Gerald Horne facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Gerald Horne
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Horne in 2020
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| Born | January 3, 1949 St. Louis, Missouri, U.S. |
| Occupation | Professor, writer |
| Education | Princeton University (B.A.) Columbia University (Ph.D.) University of California, Berkeley (J.D.) |
| Subject | Social & cultural analysis of race and class; class and race history |
Gerald Horne (born January 3, 1949) is an American historian who holds the John J. and Rebecca Moores Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston.
Background
Gerald Horne was raised in St. Louis, Missouri. After his undergraduate education at Princeton University, he received his Ph.D. from Columbia University and a J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.
Career
Horne holds the John J. and Rebecca Moores Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston.
He was a contributing editor of Political Affairs magazine.
Writing
Horne has published extensively on W. E. B. Du Bois and has written books on neglected episodes of world history. He writes about topics he perceives as misrepresented struggles for justice; in particular communist struggles and struggles against imperialism, colonialism, fascism, racism, and white supremacy. Horne is a Marxist. Much of his work highlights and analyzes specific individuals in their historical contexts, including figures such as the blacklisted Hollywood screenwriter John Howard Lawson, Ferdinand Smith (a Jamaican-born communist, sailor, labor leader, and co-founder of the National Maritime Union), and Lawrence Dennis, a man described as "the brains behind American fascism".
While many of Horne's books use an individual as a prism to inspect the historical forces of their times, Horne has also produced broad canvas chronicles of infrequently examined periods and aspects of the history of white supremacy and imperialism. For example, he has written on the post-civil war involvement of the US ruling class—newly dispossessed of human chattels—in relation to slavery in Brazil, which was not legally abolished until 1888. He has also written on the historic relationships between African Americans and the Japanese in the mid-20th century, specifically examining the ways in which the Japanese state gained sympathy and solidarity from people of colour by positioning themselves as the leaders of a global war against white supremacy.
Manning Marable has said: "Gerald Horne is one of the most gifted and insightful historians on racial matters of his generation."
Historiography in and for the radical tradition
In a speech given at an event marking the depositing of the Communist Party USA archives at the Tamiment Library at New York University, Horne remarked at length on the writing of history, its importance, and what he perceives as the grievous proliferation of propagandistic historiography in the US:
Now it is often said that every generation has to rewrite history. For example, at one time there was a prevalent "moonlight and magnolias" version of slavery and Reconstruction that fundamentally portrayed "happy Negroes" during the slave era and portrayed the period following slavery as a dastardly period of Negro misrule and corruption. This began to change in the 1930s with the publication of Du Bois' magisterial 'Black Reconstruction' and changed decisively with the publication of Eric Foner's 'Reconstruction.'"
One of the reasons why I personally – and I daresay future generations – are so pleased by the depositing of these CPUSA archives is because it is painfully obvious that the history of the Communist movement in this nation is long overdue for a massive rewriting and these archives will prove indispensable in that process.
It is easy to see why future generations will be displeased with much of the present history that has been written to this point about the Communist Party because it has been incredibly biased, one-sided, deeply influenced by the conservative drift of the nation – not unlike pre-Du Bois histories of Reconstruction – and, fundamentally, anticommunist.
From 2013 to date, Horne has discussed his historical, socio-economic and political research findings in a series of conversations with Paul Jay.
Works
- Black and Red: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Afro-American Response to the Cold War. SUNY Press (1986)
- Communist Front? The Civil Rights Congress, 1946–1956. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press (1987)
- Black Liberation/Red Scare: Ben Davis and the Communist Party. University of Delaware Press (1994)
- Fire This Time: The Watts Uprising And The 1960s. Da Capo Press (1997)
- From the Barrel of a Gun: The United States and the War against Zimbabwe, 1965–1980. University of North Carolina Press (2000)
- Class Struggle in Hollywood, 1930–1950 : Moguls, Mobsters, Stars, Reds and Trade Unionists. University of Texas Press (2001)
- Race Woman: The Lives of Shirley Graham Du Bois. New York University Press (2002)
- Black and Brown: African Americans and the Mexican Revolution, 1910–1920. New York University Press (2005)
- The Final Victim of the Blacklist: John Howard Lawson, Dean of the Hollywood Ten. University of California Press (2006)
- Cold War in a Hot Zone: The United States Confronts Labor and Independence Struggles in the British West Indies. Temple University Press (2007)
- The White Pacific: U.S. Imperialism and Black Slavery in the South Seas After the Civil War. University of Hawaii Press (2007)
- The Deepest South: The United States, Brazil, and the African Slave Trade. New York University Press (2007)
- Blows Against the Empire: U.S. Imperialism in Crisis. International Publishers (2008)
- Red Seas: Ferdinand Smith and Radical Black Sailors in the United States and Jamaica. New York University Press (2009)
- Mau Mau in Harlem?: The U.S. and the Liberation of Kenya. Palgrave MacMillan (2009)
- The Color of Fascism: Lawrence Dennis, Racial Passing, and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism in the United States. New York University Press (2009)
- W.E.B. Du Bois: A Biography. Greenwood Press (2009)
- The End of Empires: African Americans and India. Temple University Press (2009)
- Fighting in Paradise: Labor Unions, Racism, and Communists in the Making of Modern Hawaii. University of Hawaii Press (2011)
- Negro Comrades of the Crown: African Americans and the British Empire Fight the U.S. Before Emancipation. New York University Press (2013)
- Black Revolutionary: William Patterson & the Globalization of the African American Freedom Struggle. University of Illinois Press (2013)
- The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America. New York University Press (2014)
- Race to Revolution: The U.S. and Cuba during Slavery and Jim Crow. Monthly Review Press (2014)
- Confronting Black Jacobins: The U.S., the Haitian Revolution and the Origins of the Dominican Republic. Monthly Review Press (2015)
- Paul Robeson: The Artist as Revolutionary. Pluto Press (2016)
- The Rise and Fall of the Associated Negro Press: Claude Albert Barnett's Pan-African News and the Jim Crow Paradox. University of Illinois Press (2017)
- Storming the Heavens: African Americans and the Early Struggle for the Right to Fly. Black Classic Press (2017)
- Facing the Rising Sun: African Americans, Japan the Rise of Afro-Asian Solidarity. New York University Press (2018)
- The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, and Capitalism in Seventeenth-Century North America and the Caribbean. Monthly Review Press (2018)
- Jazz and Justice: Racism and the Political Economy of the Music. Monthly Review Press (2019)
- White Supremacy Confronted: U.S. Imperialism and Anti-Communism vs. the Liberation of Southern Africa from Rhodes to Mandela. International Publishers (2019)
- The Dawning of the Apocalypse: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and Capitalism in the Long Sixteenth Century. Monthly Review Press (2020)
- The Bittersweet Science: Racism, Racketeering, and the Political Economy of Boxing. International Publishers (2020)
- The Counter-Revolution of 1836: Texas Slavery & Jim Crow and the Roots of U.S. Fascism. International Publishers (2022)
- Revolting Capital: Racism and Radicalism in Washington D.C., 1900–2000. International Publishers (2023)
See also
- Black and Brown: African Americans and the Mexican Revolution, 1910-1920
