Illuminates how the preservation of slavery was a motivating factor for the Revolutionary War

The successful 1776 revolt against British rule in North America has been hailed almost universally as a great step forward for humanity. But the Africans then living in the colonies overwhelmingly sided with the British. In this trailblazing book, Gerald Horne shows that in the prelude to 1776, the abolition of slavery seemed all but inevitable in London, delighting Africans as much as it outraged slaveholders, and sparking the colonial revolt.

Prior to 1776, anti-slavery sentiments were deepening throughout Britain and in the Caribbean, rebellious Africans were in revolt. For European colonists in America, the major threat to their security was a foreign invasion combined with an insurrection of the enslaved. It was a real and threatening possibility that London would impose abolition throughout the colonies--a possibility the founding fathers feared would bring slave rebellions to their shores. To forestall it, they went to war.

The so-called Revolutionary War, Horne writes, was in part a counter-revolution, a conservative movement that the founding fathers fought in order to preserve their right to enslave others. The Counter-Revolution of 1776 brings us to a radical new understanding of the traditional heroic creation myth of the United States.

When Mexico moved to abolish slavery, Texas seceded in 1836-in a replay of 1776-- in order to perpetuate enslavement of Africans forevermore. Until 1845 Texas was an independent nation and moved to challenge the U.S. for leadership in the odious commerce of the African Slave Trade: Texas also competed vigorously with the U.S. in the dirty business of denuding Mexico by snatching California in the race to the Pacific and domination of the vaunted China market.

But Texas could not withstand pressure from abolitionist Mexico and revolutionary Haiti and joined the U.S. as a state-under questionable legal procedures-in 1845.

Thereafter Texas' enslaved population increased exponentially along with land grabs targeting Comanches, Caddo and Kiowa-and other Indigenous nations-leading to staggeringly violent bloodshed.

But Mexico continued to support Indigenes and the enslaved, irking Texas, which then led the secession from the U.S. in 1861 in order to perpetuate enslavement of Africans forevermore-though a number of leaders in Austin wanted to avoid the resultant Civil War by moving southward and snatching Cuba, Nicaragua and points southward.

But weakened by conflict with the U.S., Mexico was then seized by France which then plotted with Texas to continue enslavement of Africans after the defeat of the rebels in 1865-and after Juneteenth of the same year.

Black troops helped to foil this deviltry but, alas, during the Reconstruction era-1865-1876-these same soldiers were at the tip of the spear as Indigenes were being pounded in West Texas as Black people were being pounded by the Ku Klux Klan in East Texas.

Texans were also in the vanguard during the scandalous 6 January 2021 insurrection on Capitol Hill and promises to be in the forefront as a unique U.S. fascism seeks to rise.

One lesson from Texas is that Repression was so severe because Resistance was so daunting-a lesson to keep in mind as this century unfolds.

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 - battling both Jim Crow and Joseph McCarthy. Gerald Horne's biography uses Robeson's remarkable and revolutionary life to tell the story of the 20th century's great political struggles: against racism, against colonialism, and for international socialism. This critical and searching account 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.

Chronicles how American culture - deeply rooted in white supremacy, slavery and capitalism - finds its origin story in the 17th century European colonization of Africa and North America, exposing the structural origins of American looting

Virtually no part of the modern United States--the economy, education, constitutional law, religious institutions, sports, literature, economics, even protest movements--can be understood without first understanding the slavery and dispossession that laid its foundation. To that end, historian Gerald Horne digs deeply into Europe's colonization of Africa and the New World, when, from Columbus's arrival until the Civil War, some 13 million Africans and some 5 million Native Americans were forced to build and cultivate a society extolling liberty and justice for all. The seventeenth century was, according to Horne, an era when the roots of slavery, white supremacy, and capitalism became inextricably tangled into a complex history involving war and revolts in Europe, England's conquest of the Scots and Irish, the development of formidable new weaponry able to ensure Europe's colonial dominance, the rebel merchants of North America who created these United States, and the hordes of Europeans whose newfound opportunities in this free land amounted to combat pay for their efforts as white settlers.

Centering his book on the Eastern Seaboard of North America, the Caribbean, Africa, and what is now Great Britain, Horne provides a deeply researched, harrowing account of the apocalyptic loss and misery that likely has no parallel in human history. The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism is an essential book that will not allow history to be told by the victors. It is especially needed now, in the age of Trump. For it has never been more vital, Horne writes, to shed light on the contemporary moment wherein it appears that these malevolent forces have received a new lease on life.

