Negro Liberation

Negro Liberation

A major work in the Black Communist tradition by worker-intellectual Harry Haywood, now in a new edition featuring a foreword by Dr. Rebecca Hall and an introduction by Dr. Charisse Burden-Stelly. In 1948, Harry Haywood, a leading member of the Communist Party USA, published  Negro Liberation , a pathbreaking book that lays out his argument that the Black Belt South constitutes a distinct nation and an internal colony of U.S. imperialism. Applying a Marxist-Leninist lens to questions of nationalism, colonialism, and land distribution, Haywood lays out the dire stakes of Jim Crow violence and oppression and critiques the emptiness and insufficiency of liberal solutions. Along the way, he makes a powerful case for Black self-determination. Framed by Rebecca Hall’s moving meditation on her father’s legacy and Charisse Burden-Stelly’s clear-eyed case for how Haywood reveals the contradiction between ruling-class politics and Black liberation today, this new edition of  Negro Liberation  is a must-read for anyone fighting against oppression. “Thanks to Haymarket’s timely re-release, Negro Liberation will have a second life, not as a newly discovered relic but as a provocation for thinking about our current struggles. The lesson is clear: The future of American democracy and the prospects for dismantling imperialist capitalism rest in the hands of a working-class-led Black liberation movement.” ―Robin D. G. Kelley "All interested in the destiny of the Black Liberation Movement and the struggle for socialism in the U.S. should welcome this edition of this classic text by the justly heralded 'Black Bolshevik' himself, Harry Haywood. The value of this marvelous and stimulating volume is enhanced by the moving words of his daughter, Rebecca Hall, and the fighting antifascist spirit of the rising star: Charisse Burden-Stelly." ―Gerald Horne, author and historian Harry Haywood (1898–1985) was a leading member of the Communist Party of the United States. Rebecca Hall is an independent scholar, activist, educator, and author of the award-winning Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts . She lives in Oakland. Charisse Burden-Stelly is associate professor of African American studies at Wayne State University and the author of Black Scare/Red Scare: Theorizing Capitalist Racism in the United States . She lives in Detroit.