Winston James

The Making of a Black Bolshevik, 1889-1923

Claude McKay

James Shaver Woodsworth

Analyzes the themes and politics of the early Jamaican works of poet Claude McKay, known for his works on the African Diaspora; explores his use of Jamaican creole; and collects early poems and a comic sketch about Jamaican peasant life.

Claude McKay's Jamaica and His Poetry of Rebellion

A Fierce Hatred of Injustice

Clive Harris

The varied experience of the Caribbean diaspora in Britain, with its difficult and fractured history, is reflected in this distinctive and lively collection. The contributors to Inside Babylon show how employers and police, psychiatrists and welfare services, help to channel black people into residential and occupational ghettoes. Clive Harris, Bob Carter and Shirley Joshi analyse the economic destiny of Afro-Caribbeans in Britain. Going beyond the familiar prisms of race relations and reductionist class analysis they illuminate the radicalizing dynamic of British capitalism in the postwar period. Errol Francis provides a shocking account of the experience of black people at the hands of psychiatrists in Britain. Cecil Gutzmore finds the Notting Hill carnival to be a litmus test of racist formations in both the media and the state, as well as evidence of the resilience of the black community. Amina Mama and Claudette Williams explore the position of women in black communities while Gail Lewis focuses on their characteristic patterns of employment. In a powerful concluding essay Winston James charts the unfolding of a new Afro-Caribbean identity in Britain and debunks the notion that racist structures by themselves create a homogeneous black community. Inside Babylon is a radical and timely indictment which moves beyond over-simplified and misleading stereotypes to identify and explore the impressive struggles of black people of Britain.

The Caribbean Diaspora in Britain

Inside Babylon

A major history of the impact of Caribbean migration to the United States. Marcus Garvey, Claude McKay, Claudia Jones, C.L.R. James, Stokely Carmichael, Louis Farakhan—the roster of immigrants from the Caribbean who have made a profound impact on the development of radical politics in the United States is extensive. In this magisterial and lavishly illustrated work, Winston James focuses on the twentieth century’s first waves of immigrants from the Caribbean and their contribution to political dissidence in America. Examining the way in which the characteristics of the societies they left shaped their perceptions of the land to which they traveled, Winston James draws sharp differences between Hispanic and English-speaking arrivals. He explores the interconnections between the Cuban independence struggle, Puerto Rican nationalism, Afro-American feminism, and black communism in the first turbulent decades of the twentieth century. He also provides fascinating insights into the impact of Puerto Rican radicalism in New York City and recounts the remarkable story of Afro-Cuban radicalism in Florida.

Caribbean Radicalism in Early-Twentieth Century America

Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia

“If I know my own heart, I can truly say, that I have not a selfish wish in placing myself under the patronage of the [American Colonization] Society; usefulness in my day and generation, is what I principally court.” “Sensible then, as all are of the disadvantages under which we at present labour, can any consider it a mark of folly, for us to cast our eyes upon some other portion of the globe where all these inconveniences are removed where the Man of Colour freed from the fetters and prejudice, and degradation, under which he labours in this land, may walk forth in all the majesty of his creation—a new born creature—a Free Man!” —John Brown Russwurm, 1829. John Brown Russwurm (1799-1851) is almost completely missing from the annals of the Pan-African movement, despite the pioneering role he played as an educator, abolitionist, editor, government official, emigrationist and colonizationist. Russwurm’s life is one of “firsts”: first African American graduate of Maine’s Bowdoin College; co-founder of Freedom’s Journal, America’s first newspaper to be owned, operated, and edited by African Americans; and, following his emigration to Africa, first black governor of the Maryland section of Liberia. Despite his accomplishments, Russwurm struggled internally with the perennial Pan-Africanist dilemma of whether to go to Africa or stay and fight in the United States, and his ordeal was the first of its kind to be experienced and resolved before the public eye. With this slim, accessible biography of Russwurm, Winston James makes a major contribution to the history of black uplift and protest in the Early American Republic and the larger Pan-African world. James supplements the biography with a carefully edited and annotated selection of Russwurm’s writings, which vividly demonstrate the trajectory of his political thinking and contribution to Pan-Africanist thought and highlight the challenges confronting the peoples of the African Diaspora. Though enormously rich and powerfully analytical, Russwurm’s writings have never been previously anthologized. The Struggles of John Brown Russwurm is a unique and unparalleled reflection on the Early American Republic, the African Diaspora and the wider history of the times. An unblinking observer of and commentator on the condition of African Americans as well as a courageous fighter against white supremacy and for black emancipation, Russwurm’s life and writings provide a distinct and articulate voice on race that is as relevant to the present as it was to his own lifetime.

