documentaries history

A classic and impassioned account of the first revolution in the Third World.This powerful, intensely dramatic book is the definitive account of the Haitian Revolution of 1794-1803, a revolution that began in the wake of the Bastille but became the model for the Third World liberation movements from Africa to Cuba. 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.

In 1967, this revolutionary work exposed the depths of systemic racism in this country and provided a radical political framework for reform: true and lasting social change would only be accomplished through unity among African-Americans and their independence from the preexisting order. An eloquent document of the civil rights movement that remains a work of profound social relevance 25 years after it was first published.

"There is no true social revolution without the liberation of women," explains the leader of the 1983-87 revolution in Burkina Faso. Workers and peasants in that West African country established a popular revolutionary government and began to combat the hunger, illiteracy, and economic backwardness imposed by imperialist domination.Preface, introduction, map, photos, index.

It’s around 7:00 A.M. on December 4, 1969, and attorney Jeff Haas is in a police lockup in Chicago, interviewing Fred Hampton’s fiancée. She is describing how the police pulled her from the room as Fred lay unconscious on their bed. She heard one officer say, “He’s still alive.” She then heard two shots. A second officer said, “He’s good and dead now.” She looks at Jeff and asks, “What can you do?”The Assassination of Fred Hampton is Haas’s personal account of how he and People’s Law Office partner Flint Taylor pursued Hampton’s assassins, ultimately prevailing over unlimited government resources and FBI conspiracy. Not only a story of justice delivered, the book puts Hampton in a new light as a dynamic community leader and an inspiration in the fight against injustice.

Until now (1960, date of the first edition), the history of Black Africa has always been written with dates as dry as laundry lists and no one has almost ever tried to find the key that unlocks the door to the intelligence the understanding of African societyFailing which no researcher has ever succeeded in revivifying the African past in bringing it back to life in our minds before our eyes so to speak while remaining strictly within the realm of science Yet the documents at our disposal allow us to do that practically without any break in continuity for a period of two thousand years, at least insofar as West Africa is concernedTherefore it had become indispensable to unfreeze in a manner of speaking to defossilize that African history which was there at hand, lifeless, imprisoned in the documentsHowever this work is not properly speaking a book of history but it is an auxiliary tool indispensable to the historian It indeed affords him a scientific understanding of all the historical facts hitherto unexplained In that sense it is a study in African historical sociology It permits us no longer to be surprised at the stagnation or rather the relatively stable equilibrium of precolonial African societies: the analysis of their socio-political structures presented in it allowing us to gauge the stabilizing factors in African society One thereby understands the technical and other lags to be the result of a different kind of development based upon absolutely objective fundamental causesThus there is no longer any reason for embarrassmentOnce the awareness achieved we can immediately and fully in almost every slightest detail relive all the aspects of Africans national life the administrative, judicial, economic, and military organizations, that of labor, the technical level, the migrations and formations of people and nationalities thus their ethnic genesis and consequently almost linguistic genesis etcUpon absorbing any such human experience we sense deep within ourselves a true reinforcement of our feeling of cultural oneness

In Oakland, California, in 1966, community college students Bobby Seale and Huey Newton armed themselves, began patrolling the police, and promised to prevent police brutality. Unlike the Civil Rights Movement that called for full citizenship rights for blacks within the U.S., the Black Panther Party rejected the legitimacy of the U.S. government and positioned itself as part of a global struggle against American imperialism. In the face of intense repression, the Party flourished, becoming the center of a revolutionary movement with offices in 68 U.S. cities and powerful allies around the world.Black against Empire is the first comprehensive overview and analysis of the history and politics of the Black Panther Party. The authors analyze key political questions, such as why so many young black people across the country risked their lives for the revolution, why the Party grew most rapidly during the height of repression, and why allies abandoned the Party at its peak of influence. Bold, engrossing, and richly detailed, this book cuts through the mythology and obfuscation, revealing the political dynamics that drove the explosive growth of this revolutionary movement, and its disastrous unraveling. Informed by twelve years of meticulous archival research, as well as familiarity with most of the former Party leadership and many rank-and-file members, this book is the definitive history of one of the greatest challenges ever posed to American state power. Read an excerpt here: Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party by Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Mart... by University of California Press Listen to an interview with the authors here:http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=...

