www.revcom.us:
Your Revolutionary Resource Center for Black History Month

Updated February 16, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

This year's Black History Month comes at a time when we've seen a massive struggle for justice--beginning with the rebellion in Ferguson, Missouri, in August--unlike anything since the Black liberation struggle of the 1960s. Big questions are posed. Why—more than two centuries after the founding of this country and 50 years after the events depicted in the film Selma—are Black people still oppressed, still brutally discriminated against, and still brutalized and murdered by the police?

On the occasion of Black History Month, we have gathered here a selection of material for those who really want to dig into these questions. This material—including a syllabus that teachers can use for their classes or for other group discussions—speaks to the foundation of this country in slavery, the oppression of African-Americans which has continued throughout the history of the U.S. while taking different forms, and the present-day reality.

 

Resources

The American Enterprise— Property and Slavery
Peculiar Notions of "Freedom" and Profound Contradictions

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How This System Has Betrayed Black People: Crucial Turning Points

by Bob Avakian

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Video clips from Bob Avakian's 2003 talk Revolution: Why It's Necessary, Why It's Possible, What It's All About:

"They're selling postcards of the hanging"

"Emmett Till and Jim Crow: Black people lived under a death sentence"

"What to the slave is your fourth of July? From the past to the present"

"The police, Black youth, and what kind of system is this?"

From the Michael Slate Radio Show.... 

Interview with author Edward Baptist:

The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism

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Interview with Author Michelle Alexander

The New Jim Crow:
Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

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Interview with Author Alice Goffman

On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City

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Interview with Author Douglas A. Blackmon
Slavery by Another Name
Re-enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II

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Interview with filmmaker Stanley Nelson

Freedom Summer

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From Q&A for the 7 Talks by Bob Avakian: response to question (#9) about "the oppression of Black people being a foundational part of how this society formed" and "the struggle of Black people being an Achilles heel for this system."


The Oppression of Black People, The Crimes of This System and the Revolution We Need
A special issue of revcom.us/Revolution newspaper




Communism and Jeffersonian Democracy

by Bob Avakian


Two Constitutions, Two Different Systems, Two Different Futures for African-American People
(a revcom.us/Revolution series)

» Part 1: A Slaveholders' Union
» Part 2: Reconstruction, and the First Great Betrayal, 1867-1896
» Part 3: Battleground Over Segregated Education in the 1950s and 1960s
» Part 4: Breaking Chains in a New Socialist Society


 

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