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.

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. Includes extensive use of original materials, including Du Bois' correspondence and writings Offers a chronology of key personal and historic events during Du Bois' life (1868-1963)

View the Table of Contents. Read the Introduction.

"This fascinating study uses the tools and sources of diplomatic history to examine a sweep of national and international history far beyond the confines of diplomacya].For Horne, the slave trade, rather than slavery, was an explosive political issue much later in the 19th century that is normally understood. Highly recommended."
--"Choice"

"A well-researched, skillfully-written, and carefully-argued diplomatic history examining connections between the United States, Brazil, Africa, and Europe as they relate to the transatlantic slave trade. Horne sheds considerable light upon the ideas, ruminations, and practices of U.S. nationals in their interactions with and encounters of Brazil over the question of slavery, especially from the mid-nineteenth century on, and makes a valuable and important contribution to our knowledge and understanding of (American) hemispheric relations and trajectories, both eventual and potential."
--Michael A. Gomez, editor of "Diasporic Africa: A Reader"

aAn important study that starts with the proposition that what happens abroad affects developments in the United States. For the first time we are made aware of the extensive contacts between pro-slavery forces in the United States in the years after the abolition of the slave trade and the promoters of slavery in and the slave trade to Brazil and elsewhere.a
--Richard J. M. Blackett author of "Divided Hearts: Britain and the American Civil War"

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.

View the Table of Contents.
Read the Preface.

"With his characteristic verve, Professor Gerald Horne has written an excellent book about the fascinating and mysterious Lawrence Dennis. This pairing of the leftist black intellectual Horne and the racially-closeted fascist Dennis makes for an exciting exploration of obscure terrain that warrants more notice. Professor Horne has performed an important service by revealing so vividly Dennis's strange but instructive career."
--Randall Kennedy, Harvard Law School

aShedding light on both passing and the formation of a proposed afascism with a human face, a this book will prove useful for scholars of race and class in the US as well as scholars of fascist doctrine and theory.a--"Choice"

"I am almost certainly not alone in expressing surprise that Lawrence Dennis, the principal American intellectual fascist, was an African American who 'passed' for white. In the process of explaining Dennis's rise and how his secret minority status shaped his political extremism, Gerald Horne has researched and written a compelling and significant history of American fascism."
--Kenneth Janken, author of "White: The Biography of Walter White, Mr. NAACP"

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 orderto 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.

Carrying W.E.B. Du Bois from his birth in Massachusetts in 1868 to his death in Ghana in 1963, this concise encyclopedia covers all of the highlights of his life--his studying at Fisk, Harvard, and Berlin, his tiff with Booker T. Washington, his role with the NAACP and Pan-Africanism, his writings, his globe trotting, and his exile in Ghana. With contributions by leading scholars and a foreword by David Levering Lewis, the book provides a complete overview of Du Bois's life. Featuring the highlights of his life, the events and personalities that influenced him, his intellectual contributions, and his activism, this book provides a complete understanding of this highly influential intellectual activist.

With the conclusion of the Cold War, there is the opportunity to obtain a fuller, more complete understanding of Du Bois' entire life. Providing full coverage of his latter crucial years--often ignored in earlier works--this book provides the latest scholarly insights, including a major entry by prizewinning scholar Brenda Gayle Plummer.

View the Table of Contents.
Read the Introduction.

""Red Seas" is biographical history at its best. It provides a glimpse into the life of one of the most powerful Black labor leaders in U.S. history, describes the trials and tribulations, the successes and failures, of building an independent, Communist-led union, and gives the reader a general feeling for the times. Horne has done all trade-unionist and working-class people a service with "Red Seas," It is highly recommended."
--"Political Affairs"

"The political connections of Harlem and the British West Indies have been crucial for at least a century, but until recent times almost invisible except to those intimately involveda]. We are now, at long last, beginning to get a better grasp, and Gerald Horneas "Red Seas" is a huge contribution to our understanding."
--Paul Buhle, "Monthly Review"

"Horne's latest work is a forceful tract that all scholars writing about radical maritime politics, unionism, and race must take into account. Horne thus sets the standard for future scholars in this area."
--"Working USA"

"In our own age of global commerce and U.S. hyperpower, what could be more instructive than the story of Ferdinand Smith, the Caribbean Communist who led a genuinely international, multicultural union in the years that birthed the American century? Gerald Horne's remarkable biography should be required reading for those who want to glimpse the potential power of that seafaring proletariat, in the last century as well as ours."
--Nelson Lichtenstein, author of "State of the Union: A Century of American Labor"

aA major achievement. It not only illuminates the maritime sources of 20th centuryworking class black radicalism, but reveals its ongoing and complicated interplay with racism and class struggle on a global scale.a
--Joe W. Trotter, Jr., Carnegie Mellon University

