1619

November 9, 2026

A blueprint for rebellion: C.L.R. James and the politics of ‘Black Jacobins’

November 30, 2019 M. Matsemela-Ali Odom

Published in 1938, “Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution” became C.L.R. James’ magnum opus, though fans of the sport of cricket might beg to differ. “Black Jacobins” was printed by the British […]

‘Pressed to the Wall … But Fighting Back’: The Black Radical Tradition and the Legacy of the Chicago Race Riots 1919

November 20, 2019 M. Odom

Recently, I watched the opening episode of the new HBO series “Watchmen.” Like millions of other viewers, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the episode began with the white terrorist assault on the community […]

From the Terrible Transformation to the Creation of the Negro: A Black Socialist Analysis of the First Century of Slavery in North America

August 1, 2019 Matsemela Odom

In Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America, the late popular historian Lerone Bennett refers to the African captives who arrived in Jamestown in 1619 as immigrants. “An estimated million of these slaves found […]

Slavery, Settler Colonialism, Gender Oppression and Resistance in the Early Colonial Years

March 25, 2019 M. Odom

This year marks 400 years since “20 and odd” enslaved Africans on board a Dutch frigate were traded for supplies to English settlers at Jamestown. As historians have noted, these African captives were not the […]