Blood In My Eye was completed only days before its author was killed. George Jackson died on August 21, 1971, at the hands of San Quentin prison guards during an alleged escape attempt. At eighteen, George Jackson was convicted of stealing seventy dollars from a gas station and was sentenced from one year to life. He was to spent the rest of his life -- eleven years-- in the California prison system, seven in solitary confinement. In prison he read widely and transformed himself into an activist and political theoretician who defined himself as a revolutionary.

A truly extraordinary work. Beautifully written, cogently and convincingly argued. Passionate and powerful and vital. Read it. "Some Americans think and say that the nation freed the black slave and gave him a vote and that, unable to use it intelligently, he lost it. That is not so. To win the war America freed the slave and armed him; and the threat to arm the mass of the black workers of the Confederacy stopped the war. Nor does this fact for a moment deny that some prophets and martyrs demanded first and last the abolition of slavery as the sole object of the war and at any cost of life and wealth. So, too, some Americans demanded not simply physical freedom but votes, land, and education for blacks, not only in order to compass the economic emancipation of labor, but also as the only fulfillment of American democratic ideals; but most Americans used the Negro to defend their own economic interests and, refusing him adequate land and real education and even common justice, deserted him shamelessly as soon as their selfish interests were safe. " "Reconstruction, therefore, in the South degenerated into a fight of rivals to control property and through that to control the labor vote. This rivalry between dictators led to graft and corruption as they bid against each other for the vote of the Negro, while meantime Negro labor in its ignorance and poverty was agonizing for ways of escape. Northern capital compromised, and Southern capital accepted race hate and black disfranchisement as a permanent program of exploitation."****************Still in mid-read, but wanted to share this, not least for how relevant to the last few months it seems: “Above this lowest mass rose a middle class of poor whites in the making. There were some small farmers who had more than a mere sustenance and yet were not large planters. There were overseers. There was a growing class of merchants who traded with the slaves and free Negroes and became in many cases larger traders, dealing with the planters for the staple crops. Some poor whites rose to the professional class, so that the rift between the planters and the mass of the whites was partially bridged by this smaller intermediate class. While revolt against the domination of the planters over the poor whites was voiced by men like Helper, who called for a class struggle to destroy the planters, this was nullified by deep-rooted antagonism to the Negro, whether slave or free. If black labor could be expelled from the United States or eventually exterminated, then the fight against the planter could take place. But the poor whites and their leaders could not for a moment contemplate a fight of united white and black labor against the exploiters. Indeed, the natural leaders of the poor whites, the small farmer, the merchant, the professional man, the white mechanic and slave overseer, were bound to the planters and repelled from the slaves and even from the mass of the white laborers in two ways: first, they constituted the police patrol who could ride with planters and now and then exercise unlimited force upon recalcitrant or runaway slaves; and then, too, there was always a chance that they themselves might also become planters by saving money, by investment, by the power of good luck; and the only heaven that attracted them was the life of the great Southern planter.” And this, longer, but so beautifully written I could not dare cut a word, and which also seems painfully worth reading during our present times: "This brings us down to the period of the Civil War. Up to the time that the war actually broke out, American labor simply refused, in the main, to envisage black labor as a part of its problem. Right up to the edge of the war, it was talking about the emancipation of white labor and the organization of stronger unions without saying a word, or apparently giving a thought, to four million black slaves. During the war, labor was resentful. Workers were forced to fight in a strife between capitalists in which they had no interest and they showed their resentment in the peculiarly human way of beating and murdering the innocent victims of it all, the black free Negroes of New York and other Northern cities; while in the South, five million non-slaveholding poor white farmers and laborers sent their manhood by the thousands to fight and die for a system that had degraded them equally with the black slave. Could one imagine anything more paradoxical than this whole situation? America thus stepped forward in the first blossoming of the modern age and added to the Art of Beauty, gift of the Renaissance, and to Freedom of Belief, gift of Martin Luther and Leo X, a vision of democratic self-government: the domination of political life by the intelligent decision of free and self-sustaining men. What an idea and what an area for its realization — endless land of richest fertility, natural resources such as Earth seldom exhibited before, a population infinite in variety, of universal gift, burned in the fires of poverty and caste, yearning toward the Unknown God; and self-reliant pioneers, unafraid of man or devil. It was the Supreme Adventure, in the last Great Battle of the West, for that human freedom which would release the human spirit from lower lust for mere meat, and set it free to dream and sing. And then some unjust God leaned, laughing, over the ramparts of heaven and dropped a black man in the midst. It transformed the world. It turned democracy back to Roman Imperialism and Fascism; it restored caste and oligarchy; it replaced freedom with slavery and withdrew the name of humanity from the vast majority of human beings. But not without struggle. Not without writhing and rending of spirit and pitiable wail of lost souls. They said: Slavery was wrong but not all wrong; slavery must perish and not simply move; God made black men; God made slavery; the will of God be done; slavery to the glory of God and black men as his servants and ours; slavery as a way to freedom — the freedom of blacks, the freedom of whites; white freedom as the goal of the world and black slavery as the path thereto. Up with the white world, down with the black! Then came this battle called Civil War, beginning in Kansas in 1854, and ending in the presidential election of 1876 — twenty awful years. The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery. The whole weight of America was thrown to color caste. The colored world went down before England, France, Germany, Russia, Italy and America. A new slavery arose. The upward moving of white labor was betrayed into wars for profit based on color caste. Democracy died save in the hearts of black folk. Indeed, the plight of the white working class throughout the world today is directly traceable to Negro slavery in America, on which modern commerce and industry was founded, and which persisted to threaten free labor until it was partially overthrown in 1863. The resulting color caste founded and retained by capitalism was adopted, forwarded and approved by white labor, and resulted in subordination of colored labor to white profits the world over. Thus the majority of the world's laborers, by the insistence of white labor, became the basis of a system of industry which ruined democracy and showed its perfect fruit in World War and Depression. And this book seeks to tell that story. " E-readers can find the whole book here https://archive.org/details/blackreco...

