The 2008 Photo Illustrated Edition of Robert Carl Cohen's 1972 biography of Robert Franklin Williams, advocate of armed self-defense in the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, and prophet of ghetto uprisings and a Socialist Revolution. The story of how an easily contented youngster who dreamed of becoming a poet was transformed into an archenemy of the U.S. power structure. Included in these pages are historically significant events such as Williams' talks with Fidel Castro and Mao Tse-Tung, details of the infighting within the Cuban Communist Party, his meeting with Che Guevara, and impressions of life in China during the first years of the "Great Cultural Revolution." This new edition is illustrated with previously unpublished photos of Williams & his wife, Mabel, in exile in Cuba and Africa. KIRKUS REVIEWS: "The education of one Black man you should not miss, and certainly cannot dismiss."

Black Crusader is the story of how a young man from a small North Carolina town who dreamed of becoming a poet was transformed into an archenemy of the US power structure. At school and in college, in the Army and Marines and in his home town in the 1950s, Robert Franklin Williams witnessed the scourge of segregation, exploitation, beatings and even murder. He decided to apply his combat training, intelligence, organizational skills and fearlessness to take a stand against race hatred, becoming the first black liberation militant to advocate armed self-defense. But in 1961 an explosion of government-supported racist violence - and a trumped-up kidnapping charge - forced him to flee and seek refuge among America's Cold War adversaries, in Cuba, the People's Republic of China and later in newly independent Tanzania. This biography details the first 44 years of Williams' life, as told in his own words, the story of an enigmatic and charismatic leader who was pursued in vain for almost a decade by the FBI and CIA. His talent for leadership extended to book writing, newspaper editing and managing Radio Free Dixie from exile. Though his message was suppressed by the US media, he was a friend of revolutionary leaders, inspired a generation of civil rights activists, and was admired by millions around the world. The book concludes with the bizarre circumstances of Williams' return to the US in 1969, after which all state and federal charges were quietly dropped. Then mainstream publishers mysteriously withdrew the first two versions of this book, now republished in full in this new illustrated edition.

In a winning new book, Pearleen Oliver: Canada's Black Crusader for Civil Rights brings to life a compassionate and passionate African Nova Scotian, the story of her growth and activism--a book that shows how one woman's voice changed the course of Nova Scotia's history. Pearleen Oliver pushed open doors that blocked Black girls from nurses' training. She kicked Little Black Sambo out of public schools. She was spokesperson for Viola Desmond's appeal of her 1946 conviction for challenging racist customs. A founder of the Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, the Black United Front and the Black Cultural Centre, she was the first female moderator of the African United Baptist Association, and a founder of the AUBA Women's Institute. Editor Ronald Caplan weaves Pearleen's voice from her interviews and speeches. We experience Pearleen's awareness of injustice as she grew up in segregated New Glasgow schools. A married woman, we see her outrage re-kindled by a bewildered teenager at her door who was barred from nurses' training by her skin colour. Pearleen began to speak out before civic and religious and community groups?Boards of Trade, Rotary luncheons, B'nai B'rith and Baptist services and nuclear disarmament conferences. Newspapers carried her voice?a voice of reason and determination and common sense?across the province, and then across Canada. While raising five sons and carrying on the duties of a minister's wife, Pearleen mentored young girls and women in summer camps, church groups, continuing education, and women's groups. She was the organist in her churches, and she wrote histories of Black communities. In this eye-opening book Pearleen Oliver tells stories of activist journalist Carrie Best who published Nova Scotia's first Black newspaper, of successful businesswoman Viola Desmond who was sidetracked by petty racism, of Black soldiers who fought Nazi racism in the Second World War and then came home to racial discrimination in Canada. This book keeps alive a determined fighter for social justice who should not be forgotten. Pearleen Oliver demonstrated what one person, one voice, can do.

This fascinating book gathers reflections by scholars and activists who consider the impact of the Black Panther Party, the BBP, the most significant revolutionary organization in the later 20th century.

During the Cold War, several prominent African American radical activist-intellectuals—including W.E.B. and Shirley Graham Du Bois, journalist William Worthy, Marxist feminist Vicki Garvin, and freedom fighters Mabel and Robert Williams—traveled and lived in China. There, they used a variety of media to express their solidarity with Chinese communism and to redefine the relationship between Asian struggles against imperialism and black American movements against social, racial, and economic injustice. In The East Is Black, Taj Frazier examines the ways in which these figures and the Chinese government embraced the idea of shared struggle against U.S. policies at home and abroad. He analyzes their diverse cultural output (newsletters, print journalism, radio broadcasts, political cartoons, lectures, and documentaries) to document how they imagined communist China’s role within a broader vision of a worldwide anticapitalist coalition against racism and imperialism.

Ultimately, Black Power reveals a black freedom movement in which the ideals of desegregation through nonviolence and black nationalism marched side by side.