After weeks of large, multiracial street demonstrations against police violence and systemic racism against Black Americans  we offer more recommended readings on racism.  To meet its full potential the splendid new movement against racism in which young people with little previous political experience have come to the fore has to quickly master the historical lessons learned by the US Marxist Left on the need for Black-white unity.

Many excellent books exist on the role of Communists in the struggles against racism and for Black-white unity. Communists have often played a leading role in them, though that role is seldom properly acknowledged.

We thank  our readers for their suggestions.  Please send any further suggestions to:  <editor@mltoday.com>    The Editors

 

Suggestions for Readings on Racism

Paul Robeson, Here I Stand.   Beacon Press, 1998. This 1958 book by Robeson is part manifesto, part autobiography.

Henry Winston,  Class, Race, and Black Liberation.  International Publishers, 1977.

Gerald Horne,  Reversing Discrimination: The Case for Affirmative Action.  International Publishers, 1992.

W. E. B. Dubois, Black Reconstruction in America. Free Press 1992, perhaps his masterpiece. Also, his John Brown International Publishers, 1987.

Victor Perlo,  Economics of Racism USA. Vol. I (1975) and Economics of Racism: Roots of Inequality USA.  Vol. II (1996), International Publishers.

William Patterson, We Charge Genocide.  International Publishers, 1970.

Claude Lightfoot, Racism and Human Survival: Lessons of Nazi Germany for Today’s World. International Publishers ,1972.

James S. Allen, Reconstruction: The Battle for Democracy.  International Publishers, 1937.

Gus Hall Fighting Racism. International Publishers, 1985.

Claude Lightfoot, Chicago Slums to World Politics. International Publishers, 1985.

Gerald Horne, Jazz and Justice: Racism and the Political Economy of Music.  Monthly Review, 2019.

Esther Cooper Jackson and Constance Pohl,  Freedomways Reader: Prophets in Their Own Country. Westview Press, 2000. Freedomways, some of whose founders and strongest supporters were communists, was the leading civil rights journal in the US from 1961 to 1985.

Serafina Harris,  “Charles White and the Purpose of Education” https://forpositivepeace.org/2020/04/01/charles-white-and-the-purpose-of-education/

Mary Helen Washington, The Other Blacklist: the African American Literary & Cultural Left of the 1950s. Columbia University Press, 2015.

James S. Allen,  Organizing in the Depression South, A Communist’s Memoir.  Nature, Society, and Thought, 2000.

Mary Stanton, Red, Black, White: the Alabama Communist Party 1930-1950. University of Georgia Press, 2019.

Lloyd L. Brown, Iron City. Masses and Mainstream, 1951. Iron City is a prison novel by the African-American writer Lloyd L. Brown based on an actual court case and inspired by the author’s experiences as a labor organizer and political prisoner in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from 1936 to 1941.