In the speeches and articles collected in this book, the black activist, organizer, and freedom fighter Stokely Carmichael traces the dramatic changes in his own consciousness and that of black Americans that took place during the evolving movements of Civil Rights, Black Power, and Pan-Africanism. Unique in his belief that the destiny of African Americans could not be separated from that of oppressed people the world over, Carmichael's Black Power principles insisted that blacks resist white brainwashing and redefine themselves. He was concerned not only with racism and exploitation, but with cultural integrity and the colonization of Africans in America. In these essays on racism, Black Power, the pitfalls of conventional liberalism, and solidarity with the oppressed masses and freedom fighters of all races and creeds, Carmichael addresses questions that still confront the black world and points to a need for an ideology of black and African liberation, unification, and transformation. 

Soundtrack to this review - please listen :-)The Ancient Egyptians, the founders of the civilisation that built the pyramids and brought writing, geometry, religion and science to the Greeks (and others), were Black, as in 'Negro' as in, they looked more like the Yoruba or the Kikuyu or the Xhosa than any group of Semitic people.* They came from the interior, from Nubia (Sudan) or the drying Western Sahara. Their sacred sites were in Upper Egypt, their true homeland. Their gods were there, and the heads of those gods were painted coal black. The Egyptians made no distinction of colour between themselves and the Nubians or other Black Africans. Herodotus says they were black and had woolly hair. The Bible says it. And where Egyptians travelled North, they ruled: the earliest kings of Elam were Black, as their tomb paintings clearly show. The Canaanites, the Phoenicians, the Carthagianians were Black. Speaking of tomb paintings, statuary and so on, well, just take a look, the book has pictures = )*Why am I struggling to make myself clear? Well, race isn't a thing is it? It's just junk in the mind of the racist, as one friend objected when I started talking about this book. The trouble is, we (as in everyone) are all racist, and the junk in racist minds is exactly what Cheikh Anta Diop (can I call him CAD? Thanks.) is writing back to here. In fact, Egyptology up to 1954 had been part and parcel of the ideology of scientific racism. While CAD is able to cite some 'scholars of good faith' going all the way back to de Volney circa 1785 who observes the (much lightened by mixing) Egyptians and recalls the words of Herodotus, concluding “the ancient Egyptians were true Negroes of the same type as all native-born Africans.”, the majority of the Egyptologists he cites are clearly so deeply sunk in their white-supremacy that they will allow themselves any amount of contradiction, denial and extravagant misinterpretation, and think up any crackpot theory, to avoid accepting the obvious conclusion that THE EGYPTIANS WERE BLACK.Some of these theories propose that the Egyptians came from the North, which is ridiculous, and others create White races with dark skin. Hence such designations as 'Hamite' 'Nilotic' and so on, proliferate as the white Egyptologists scramble to avoid the belief that the despised and enslaved Negro could be the antecedent and teacher of European culture. CAD believes that there are only three 'races', 'white, black and yellow' and suspects that even the 'yellow' is really just a mix of black and white, like the Semites and other 'Mediterranean' people, and the Egyptians today. Egyptologists had suggested that Indo-Europeans civilized the Egyptians and lightened them, but Egyptian civilisation pre-dates anything in Europe and Mesopotamia, and mixing was very gradual due to the small numbers of whiter peoples coming to Africa, while all the elements of the Egyptian civilisation were in place in the undeniably Black Old Kingdom. The pale folks who came to Egypt before it fell were usually prisoners of war who became slaves (Egyptians could not be enslaved. The country was never a slave economy – numbers were small) or brought into the royal harem.This isn't a theory of racial superiority of course; the Egyptians' social and cultural sophistication, asserts CAD, was nurtured by their environment and the need for cooperation imposed by the particular agricultural conditions around the Nile. Bounteous nature was unsurprisingly revered. Meanwhile, the Indo-Europeans struggling to survive on the hostile steppes developed the patriarchal family and aggressive, opportunistic lifeways, devoid of respect for nature, which treated them harshly. CAD suggests that the Egyptians persecuted the Jews because of their horror of nomads. I am generally wary of this kind of psychological explanation-by-climate, but in some aspects this speculative description approximates a historical approach. I would like to stand up for nomads against this sedentarist perspective, though not especially to defend the people who became the faithless extractivists of Western Europe (what about Native 'American' nomadic people, famously not faithless extractivists**) One of my problems with the text is the apparently uncritical use of the opposition between 'civilisation' and 'barbarism'. CAD accepts the idea that Black Africa has 'regressed' from the glory days of the pharaohs. I have to object that this is part of racist, colonial ideology.Nor is this the only aspect