There is a fundamental contradiction in U.S. Imperialism: the capital of this empire for

decades has had a majority Black population, which-in turn-has created favorable

conditions not only for the erosion of the pestilence that is racism but the flourishing of the

antidote that is radicalism.

In this sweeping history, Gerald Horne traces this phenomenon over a century, in a book

which should be understood and studied by all anti-imperialist and progressive forces. This

relatively small metropolis also has influenced profoundly its neighbors in Maryland and

Virginia, especially in the potent area of labor organizing.

The Haitian Revolution, the product of the first successful slave revolt, was truly world-historic in its impact. When Haiti declared independence in 1804, the leading powers--France, Great Britain, and Spain--suffered an ignominious defeat and the New World was remade. The island revolution also had a profound impact on Haiti's mainland neighbor, the United States. Inspiring the enslaved and partisans of emancipation while striking terror throughout the Southern slaveocracy, it propelled the fledgling nation one step closer to civil war. Gerald Horne's path breaking new work explores the complex and often fraught relationship between the United States and the island of Hispaniola. Giving particular attention to the responses of African Americans, Horne surveys the reaction in the United States to the revolutionary process in the nation that became Haiti, the splitting of the island in 1844, which led to the formation of the Dominican Republic, and the failed attempt by the United States to annex both in the 1870s.
Drawing upon a rich collection of archival and other primary source materials, Horne deftly weaves together a disparate array of voices--world leaders and diplomats, slaveholders, white abolitionists, and the freedom fighters he terms Black Jacobins. Horne at once illuminates the tangled conflicts of the colonial powers, the commercial interests and imperial ambitions of U.S. elites, and the brutality and tenacity of the American slaveholding class, while never losing sight of the freedom struggles of Africans both on the island and on the mainland, which sought the fulfillment of the emancipatory promise of 18th century republicanism.

In August 1965 the predominantly black neighborhood of Watts in Los Angeles erupted in flames and violence following an incident of police brutality. The official death toll was thirty-four; property losses reached hundreds of millions of dollars; but the political results were even more profound. The civil rights movement was placed on the defensive as the image of rioting blacks in the West replaced the image of meek and angelic protestors in the South. A white backlash ensued that led directly to Ronald Reagan's election as governor of California in 1966.This is the first comprehensive treatment of the uprising, its causes, and its aftermath, and is based on hundreds of oral histories and unprecedented archival research. With a cast that includes Ronald Reagan, Tom Bradley, Martin Luther King, Jr., Edmund G. Brown, the NAACP, the Black Panthers, the Nation of Islam, and thousands of blacks and whites, Fire This Time is a compelling account of an event that changed the face of racial justice in America.

A galvanizing history of how jazz and jazz musicians flourished despite rampant cultural exploitation

The music we call jazz arose in late nineteenth century North America--most likely in New Orleans--based on the musical traditions of Africans, newly freed from slavery. Grounded in the music known as the blues, which expressed the pain, sufferings, and hopes of Black folk then pulverized by Jim Crow, this new music entered the world via the instruments that had been abandoned by departing military bands after the Civil War. Jazz and Justice examines the economic, social, and political forces that shaped this music into a phenomenal US--and Black American--contribution to global arts and culture.

Horne assembles a galvanic story depicting what may have been the era's most virulent economic--and racist--exploitation, as jazz musicians battled organized crime, the Ku Klux Klan, and other variously malignant forces dominating the nightclub scene where jazz became known. Horne pays particular attention to women artists, such as pianist Mary Lou Williams and trombonist Melba Liston, and limns the contributions of musicians with Native American roots. This is the story of a beautiful lotus, growing from the filth of the crassest form of human immiseration.

I Dare Say: A Gerald Horne Reader is a timely and essential collection of the many works of Professor Gerald Horne--a historian who has made an indelible impact on the study of US and international history.

Horne approaches his study of history as a deeply politically engaged scholar, with an insightful and necessarily partisan stance, critiquing the lasting reverberations of white supremacy and all its bedfellows--imperialism, colonialism, fascism and racism--which continue to wreak havoc in the United States and abroad to this day.

Drawing on a career that spans more than four decades, The Gerald Horne Reader will showcase the many highlights of Horne's writings, delving into discussions of the United States and its place on the global stage, the curation of mythology surrounding titans of 20th Century African American history like Malcolm X, and Horne's thoughts on pressing international crises of the 21st Century including the war in Afghanistan during the early 2000s, and the war in Ukraine which erupted in February 2022.

