United States was designed from the ground up as a parasitic and genocidal entity. Settlers exposes the fact that America’s white citizenry have never supported themselves but have always resorted to exploitation and theft, culminating in acts of genocide to maintain their culture and way of life. As recounted in painful detail by Sakai, the United States has been built on the theft of Indigenous lands and of Afrikan labor, on the robbery of the northern third of Mexico, the colonization of Puerto Rico, and the expropriation of the Asian working class, with each of these crimes being accompanied by violence.This new edition includes “Cash & Genocide: The True Story of Japanese-American Reparations” and an interview with author J. Sakai by Ernesto Aguilar.Please note that none of the illustrations from the paperback edition are included in the digital version.
The Common Wind: Afro-American Currents in the Age of the Haitian Revolution
Julius S. Scott - 2018
Having delved deep into the gray obscurity of official eighteenth-century records in Spanish, English, and French, Julius S. Scott has written a powerful “history from below.” Scott follows the spread of “rumors of emancipation” and the people behind them, bringing to life the protagonists in the slave revolution.By tracking the colliding worlds of buccaneers, military deserters, and maroon communards from Venezuela to Virginia, Scott records the transmission of contagious mutinies and insurrections in unparalleled detail, providing readers with an intellectual history of the enslaved.Though The Common Wind is credited with having “opened up the Black Atlantic with a rigor and a commitment to the power of written words,” the manuscript remained unpublished for thirty-two years. Now, after receiving wide acclaim from leading historians of slavery and the New World, it has been published by Verso for the first time, with a foreword by the academic and author Marcus Rediker.
A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration
Steven Hahn - 2003
As Steven Hahn demonstrates, rural African-Americans were central political actors in the great events of disunion, emancipation, and nation-building. At the same time, Hahn asks us to think in more expansive ways about the nature and boundaries of politics and political practice.Emphasizing the importance of kinship, labor, and networks of communication, A Nation under Our Feet explores the political relations and sensibilities that developed under slavery and shows how they set the stage for grassroots mobilization. Hahn introduces us to local leaders, and shows how political communities were built, defended, and rebuilt. He also identifies the quest for self-governance as an essential goal of black politics across the rural South, from contests for local power during Reconstruction, to emigrationism, biracial electoral alliances, social separatism, and, eventually, migration.Hahn suggests that Garveyism and other popular forms of black nationalism absorbed and elaborated these earlier struggles, thus linking the first generation of migrants to the urban North with those who remained in the South. He offers a new framework--looking out from slavery--to understand twentieth-century forms of black political consciousness as well as emerging battles for civil rights. It is a powerful story, told here for the first time, and one that presents both an inspiring and a troubling perspective on American democracy.
Myth of the Welfare Queen
David Zucchino - 1997
Odessa, supporting an extended family, exhibits almost superhuman strength and resolve. Cheri, a single mother, is a tireless advocate for the homeless. Zucchino beautifully portrays them as figures of profound courage and quiet perseverance, systematically shattering all misconceptions and stereotypes about these women and so many others like them.
And We Are Not Saved: The Elusive Quest for Racial Justice
Derrick A. Bell - 1987
Bell challenges the idea that significant social, political, and economic progress was achieved by the civil rights movement in the wake of the 1954 Brown v. Board decision. Through a series of fables and dramatic dialogues modeled on the grim fairytales of the eighteenth century, Bell explains the true pervasiveness of racial oppression within the American legal system. Racial inequality, he argues, is an integral part of American law and society, and it cannot be easily reversed through legislation. Hailed as “fascinating” (New York Times Book Review) and “daring” (Washington Post), this is a landmark work in the study of race in America.
The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual: A Historical Analysis of the Failure of Black Leadership
Harold Cruse - 1967
The product of a lifetime of struggle and reflection, Cruse's book is a singular amalgam of cultural history, passionate disputation, and deeply considered analysis of the relationship between American blacks and American society. Reviewing black intellectual life from the Harlem Renaissance through the 1960s, Cruse discusses the legacy (and offers memorably acid-edged portraits) of figures such as Paul Robeson, Lorraine Hansberry, and James Baldwin, arguing that their work was marked by a failure to understand the specifically American character of racism in the United States. This supplies the background to Cruse's controversial critique of both integrationism and black nationalism and to his claim that black Americans will only assume a just place within American life when they develop their own distinctive centers of cultural and economic influence. For Cruse's most important accomplishment may well be his rejection of the clich?s of the melting pot in favor of a vision of Americanness as an arena of necessary and vital contention, an open and ongoing struggle.