of the text which needs further decolonisation. Unforgivably, CAD collaborates in antiblackness as it constructs black female gender. Comments about hair in particular (I would like to know what 'frizzy' is translated from) are entirely misogynoiristic*** and when CAD uses the phrase 'feminine elegance' he is explicitly distinguishing white women from black women**I don't mean to imply that Native 'Americans' all have nomadic traditions or were all nomadic before the invasion of colonising Europeans – despite my ignorance about the topic I am well aware that the continent had many cities before the white invasion. CAD thinks that Black Africans who crossed the Atlantic had a hand in this urbanising (step pyramids!) but he is only speculating and I need to do further research into the exciting topic of these Atlantic crossings***the term misogynoir was coined by Moya BaileyThe depth of some Egyptologists' investment in white supremacy provokes some enjoyable dry humour from CAD. In 'Reply to a Critic', he addresses the remarks of one denier, Raymond Mauny on the ethnic mix of later periods “M Mauny knows that if this mix of people were transported to New York City, they would be found in Harlem”This snark not only indicates the accessibility of this readable and absorbing book, but also points to the reality that racialisation is contextual. As Leena Abiballa (a Sudanese writer) explains in this article Too Black to be Arab, too Arab to be Black "race is a Western fantasy maintained by a daily, violent socio-political choreography.” So, why do I disagree with my friend's comment that "we shouldn't assign racial identities to historic civilizations"? Why am I greeting CAD's project as near-heroic? Context! In, say, Paris, 1954, or London, 2016, a time-travelling group of ancient Egyptians would be called BLACK, and that fact turns the foundation of scientific racism, which is the foundation of this 'Western fantasy' of race, UPSIDE DOWN, which (as Fanon tells us) is what has to be done before it can dissipate into nothingness. So while I find the occasional descent into skull-measuring tedious, I recognise its necessity. What happens now is that nobody talks of the Egyptians as White or Asian, but the conception is not challenged, so people continue to picture them as such and reproduce the idea - it has its own self-sustaining life. That's why whites are cast as Egyptians in movies etc. Now I'm on the lookout for books and other art that presents ancient Egypt as Black. Hollywood antidotes please...update: it has been suggested to me that Cheikh Anta Diop's theory is 'trapped inside a racist conception'I would like to avoid facilitating obfuscation, so I want to reply here. Firstly, this is insulting. CAD has replied to the racism of Egyptology, implicit and explicit, ON ITS OWN TERMS. Even on the grounds of the essentialist concept of race it propounds, it is incorrect. I think this is the most effective refutation. CAD has used white man epistemology and essentialism strategically.I know that in a way, a meaningful way, the objector is right, because in this volume CAD concludes with touching optimism that accurate or authentic objective anthropology will triumph, racism will be over! But yes, a different epistemology is needed. To repeat a much abused revelation:"The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house" - Audre LordeBut knowing that 'race' is not real has not helped much, has it? White supremacy has been making out like a bandit on the back of this valid deconstruction for some time, pretending that since race does not exist, racism (the white concept of racism is one of the master's tools) does not exist either, since Lincoln freed the slaves or whatever, now there's a full meritocracy, level playing field etc:'that was all in the past, can't we just move on?''stop playing the race card!'Racialisation is contextual, but it does not follow that a person can take off the helmet of their language and culture at a stroke, and end racism thus. History is important, emotionally. Stories have real power.While I was reading this, I asked some folks this question:What do you think the ancient Egyptians looked like?The first answer I got was about their clothesThis is avoidance of the uncomfortable. I clarifiedThe second reply (from a knowledgeable person) was that they had 'Asian skin, almond eyes, long hair'That is racist Egyptology at work.I said the Egyptians were Black, as in, you know, like Oprah.The next reply was 'I don't think we should assign race to them, I never thought about it'That is 'colourblindness' or raceblindness, which is really racism-blindness, isn't it? The last person is quite enlightened, he knows race is not a thing, but it seems to me that it is another way of avoiding an uncomfortable topic.White Supremacy: "The Egyptians were White, because only Whites could create this advanced civilisation"Cheikh Anta Diop: "Actually, the Egyptians were Black"Pomo Covert White Supremacy: "Oh, race isn't a thing anyway"What happened? The water got hot, so somebody jumped out.Person 2 also said 'Surely the Egyptologists were not all racist' which is related to the objection 'some old racist books claimed the Egyptians were white'But this is not over, as person #2's first response indicates. They had 'Asian skin', so they were Asian?Go to the British Museum's lovely Ancient Egypt website, and see all the gods drawn as pale as I amAs Sara Ahmed says:This is not over. We should not get over it.