The Life and Writings of a Pan-Africanist Pioneer, 1799-1851

The Struggles of John Brown Russwurm

Recipient of the Gordon K. Lewis Memorial Award for Caribbean Scholarship Marcus Garvey, Amy Jacques Garvey, Claude McKay, Claudia Jones, C.L.R. James, Stokely Carmichael—the roster of immigrants from the Caribbean who have had a profound impact on the development of radical politics in the United States is a long one. In this magisterial work, Winston James focuses on the twentieth century’s first wave of inspirational writers and activists from the Caribbean and their contribution to political dissidence in America. Examining the way in which the characteristics of the societies they left shaped their perceptions of the land to which they traveled, Winston James draws sharp differences between Hispanic, Anglophone, and other non-Hispanic arrivals. He explores the interconnections between the Cuban independence struggle, Puerto Rican nationalism, Afro-American feminism, and black communism in the first turbulent decades of the twentieth century. He also provides fascinating insights into the peculiarities of Puerto Rican radicalism’s impact in New York City and recounts the remarkable story of Afro-Cuban radicalism in Florida. Virgin Islander Hubert Harrison, whom A. Philip Randolph dubbed “the father of Harlem radicalism,” is rescued from the historical shadows by James’s analysis of his pioneering contribution to Afro-America’s radical tradition. In addition to a subtle re-examination of Garvey’s Universal Negro Movement Association—including the exertions and contributions of its female members—James provides the most detailed exploration so far undertaken of Cyril Briggs and his little-known but important African Blood Brotherhood. This diligently researched, wide ranging and sophisticated book will be welcomed by all those interested in the Caribbean and its émigrés, the Afro-American current within America’s radical tradition, and the history, politics, and culture of the African diaspora.

One of the foremost Black writers and intellectuals of his era, Claude McKay (1889–1948) was a central figure in Caribbean literature, the Harlem Renaissance, and the Black radical tradition. McKay’s life and writing were defined by his class consciousness and anticolonialism, shaped by his experiences growing up in colonial Jamaica as well as his early career as a writer in Harlem and then London. Dedicated to confronting both racism and capitalist exploitation, he was a critical observer of the Black condition throughout the African diaspora and became a committed Bolshevik. Winston James offers a revelatory account of McKay’s political and intellectual trajectory from his upbringing in Jamaica through the early years of his literary career and radical activism. In 1912, McKay left Jamaica to study in the United States, never to return. James follows McKay’s time at the Tuskegee Institute and Kansas State University, as he discovered the harshness of American racism, and his move to Harlem, where he encountered the ferment of Black cultural and political movements and figures such as Hubert Harrison and Marcus Garvey. McKay left New York for London, where his commitment to revolutionary socialism deepened, culminating in his transformation from Fabian socialist to Bolshevik. Drawing on a wide variety of sources, James offers a rich and detailed chronicle of McKay’s life, political evolution, and the historical, political, and intellectual contexts that shaped him.

The Making of a Black Bolshevik

Marcus Garvey, Claude McKay, Claudia Jones, C.L.R. James, Stokely Carmichael, Louis Farakhan—the roster of immigrants from the Caribbean who have made a profound impact on the development of radical politics in the United States is extensive. In this magisterial and lavishly illustrated work, Winston James focuses on the twentieth century’s first waves of immigrants from the Caribbean and their contribution to political dissidence in America. This diligently researched, wide-ranging and sophisticated book will be welcomed by all those interested in the Caribbean and its émigrés, the Afro-American current within America’s radical tradition, and the history, politics, and culture of the African diaspora.

Winston James

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