As we continue to observe the chaos of our current times, I Dare Say: A Gerald Horne Reader foregrounds a firmly rooted, consistent analysis of what has come to pass--and provides illuminating insight that better informs where we may be headed, and outlines what needs to be done to stem the tide of growing fascism across the Western world.

Acclaimed historian Gerald Horne troubles America's settler colonialism's creation myth

August 2019 saw numerous commemorations of the year 1619, when what was said to be the first arrival of enslaved Africans occurred in North America. Yet in the 1520s, the Spanish, from their imperial perch in Santo Domingo, had already brought enslaved Africans to what was to become South Carolina. The enslaved people here quickly defected to local Indigenous populations, and compelled their captors to flee. Deploying such illuminating research, The Dawning of the Apocalypse is a riveting revision of the creation myth of settler colonialism and how the United States was formed. Here, Gerald Horne argues forcefully that, in order to understand the arrival of colonists from the British Isles in the early seventeenth century, one must first understand the long sixteenth century- from 1492 until the arrival of settlers in Virginia in 1607.

During this prolonged century, Horne contends, whiteness morphed into white supremacy, and allowed England to co-opt not only religious minorities but also various nationalities throughout Europe, thus forging a muscular bloc that was needed to confront rambunctious Indigenes and Africans. In retelling the bloodthirsty story of the invasion of the Americas, Horne recounts how the fierce resistance by Africans and their Indigenous allies weakened Spain and enabled London to dispatch settlers to Virginia in 1607. These settlers laid the groundwork for the British Empire and its revolting spawn that became the United States of America.

Worldwide supplies of sugar and cotton were impacted dramatically as the U.S. Civil War dragged on. New areas of production entered these lucrative markets, particularly in the South Pacific, and plantation agriculture grew substantially in disparate areas such as Australia, Fiji, and Hawaii. The increase in production required an increase in labor; in the rush to fill the vacuum, freebooters and other unsavory characters began a slave trade in Melanesians and Polynesians that continued into the twentieth century.

The White Pacific ranges over the broad expanse of Oceania to reconstruct the history of blackbirding (slave trading) in the region. It examines the role of U.S. citizens (many of them ex-slaveholders and ex-confederates) in the trade and its roots in Civil War dislocations. What unfolds is a dramatic tale of unfree labor, conflicts between formal and informal empire, white supremacy, threats to sovereignty in Hawaii, the origins of a White Australian policy, and the rise of Japan as a Pacific power and putative protector. It also pieces together a wonderfully suggestive history of the African American presence in the Pacific.

Based on deft archival research in Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Hawaii, the United States, and Great Britain, The White Pacific uncovers a heretofore hidden story of race, labor, war, and intrigue that contributes significantly to the emerging intersectional histories of race and ethnicity.

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. However, at some point between leaving prep school and entering Harvard University, he chose to abandon his family and his former life as an African American in order to pass for white. Dennis went on to work for the State Department and on Wall Street, and ultimately became the public face of U.S. fascism, meeting with Mussolini and other fascist leaders in Europe. He underwent trial for sedition during World War II, almost landing in prison, and ultimately became a Cold War critic before dying in obscurity in 1977.
Based on extensive archival research, The Color of Fascism blends biography, social history, and critical race theory to illuminate the fascinating life of this complex and enigmatic man. Gerald Horne links passing and fascism, the two main poles of Dennis's life, suggesting that Dennis's anger with the U.S. as a result of his upbringing in Jim Crow Georgia led him to alliances with the antagonists of the U.S. and that his personal isolation which resulted in his decision to pass dovetailed with his ultimate isolationism.
Dennis's life is a lasting testament to the resilience of right-wing thought in the U.S. The first full-scale biographical portrait of this intriguing figure, The Color of Fascism also links the strange career of a prominent American who chose to pass.

For nearly fifty years, the Chicago-based Associated Negro Press (ANP) fought racism at home and grew into an international news organization abroad. At its head stood founder Claude Barnett, one of the most influential African Americans of his day and a gifted, if unofficial, diplomat who forged links with figures as diverse as Jawaharlal Nehru, Zora Neale Hurston, and Richard Nixon.