Challenging the notion that civilization started in Greece, this uncompromising classic attempts to prove that the true authors of Greek philosophy were not Greeks but Egyptians. The text asserts that the praise and honor blindly given to the Greeks for centuries rightfully belong to the people of Africa, and argues that the theft of this great African legacy led to the erroneous world opinion that the African continent has made no contribution to civilization. Quoting such celebrated Greek scholars as Herodotus, Hippocrates, Aristotle, Thales, and Pythagoras, who admit to the influence of Egyptian studies in their work, this edition sheds new light on traditional philosophical and historical thought. Originally published in 1954, this book features a new introduction.

In this ambitious work, first published in 1983, Cedric Robinson demonstrates that efforts to understand black people's history of resistance solely through the prism of Marxist theory are incomplete and inaccurate. Marxist analyses tend to presuppose European models of history and experience that downplay the significance of black people and black communities as agents of change and resistance. Black radicalism must be linked to the traditions of Africa and the unique experiences of blacks on western continents, Robinson argues, and any analyses of African American history need to acknowledge this.To illustrate his argument, Robinson traces the emergence of Marxist ideology in Europe, the resistance by blacks in historically oppressive environments, and the influence of both of these traditions on such important twentieth-century black radical thinkers as W. E. B. Du Bois, C. L. R. James, and Richard Wright.

They Came Before Columbus reveals a compelling, dramatic, and superbly detailed documentation of the presence and legacy of Africans in ancient America. Examining navigation and shipbuilding; cultural analogies between Native Americans and Africans; the transportation of plants, animals, and textiles between the continents; and the diaries, journals, and oral accounts of the explorers themselves, Ivan Van Sertima builds a pyramid of evidence to support his claim of an African presence in the New World centuries before Columbus. Combining impressive scholarship with a novelist’s gift for storytelling, Van Sertima re-creates some of the most powerful scenes of human history: the launching of the great ships of Mali in 1310 (two hundred master boats and two hundred supply boats), the sea expedition of the Mandingo king in 1311, and many others. In They Came Before Columbus, we see clearly the unmistakable face and handprint of black Africans in pre-Columbian America, and their overwhelming impact on the civilizations they encountered.