"A brilliant political biography--we are in Gerald Horne's debt for bringing to life a towering figure of the 20th century. A radical labor leader in the US and Jamaica who felt the sting of anticommunism on both shores, Ferdinand Smith also laid the groundwork for the modern civil rights movement."
--Martha Biondi, author of "To Stand and Fight: the Struggle for Civil Rights in Postwar New York City"

"Exhaustively researched, this is a pioneering, insightful, sympathetic, and brilliant portrait of the life of Ferdinand Smith. A wonderful book."
--Colin Palmer, Dodge Professor of History, Princeton University

aRed Seas offers a rich account of the Communist Partyas centrality in twentieth- century anti-racist struggles, the critical role workers of colour and anti-racism played in the rise and decline of organized labor, and the tragedy of paths not taken, particularly toward the international labour alliances and organizing that might have forestalled the current international arace to the bottom.a
--"International Journal of Maritime History"

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. Smithas active membership in the Communist Party, however, coupled with his bold labor radicalism and shaky immigration status, brought him undercontinual surveillance by U.S. authorities, especially during the Red Scare in the 1950s. Smith was eventually deported to his homeland of Jamaica, where he continued his radical labor and political organizing until his death in 1961.

Gerald Horne draws on Smithas life to make insightful connections between labor radicalism and the Civil Rights Movement--demonstrating that the gains of the latter were propelled by the former and undermined by anticommunism. Moreover, Red Seas uncovers the little-known experiences of black sailors and their contribution to the struggle for labor and civil rights, the history of the Communist Party and its black members, and the significant dimensions of Jamaican labor and political radicalism.

Winner of a 2005 Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award (Honorable Mention)

"Gerald Horne is one of America's most outstanding and prolific historians. In his latest work, Horne illustrates the extensive involvement of black Americans in Mexico's revolutionary past. "Black and Brown" provides a powerful and provocative interpretation of the complex connections linking African Americans with Latin American history. Superbly researched and well-crafted, "Black and Brown" sets a high standard in the writing of modern social history."
--Manning Marable, Professor of Public Affairs, History and African-American Studies and Director, Center for Contemporary Black History at Columbia University

"This is history plus . . . The road traveled by this expert driver is not an easy straight away but a series of ascending curves, reaching a new mountaintop of understanding."
--Juan Gomez Quinones, UCLA

"A masterful, elegant work of history...As the African Diaspora grows in importance, and as the surging Latino presence arrests the attention of the nation--Horne puts the relationship between blacks and Mexicans on center stage...A 'must read' for all interested in the bold new course of American race-relations."
--Ben Vinson III, Penn State University, author of "Flight: The Story of Virgil Richardson, A Tuskegee Airman in Mexico" and "Bearing Arms for His Majesty: The Free-Colored Militia in Colonial Mexico"

"Thought-provoking" --WTBF, Troy, Alabama

""Black and Brown" is a book that shows the sides of Jack Johnson and Henry O. Flipper only a serious, politically astute and socially conscious writer and ovserver like Gerald Horne has the insight to delve into and prompt areader to truly say 'I didn't know that' about these otherwise popular personalities of their day."
--"Caribbean Life"

""Black and Brown" benefits from the author's extensive research on both sides of the border, and it suceeds in shedding light on a forgotten corner of American history."
--"Military History"

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 blacks' role as "Indian fighters," the relationship between African Americans and immigrants, and the U.S. government's growing fear of black disloyalty, among other essential concerns of the period: 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 alongthe Mexican border.

This work examines the experiences of African Americans under the law and how African American culture has fostered a rich tradition of legal criticism. Moving between novels, music, and visual culture, the essays present race as a significant factor within legal discourse. Essays examine rights and sovereignty, violence and the law, and cultural ownership through the lens of African American culture. The volume argues that law must understand the effects of particular decisions and doctrines on African American life and culture and explores the ways in which African American cultural production has been largely centered on a critique of law.

Commemorating the 150th anniversary of W. E. B. Du Bois's birth, the chapters in this book reflect on the local, national, and international significance of his remarkable life and legacy in relation to his specific commitments to socialism and democracy. Written with contemporary conditions in mind, such as the current political period of economic inequality, the debilitating reality of exploitative economic conditions, an expansive and invasive surveillance state, the grotesque injustice of the prison industrial complex, the ongoing crisis of police violence and the militarization of law enforcement, and a White House unashamedly spewing white supremacist, nationalist rhetoric in word and deed, this book collectively ponders how Du Bois's radicalism can shape and re-texture historical understanding and underscore a reflective urgency about the future. In this volume, scholars and activists undertake thoughtful and analytical explorations with regards to how Du Bois' commitments to socialism and democracy can inform current methodology and praxis. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal Socialism and Democracy.

