What are you reading for Black History Month?

[graymouser]

So, February is Black History Month. I always try and read at least one or two of the books on Black liberation from my shelves in celebration. I'm starting with Herbert Aptheker's American Negro Slave Revolts, a study from the 1940s that really was the first to tie together the various slave uprisings of the early 1800s into a cohesive narrative of resistance and agency among the enslaved people of the pre-Civil War United States.

Afterward, I'll probably switch to something more recent, though I'm not sure exactly what it would be.

What are folks here reading? I'm curious for thoughts and suggestions. Also - if you haven't read it, you owe it to yourself to read The Autobiography of Malcolm X.

[brigadista]

CLR James the BLack Jacobins again - a really good read

and Im going to read Angela Davis Abolition Democracy - her autobiography is a great read

but i am reading them not just for black history month but because they are informative and interesting generally and I dont think we should ghettoise our reading!!

Black writers, activists and academics have something to say and that EVERYONE can learn from!!

[graymouser]

CLR James the BLack Jacobins again - a really good read
Great one, a classic well worth revisiting. If I had to list my top 10 books, I think it'd be on that list.

[brigadista]

Great one, a classic well worth revisiting. If I had to list my top 10 books, I think it'd be on that list.

try angela davis women race and class on my top ten..

[Angry Young Man]

I thought October was Black History Month?

[Red Commissar]

I thought October was Black History Month?

In the UK yes, but in the US and Canada it's in February.

It wasn't so much meant for Black History month, but my reading of it is running into it anyways- WEB Du Bois "The Souls of Black Folk". Not really radical but hey I guess it counts. I think I'll read Malcolm X's autobiography too.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

I've had a book with "Every Cook Can Govern", and some other C.L.R. James essay, kicking around for a few months now . . . this is totally the push I need to finally sit down and read it.

Anyone have any pertinent thoughts on his work? I'm pretty unfamiliar.

[graymouser]

I've had a book with "Every Cook Can Govern", and some other C.L.R. James essay, kicking around for a few months now . . . this is totally the push I need to finally sit down and read it.

Anyone have any pertinent thoughts on his work? I'm pretty unfamiliar.
Yeah, you owe yourself a read of his seminal The Black Jacobins, a Marxist history of the Haitian revolution. James's later work became increasingly impressionistic and Afrocentric, and IMO lacked the tremendous clarity of his '30s work. I haven't read his history of the Comintern, World Revolution, yet but it's well regarded.

[RED DAVE]

Actually, I'm working with an artist for an adaptation of Robin Kelley's book on Thelonious Monk.

Also, bizarrely, I found a reprint of a 1933 book, Race and Revolution, by, of all people, Max Shactman.

RED DAVE

[graymouser]

Actually, I'm working with an artist for an adaptation of Robin Kelley's book on Thelonious Monk.
I haven't read Kelley's book on Monk but I was very much impacted by his excellent Hammer and Hoe, a history of the tremendous and frequently heroic work that the '30s CPUSA did in the deep South, particularly in Alabama. Despite my own deep issues with the CP at that point, I think its work was exemplary and served as one of the high points of the American left intervening in a question of oppression. It was tremendous what the Black CP members and the few white organizers who went to help them (all at the risk of their lives) did, and it's a fucking shame that their party abandoned their struggle during World War II, siding with the strikebreaking federal government and refusing to speak out against segregation in the military. It's a history that demands to be read and understood.

Could you tell a little about Kelley's book on Monk? I know the man's music but nothing about his politics.


Also, bizarrely, I found a reprint of a 1933 book, Race and Revolution, by, of all people, Max Shactman.
I found that to be a great disappointment. It was basically a lengthy report Shachtman wrote because Trotsky wanted the Workers Party to focus on the question of Black oppression, but it wasn't until the 1938 and 1939 discussions in Mexico that they showed signs of really beginning to understand the questions, and I don't think it was really until the Breitman-Fraser debate from 1955 to 1963 that the Trotskyist positions were fleshed out and clarified. This actually cost the SWP a major opportunity in the late 1940s: after WWII, they actually recruited a lot of Black cadre in Newark and Detroit specifically, but had no effective line for them aside from a suggestion that they work with the NAACP. Between the lack of clarity on the question and the problems of McCarthyism the SWP lost most of these cadres.

But Shachtman's work, basically a summary of the naïve pre-1938 ideas that the WP had, isn't really all that useful today. It is a missed opportunity, as well, since the book is basically reprinting a long pamphlet and the introduction is nearly as long as Shachtman's text; some later companion piece would have made it at least somewhat relevant. As it stands it's mostly a historical curiosity, which sits on my shelf so at least Shachtman is represented there.

[RED DAVE]

But Shachtman's work, basically a summary of the naïve pre-1938 ideas that the WP had, isn't really all that useful today. It is a missed opportunity, as well, since the book is basically reprinting a long pamphlet and the introduction is nearly as long as Shachtman's text; some later companion piece would have made it at least somewhat relevant. As it stands it's mostly a historical curiosity, which sits on my shelf so at least Shachtman is represented there.I haven't finished it yet. One point though: the work apparently was never circulated out of manuscript. It's best read in conjunction with the later works of James and Trotsky on the subject.

It's interesting and important that the Shactmanites actually played an important role in the early civil rights movement. Bayard Rustin, for example, can be considered a Shactmanite. But their movement towards the Democratic Party made them less and less effective as the 60s went on, except as shills for the Democrats and the labor bureaucracy.

RED DAVE

[Sixiang]

I'm reading Jazz, by Toni Morrison for my English class right now. It's about a young black couple who move to Harlem from the south during the Harlem Renaissance.

I have read the Autobiography of Malcolm X before. It's a fantastic read. I might try to read some W.E.B. Dubois or some Cornel West this month, too. I also saw a copy of Black Like Me last time I was at the bookstore and it made me kind of curious (I didn't buy it then, though). And I'll try to read some of Langston Hughes' poetry while I'm at it.