A gripping biography of the leader of the slave revolt that led to Haiti’s independence, described as ‘the first black superhero of the modern age, the work under review promises to be the definitive study of the epocal revolutionary figure.
Medicare for All | John Oliver. No Rules for Donald | Randy Rainbow Song Parody. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar | Black Heroes of the American Revolution. Elizabeth Warren Dissects Bloomberg Defense. 'You're Pardoned!': Trump Frees Convicted Swamp Creatures.
Basketball legend, best-selling author and history buff Kareem Abdul-Jabbar teamed up with the History Channel to create Black Patriots: Heroes of the Revolution, a one-hour documentary that shares the African-American experience during the Revolutionary War
Little is known about the veracity of the so-called Burr Conspiracy, the alleged effort by Aaron Burr to split off the western territories to form a separate nation in the early 1800s. People, the book's author writes, clung to familiar stories; they ‘embraced different certainties’ regardless of new information and revelations. Burr was judged on what was viscerally believed in a politically divided United States, whose easy acceptance of felt truths resembles our own.
The author argues that a key factor in unifying the fractious 13 colonies in opposition to British rule during the Revolution was the patriots' effort to link British oppression to extant colonial fears about insurrectionary slaves and homicidal Indians. America's founders were chief among those spreading tales of British agents inciting blacks and Indians to take up arms against the American rebellion, making racial prejudice a foundation stone of the new republic.
A new book chronicles the travelers ignoring borders to spread ideas of liberty and equality, from the American revolution to the declaration of Haitian independence. "Without social media or even an international postal system," author Janet Polasky writes, "revolutionaries shared ideals of liberty and equality across entire continents." Decades before Marx, these internationalist radicals were soon betrayed by the very societies they helped build.
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Afro-American Artists to Present Works in Cuba; Sinéad O'Connor: 'I Won't Play in Israel'
What emerges from Gerald Horne's new book, "Counter-Revolution," is a picture of courage, heroism and betrayal. Most importantly, it is a history that accounts for the fact that so many "advances" of democracy in the United States have been at the expense of Africans and their descendants, people brought in chains to the shores of the United States. What emerges is a glimmer of understating why white supremacy in the United States is so virulent.
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The "so-called" American Revolution was not so much a "revolution for freedom against Great Britain, per se," as it was a shrewd and carefully calculated set of moves on the global chessboard of Real Politik, that amounted to a "Counter-Revolution" against freedom: That is to say, it was a revolution against ending freedom for its slaves and other slaves around the colonial empire.
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