Gerald Horne weaves Barnett's fascinating life story through a groundbreaking history of the ANP, including its deep dedication to Pan-Africanism. An activist force in journalism, Barnett also helped send doctors and teachers to Africa, advised African governments, gave priority to foreign newsgathering, and saw the African American struggle in global terms. Yet Horne also confronts Barnett's contradictions. A member of the African American elite, Barnett's sympathies with black aspirations often clashed with his ethics and a powerful desire to join the upper echelons of business and government. In the end, Barnett's activist success undid his work. Horne traces the dramatic story of the ANP's collapse as the mainstream press, retreating from Jim Crow, finally covered black issues and hired African American journalists.

Revelatory and entertaining, The Rise and Fall of the Associated Negro Press tells the story of a forgotten pioneer and the ambitious black institution he created.

As World War II wound down in 1945 and the cold war heated up, the skilled trades that made up the Conference of Studio Unions (CSU) began a tumultuous strike at the major Hollywood studios. This turmoil escalated further when the studios retaliated by locking out CSU in 1946. This labor unrest unleashed a fury of Red-baiting that allowed studio moguls to crush the union and seize control of the production process, with far-reaching consequences.

This engrossing book probes the motives and actions of all the players to reveal the full story of the CSU strike and the resulting lockout of 1946. Gerald Horne draws extensively on primary materials and oral histories to document how limited a threat the Communist party actually posed in Hollywood, even as studio moguls successfully used the Red scare to undermine union clout, prevent film stars from supporting labor, and prove the moguls' own patriotism.

Horne also discloses that, unnoticed amid the turmoil, organized crime entrenched itself in management and labor, gaining considerable control over both the product and the profits of Hollywood. This research demonstrates that the CSU strike and lockout were a pivotal moment in Hollywood history, with consequences for everything from production values, to the kinds of stories told in films, to permanent shifts in the centers of power.

Honorable Mention for 2005 Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award

Brings to light the lives of Black Americans living along the Mexican border during and immediately after the Mexican Revolution

The Mexican Revolution was a defining moment in the history of race relations, impacting both Mexican and African Americans. For Black Westerners, 1910-1920 did not represent the clear-cut promise of populist power, but a reordering of the complex social hierarchy which had, since the nineteenth century, granted them greater freedom in the borderlands than in the rest of the United States.

Despite its lasting significance, the story of Black Americans along the Mexican border has been sorely underreported in the annals of U.S. history. Gerald Horne brings the tale to life in Black and Brown. Drawing on archives on both sides of the border, a host of cutting-edge studies and oral histories, Horne chronicles the political currents which created and then undermined the Mexican border as a relative safe haven for African Americans. His account addresses Black people's role as Indian fighters, the relationship between African Americans and immigrants, and the U.S. government's growing fear of Black disloyalty. He also considers how the heavy reliance of the U.S. on Black soldiers along the border placed white supremacy and national security on a collision course that was ultimately resolved in favor of the latter.

Mining a forgotten chapter in American history, Black and Brown offers tremendous insight into the past and future of race relations along the Mexican border.

The histories of Cuba and the United States are tightly intertwined
and have been for at least two centuries. In Race to Revolution,
historian Gerald Horne examines a critical relationship between
the two countries by tracing out the typically overlooked interconnections
among slavery, Jim Crow, and revolution. Slavery was
central to the economic and political trajectories of Cuba and the
United States, both in terms of each nation's internal political and
economic development and in the interactions between the small
Caribbean island and the Colossus of the North.

Horne draws a direct link between the black experiences in two
very different countries and follows that connection through
changing periods of resistance and revolutionary upheaval. Black
Cubans were crucial to Cuba's initial independence, and the relative
freedom they achieved helped bring down Jim Crow in the
United States, reinforcing radical politics within the black communities
of both nations. This in turn helped to create the conditions
that gave rise to the Cuban Revolution which, on New Years' Day
in 1959, shook the United States to its core.

Based on extensive research in Havana, Madrid, London, and
throughout the U.S., Race to Revolution delves deep into the
historical record, bringing to life the experiences of slaves and
slave traders, abolitionists and sailors, politicians and poor farmers.
It illuminates the complex web of interaction and infl uence
that shaped the lives of many generations as they struggled over
questions of race, property, and political power in both Cuba and
the United States.

This biography of W.E.B. Du Bois gives full measure to his entire life, including his controversial final decades.

This revealing biography captures the full life of W.E.B. Du Bois--historian, sociologist, author, editor--a leader in the fight to bring African Americans more fully into the American landscape as well as forceful proponent of them leaving America altogether and returning to Africa.