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. They were stunned by the feudal conditions they found in Hawaii, where the majority of workers-Hawaiian, Japanese, Chinese, and Filipino in origin-were routinely subjected to repression and racism at the hands of white bosses. The wartime civil liberties crackdown brought union organizing to a halt; but as the war wound down, Hawaii workers' frustrations boiled over, leading to an explosive success in the forming of unions. During the 1950s, just as the ILWU began a series of successful strikes and organizing drives, the union came under McCarthyite attacks and persecution. In the midst of these allegations, Hawaii's bid for statehood was being challenged by powerful voices in Washington who claimed that admitting Hawaii to the union would be tantamount to giving the Kremlin two votes in the U.S. Senate, while Jim Crow advocates worried that Hawaii's representatives would be enthusiastic supporters of pro-civil rights legislation. Hawaii's extensive social welfare system and the continuing power of unions to shape the state politically are a direct result of those troubled times. Based on exhaustive archival research in Hawaii, California, Washington, and elsewhere, Gerald Horne's gripping story of Hawaii workers' struggle to unionize reads like a suspense novel as it details for the first time how radicalism and racism helped shape Hawaii in the twentieth century.

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 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 what became the United States of America.

This book provides a new interpretation of the life of W.E.B. Du Bois, one of the most important African American scholars and thinkers of the 20th century. This revealing biography captures the full life of W.E.B. Du Bois-historian, sociologist, author, editor, and a leader in the fight to bring African Americans more fully into the American landscape as well as a forceful proponent of their leaving America altogether and returning to Africa. Drawing on extensive research and including new primary documents, sidebars, and analysis, Gerald Horne and Charisse Burden-Stelly offer a portrait of this remarkable man, paying special attention to the often-overlooked radical decades at the end of Du Bois's life. The book also highlights Du Bois's relationships with and influence on civil rights activists, intellectuals, and freedom fighters, among them Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey, Shirley Graham Du Bois, Louise Thompson Patterson, William Alphaeus Hunton, and Martin Luther King, Jr. The biography includes a selection of primary source documents, including personal letters, speeches, poems, and newspaper articles, that provide insight into Du Bois's life based on his own words and analysis. Provides a comprehensive overview of the life and times of W.E.B. Du Bois Takes an interdisciplinary approach to his life and works Traces his radicalization over time Pays particular attention to the effects of the Cold War and anticommunism on his philosophy Provides key primary documents with explanations of their significance

Clinton rode into office on the promise of "change." It was a safe, content- free slogan. After all, in recent years, the most radical proposals for change have come not from the Democrats but from the Republican right. "Change" could mean the further downsizing of government and neglect of social problems, or, of course, the reversal of these trends. When they went to the polls in 1992, however, most Americans had a good idea of what kind of change they wanted.

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."

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.

While it is well known that more Africans fought on behalf of the British than with the successful patriots of the American Revolution, Gerald Horne reveals in his latest work of historical recovery that after 1776, Africans and African-Americans continued to collaborate with Great Britain against the United States in battles big and small until the Civil War. Many African Americans viewed Britain, an early advocate of abolitionism and emancipator of its own slaves, as a powerful ally in their resistance to slavery in the Americas. This allegiance was far-reaching, from the Caribbean to outposts in North America to Canada. In turn, the British welcomed and actively recruited both fugitive and free African Americans, arming them and employing them in military engagements throughout the Atlantic World, as the British sought to maintain a foothold in the Americas following the Revolution. In this path-breaking book, Horne rewrites the history of slave resistance by placing it for the first time in the context of military and diplomatic wrangling between Britain and the United States. Painstakingly researched and full of revelations, Negro Comrades of the Crown is among the first book-length studies to highlight the Atlantic origins of the Civil War, and the active role played by African Americans within these external factors that led to it. Listen to a one hour special with Dr. Gerald Horne on the "Sojourner Truth" radio show.

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.

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.

