race
Information about race, racism and anti-racism.
9. Slavery Without Submission, Emancipation Without Freedom
The United States government's support of slavery was based on an overpowering practicality. In
1790, a thousand tons of cotton were being produced every year in the South. By 1860, it was a
million tons. In the same period, 500,000 slaves grew to 4 million. A system harried by slave
rebellions and conspiracies (Gabriel Prosser, 1800; Denmark Vesey, 1822; Nat Turner, 1831)
5. A kind of Revolution
The American victory over the British army was made possible by the existence of an already-
armed people. Just about every white male had a gun, and could shoot. The Revolutionary
leadership distrusted the mobs of poor. But they knew the Revolution had no appeal to slaves and
Indians. They would have to woo the armed white population.
3. Persons of Mean and Vile Condition
In 1676, seventy years after Virginia was founded, a hundred years before it supplied leadership for
the American Revolution, that colony faced a rebellion of white frontiersmen, joined by slaves and
servants, a rebellion so threatening that the governor had to flee the burning capital of Jamestown,
and England decided to send a thousand soldiers across the Atlantic, hoping to maintain order
2. Drawing the Color Line
A black American writer, J. Saunders Redding, describes the arrival of a ship in North America in
the year 1619:
Sails furled, flag drooping at her rounded stern, she rode the tide in from the sea. She was a strange ship, indeed, by all accounts, a frightening ship, a ship of mystery. Whether she was
1. Columbus, The Indians, and Human Progress
Arawak men and women, naked, tawny, and full of wonder, emerged from their villages onto the
island's beaches and swam out to get a closer look at the strange big boat. When Columbus and his
sailors came ashore, carrying swords, speaking oddly, the Arawaks ran to greet them, brought them
food, water, gifts. He later wrote of this in his log:
Manx Justice
One of the most blatant cases of double standards regarding rich and poor the Isle of Man has seen in recent years, a South African millionaire has been given a slap on the wrist while the men he enslaved are exiled from the island.
Until his trial Pieter Van Rooyen, a South African tax exile, was a local Barclays bank manager on the Isle of Man, and also founder and head of the Life Church, a small evangelical cult.
Rooyen had helped smuggle five black South African labourers and their white boss over to the island to improve his property.
Against Zionism
Written by the 'Campaign for Real Life' in the mid-1980s, this is an optimistic, insightful little leaflet on Zionism and the Palestinian Intefada struggle. In its conclusion it refers to connections with the situation in the UK at the time; the ongoing cuts in public services, gentrification, the aftermath of the miners strike etc.
Posties pique - Royal Mail workers out on wildcats
With postal workers already angry at the Royal Mail's decision to impose a 2.9% pay offer, two small wildcat strikes have broken out in Oxford and Wolverhampton
As they were underway, the Communication Workers Union (CWU) announced its intention to ballot for industrial action.
James Carr, the Black Panthers and all that
"Jimmy was the baddest motherfucker..." - George Jackson.
A look at the life and times of James Carr and the Black Panthers and their relationship to the prison struggles and wider social movements of the 1960s.
1981: The nine year old leader (C.L.R. James on Moss Side)
James discusses a 1981 riot in Manchester, northern England.