Drawing on extensive research, Gerald Horne, a leading authority on Du Bois and a versatile and prolific scholar in his own right, offers a fully rounded portrait of this accomplished and controversial figure, including the often overlooked final decades without which no portrait of Du Bois could be complete. The book also highlights Du Bois's relationships with and influence upon other leading civil rights activists both during, and subsequent to, his extraordinarily long life, including Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglas, Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and Jesse Jackson.

Based upon exhaustive research in court records, memoirs, the files of the New York State Athletic Commissions and related bodies from Nevada to New Jersey - not to mention the gangster venues from garish Las Vegas to venal South Philadelphia, this pioneering work tells the untold story of the grimy intersection of racism and racketeering in boxing. Revealing previously unrecorded stories of punchers from Jack Johnson to Joe Louis to Sugar Ray Robinson to Muhammad Ali, Horne also details a fascinating story of the waxing and waning of anti-Semitism. Toxic masculinity and other offshoots (including homophobia) are a major theme of this book and the author does not neglect women boxers--and wrestlers too---whose skills were honed in day-to-day battles with the pestilence that is male supremacy.

An intriguing chapter concerns--ironically--the mob's chief executive in boxing in the 1950s, when profits piled up because of television broadcasts: Truman Gibson, a Negro, became the fall guy, however, when a scapegoat was needed to take the blame for the fixed fights, the murderous attacks on those who refused to cooperate and the broken lives of what amounted to desperate workers eager to make a buck to support their starving families.

This book traces the story of Black dominance in the sport, from fighting enslavers in Africa, through the brutal battle royals of slavery when enslaved men were placed in a ring blindfolded and forced to fight until one man was left standing, while, at the same time, it exposes the gross exploitation of fighters and the gargantuan profits garnered by the likes of Don King, Bob Arum--and a former Atlantic City casino poseur named Donald J. Trump.

A galvanizing history of how jazz and jazz musicians flourished despite rampant cultural exploitation

The music we call jazz arose in late nineteenth century North America--most likely in New Orleans--based on the musical traditions of Africans, newly freed from slavery. Grounded in the music known as the blues, which expressed the pain, sufferings, and hopes of Black folk then pulverized by Jim Crow, this new music entered the world via the instruments that had been abandoned by departing military bands after the Civil War. Jazz and Justice examines the economic, social, and political forces that shaped this music into a phenomenal US--and Black American--contribution to global arts and culture.

Horne assembles a galvanic story depicting what may have been the era's most virulent economic--and racist--exploitation, as jazz musicians battled organized crime, the Ku Klux Klan, and other variously malignant forces dominating the nightclub scene where jazz became known. Horne pays particular attention to women artists, such as pianist Mary Lou Williams and trombonist Melba Liston, and limns the contributions of musicians with Native American roots. This is the story of a beautiful lotus, growing from the filth of the crassest form of human immiseration.

The recent Hollywood film Hidden Figures presents a portrait of how African-American women shaped the U.S. effort in aerospace during the height of Jim Crow. In Storming the Heavens, Gerald Horne presents the necessary back story to this story and goes further to detail the earlier struggle of African-Americans to gain the right to fly. This struggle involved pioneers like Bessie Coleman, who traveled to World War I era Paris in order to gain piloting skills that she was denied in her U.S. homeland; and John Robinson, from Chicago via Mississippi, who traveled to 1930s Ethiopia where he was the leading pilot for this beleaguered African nation as it withstood an invasion from fascist Italy, became the personal pilot of His Imperial Majesty, Haile Selassie and became a founder of Ethiopian Airways, which to this very day is Africa's most important carrier. Additionally, Horne adds nuance to the oft told tale of the Tuskegee Airmen but goes further to discuss the role of U.S. pilots during the Korean war in the early 1950s. He also tells the story of how and why U.S. airlines were fought when they began to fly into South Africa―and how planes from this land of apartheid were protested when they landed at U.S. airports. This riveting story climaxes with the launching of the Soviet satellite, Sputnik, in 1957 which marked a new stage in the battle for aerospace and helps to convince the U.S. that the centuries-long fixation on the race race was hampering the new challenge represented by the space race. This conflict was unfolding as the battle to desegregate public schools in Little Rock, Arkansas was spotlighting, globally, the bleeding wound that was Jim Crow and sheds light on how and why depriving African-Americans of skills and education was causing the nation to fall behind. Thus, in this embattled context, barriers are broken and African-Americans who once endured inferior conditions on planes and in airports and in airport manufacturing facilities alike, gained added impetus in their decades long struggle to win the right to fly.