Winner of a 2005 Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award (Honorable Mention)

"Gerald Horne is one of America's most outstanding and prolific historians. In his latest work, Horne illustrates the extensive involvement of black Americans in Mexico's revolutionary past. "Black and Brown" provides a powerful and provocative interpretation of the complex connections linking African Americans with Latin American history. Superbly researched and well-crafted, "Black and Brown" sets a high standard in the writing of modern social history."
--Manning Marable, Professor of Public Affairs, History and African-American Studies and Director, Center for Contemporary Black History at Columbia University

"This is history plus . . . The road traveled by this expert driver is not an easy straight away but a series of ascending curves, reaching a new mountaintop of understanding."
--Juan Gomez Quinones, UCLA

"A masterful, elegant work of history...As the African Diaspora grows in importance, and as the surging Latino presence arrests the attention of the nation--Horne puts the relationship between blacks and Mexicans on center stage...A 'must read' for all interested in the bold new course of American race-relations."
--Ben Vinson III, Penn State University, author of "Flight: The Story of Virgil Richardson, A Tuskegee Airman in Mexico" and "Bearing Arms for His Majesty: The Free-Colored Militia in Colonial Mexico"

"Thought-provoking" --WTBF, Troy, Alabama

""Black and Brown" is a book that shows the sides of Jack Johnson and Henry O. Flipper only a serious, politically astute and socially conscious writer and ovserver like Gerald Horne has the insight to delve into and prompt areader to truly say 'I didn't know that' about these otherwise popular personalities of their day."
--"Caribbean Life"

""Black and Brown" benefits from the author's extensive research on both sides of the border, and it suceeds in shedding light on a forgotten corner of American history."
--"Military History"

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 blacks' role as "Indian fighters," the relationship between African Americans and immigrants, and the U.S. government's growing fear of black disloyalty, among other essential concerns of the period: 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 alongthe Mexican border.

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. Smith's active membership in the Communist Party, however, coupled with his bold labor radicalism and shaky immigration status, brought him under continual surveillance by U.S. authorities, especially during the Red Scare in the 1950s. Smith was eventually deported to his homeland of Jamaica, where he continued his radical labor and political organizing until his death in 1961.

Gerald Horne draws on Smith's life to make insightful connections between labor radicalism and the Civil Rights Movement--demonstrating that the gains of the latter were propelled by the former and undermined by anticommunism. Moreover, Red Seas uncovers the little-known experiences of black sailors and their contribution to the struggle for labor and civil rights, the history of the Communist Party and its black members, and the significant dimensions of Jamaican labor and political radicalism.

View the Table of Contents.
Read the Introduction.

"Besides writing an important history, Horne adds to our understanding of the evolution of white supremacy."
--"Political Affairs"

"This is a challenging story, known to specialists but worth retelling from a fresh perspecctive."
--" Library Journal"

"New studies of World War II and the Pacific War should be conducted with an aim to learn from the forgotten people- the 'colored' people- in Asia and the Pacific. Horne's book provides a valuable suggestion towards that lesson."
--"Diplomatic History"

"The strength of this book is that it leaves no claim unsubstantiated, and that it does not paint a picture in black and white. Horne does note vade the many contradictions that race inserted into the complexities of the war, but tackles them with analytic clarity."
--"Asia Views"

aHorneas analysis of the race problem and its role in World War II is both brilliant and convincing.a --Virginia Review of Asian Studies

aThis ambitious, transnational study makes a valuable and proactive contribution to the growing literature devoted to the racial aspects of the Pacific War.a
--Pacific Historical Review

aThis book is full of interesting information like this about deep and wide repercussions of Japanas racial stance...a
--Journal of Imperial Commonwealth History.

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 toreveal how European racism and colonialism were deftly exploited by the Japanese to create allies among formerly colonized people of color. Through interviews and original archival research on five continents, Gerald Horne shows how race played a key--and hitherto ignored--role in each phase of the war.

During the conflict, the Japanese turned white racism on its head portraying the war as a defense against white domination in the Pacific. We learn about the "reverse racial hierarchy" practiced by the Japanese internment camps, in which whites were placed at the bottom of the totem pole, under the supervision of Chinese, Korean, and Indian guards--an embarrassing example of racial payback that was downplayed by the defeated Japanese and the humiliated Europeans and Euro-Americans.

Focusing on the microcosmic example of Hong Kong but ranging from colonial India to New Zealand and the shores of the U.S., Gerald Horne "radically retells" the story of the war. From racist U.S. propaganda to Black Nationalist open support of Imperial Japan, information about the effect of race on U.S. and British policy is revealed for the first time. This revisionist account of the war draws connections between General Tojo, Malaysian freedom fighters, and Elijah Muhammed of the Nation of Islam and shows how white racism encouraged and enabled Japanese imperialism. In sum, Horne demonstrates that the retreat of white supremacy was not only driven by the impact of the Cold War and the energized militancy of Africans and African-Americans but by the impact of the Pacific War as well, as a chastened U.S. and U.K. moved vigorously after this conflict to remove the conditions that made Japan's successpossible.