Slavery helped finance the Industrial Revolution in England. Plantation owners, shipbuilders, and merchants connected with the slave trade accumulated vast fortunes that established banks and heavy industry in Europe and expanded the reach of capitalism worldwide.Eric Williams advanced these powerful ideas in Capitalism and Slavery, published in 1944. Years ahead of its time, his profound critique became the foundation for studies of imperialism and economic development.Binding an economic view of history with strong moral argument, Williams's study of the role of slavery in financing the Industrial Revolution refuted traditional ideas of economic and moral progress and firmly established the centrality of the African slave trade in European economic development. He also showed that mature industrial capitalism in turn helped destroy the slave system. Establishing the exploitation of commercial capitalism and its link to racial attitudes, Williams employed a historicist vision that set the tone for future studies.In a new introduction, Colin Palmer assesses the lasting impact of Williams's groundbreaking work and analyzes the heated scholarly debates it generated when it first appeared.

\ The searing, visionary memoir of founding Black Panther Huey P. Newton, in a dazzling graphic package\ Eloquently tracing the birth of a revolutionary, Huey P. Newton's famous and oft-quoted autobiography is as much a manifesto as a portrait of the inner circle of America's Black Panther Party. From Newton's impoverished childhood on the streets of Oakland to his adolescence and struggles with the system, from his role in the Black Panthers to his solitary confinement in the Alameda County Jail, Revolutionary Suicide is smart, unrepentant, and thought-provoking in its portrayal of inspired radicalism.

The title of this book suggests something dated, describing both a situation and a mindset that has either ceased to exist or become discredited with time. As such, I hesitated to pick it up initially. But now having read it, I have to say its one of the profound books I've read in recent memory. In timeless detail Memmi describes not just the psychologies of the oppressed and the oppressor, but also the predicament of the "leftist" in the oppressing group who at once is attracted to and recoils from the way in which the oppressed tries to liberate themselves, as well as from their end goals, in which they would "likely find no place." Memmi is not just a pontificating observer. He was a Tunisian living as a native under the colonial regime, but straddling both worlds as a relatively more privileged Jewish member of the colonized class; thus able to interact with and experience both perspectives. He describes the self-destructive and somewhat self-loathing tyranny of the colonizer, who ossifies the society he colonizes, the inherent fascism, and the way in which the mediocre at home can become the grandiose in the colony, and how jealously they defend that privilege. As well, Memmi catalogues as the psychological effects of colonization; destroying the institutions and thus the memory of the colonized, cutting them off from their language and debasing it, preventing its growth and the practice of its higher forms and finally the eventual belief action upon the worst myths about themselves.The best part I thought was about the leftist who hates colonialism, but also ends up hating and fearing the means and goals of those he seeks to defend from its ravages. This is still an absolutely timely and relevant predicament, right up to the War on Terror. The comparison is not as apocalyptically stark because these people don't have to live in the same societies, only to agree not to harm one another (and, in the common perception, not feed an imperial complex that benefits from such conflict), but many of the same dynamics apply. There really is a clash, and a dissonance; even applicable in movements such as the Black radical struggle in the United States, many of whose white supporters, both half-hearted and zealous, would lose something, even perhaps much, through the victory of. It is best to acknowledge this predicament and offer an appreciation of it, than to simply ignore it and leave one open to accusations of ignorance or foolhardiness.Throughout the book I was able to picture the circumstances he described in multiple settings, from Black Lives Matter to the War on Terror, and they almost always seemed both moving, urgent and relevant. Memmi later recoiled from many of his views about the decolonized, in light of the ugliness that much of decolonization brought to the fore, but ironically the seeds of that ugliness seem explicitly predicted and accounted for in this book. If anything, that historical experience should count against the irrational optimism about human nature that progressives tend to uncritically project onto the world. I recommend this book unreservedly, I couldn't put it down, and will certainly refer back to it in future.

"Before the Mayflower" traces black history from its origins in western Africa, through the transatlantic journey that ended in slavery, the Reconstruction period, the Jim Crow era, and the civil rights upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s, culminating in an exploration of the complex realities of African-American life in the 1990s. Here is the most recent scholarship on the geographic, social, ethnic, economic, and cultural journey of "the other Americans, " together with vital portraits of black pioneers and seminal figures in the struggle for freedom, as well as additional material on historical developments in the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton years.