Williams was a compassionate man. He was an intelligent American citizen and Korean war veteran, who claimed his right of American citizenship. Acutely aware of the broken promises of the US government, he remained fully invested in the rights, privileges, and responsibilities the Constitution guaranteed all of its citizens. As many of his contemporaries now confess, Williams’s strength and appeal, as explained by his second son, John Williams, was his uncompromising stance and determination to act on the American dream he imagined for social, economic, and political equality for African Americans. The skills he acquired as a journalist and propaganda specialist were key to his political development, evolution, and transnational collaborations with Cuba and China, which he used to challenge domestic policies in the United States, were way beyond the imagination of his supporters in the United States. Williams ultimately used these strengths, strategies, and collaborations to deliver liberting messages of freedom, resistance, and social and economic equality on behalf of the rights of African Americans. Williams significantly contributed to the Black freedom struggle and should not be forgotten. Robert Franklin Williams Speaks: A Documentary History includes a collection of interviews, speeches, and writings by and about Williams as an internationalist, pragmatist, and civil and human rights champion.

The Routledge History of World Peace since 1750 examines the varied and multifaceted scholarship surrounding the topic of peace and engages in a fruitful dialogue about the global history of peace since 1750. Interdisciplinary in nature, the book includes contributions from authors working in fields as diverse as history, philosophy, literature, art, sociology, and Peace Studies. The book crosses the divide between historical inquiry and Peace Studies scholarship, with traditional aspects of peace promotion sitting alongside expansive analyses of peace through other lenses, including specific regional investigations of the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and other parts of the world. Divided thematically into six parts that are loosely chronological in structure, the book offers a broad overview of peace issues such as peacebuilding, state building, and/or conflict resolution in individual countries or regions, and indicates the unique challenges of achieving peace from a range of perspectives. Global in scope and supported by regional and temporal case studies, the volume is an essential resource for educators, activists, and policymakers involved in promoting peace and curbing violence as well as students and scholars of Peace Studies, history, and their related fields.

Did American racism originate in the liberal North? An inquiry into the system of institutionalized racism created by Northern Jim Crow Jim Crow was not a regional sickness, it was a national cancer. Even at the high point of twentieth century liberalism in the North, Jim Crow racism hid in plain sight. Perpetuated by colorblind arguments about “cultures of poverty,” policies focused more on black criminality than black equality. Procedures that diverted resources in education, housing, and jobs away from poor black people turned ghettos and prisons into social pandemics. Americans in the North made this history. They tried to unmake it, too. Liberalism, rather than lighting the way to vanquish the darkness of the Jim Crow North gave racism new and complex places to hide. The twelve original essays in this anthology unveil Jim Crow’s many strange careers in the North. They accomplish two goals: first, they show how the Jim Crow North worked as a system to maintain social, economic, and political inequality in the nation’s most liberal places; and second, they chronicle how activists worked to undo the legal, economic, and social inequities born of Northern Jim Crow policies, practices, and ideas. The book ultimately dispels the myth that the South was the birthplace of American racism, and presents a compelling argument that American racism actually originated in the North.

Drawing on diverse theories and methods, this collective volume emphasizes the multi-ethnic and transnational aspects of southern literature over a four hundred-year period.

One of the most important African American leaders of the twentieth century and perhaps the most influential woman in the civil rights movement, Ella Baker (1903–1986) was an activist whose remarkable career spanned fifty years and touched thousands of lives. A gifted grassroots organizer, Baker shunned the spotlight in favor of vital behind-the-scenes work that helped power the Black freedom struggle. Making her way in predominantly male circles while maintaining relationships with a vibrant group of women, students, and activists, Baker was a national officer and key figure in the NAACP, a founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and a prime mover in the creation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. In this definitive biography, Barbara Ransby chronicles Baker's long and rich career, revealing her complexity, radical democratic worldview, and enduring influence on group-centered, grassroots activism. Beyond documenting an extraordinary life, Ransby paints a vivid picture of the African American fight for justice and its intersections with other progressive struggles worldwide throughout the twentieth century.

This new collection of essays, contributed by scholars and former Panthers, is a ground-breaking work that offers thought-provoking and pertinent observations about the many facets of the Party. By placing the perspectives of participants and scholars side by side, Dr. Jones presents an insider view and initiates a vital dialogue that is absent from most historical studies.

"Time Longer than Rope unearths the ordinary roots of extraordinary change, demonstrating the depth and breadth of black oppositional spirit and activity that preceded the civil rights movement. The diversity of activism covered by this collection extends from tenant farmers' labor reform campaign in the 1919 Elaine, Arkansas massacre to Harry T. Moore's leadership of a movement that registered 100,000 black Floridians years before Montgomery, and from women's participation in the Garvey movement to the changing meaning of the Lincoln Memorial. Concentrating on activist efforts in the South, key themes emerge, including the underappreciated importance of historical memory and community building, the divisive impact of class and sexism, and the shifting interplay between individual initiative and structural constraints."--Publisher description.