Don’t Overlook Coretta Scott King
Coretta Scott King condemned the brutality of the Vietnam War and criticized how it drained money from housing, health care, and jobs.
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Socialists Organized in the 1950s Civil Rights Movement
In 1950s America, the Cold War was raging, but socialists were playing key roles in the early civil rights movement. We can’t afford to let that radical history be sanitized.
Why Stonewall Matters Today
Stonewall wasn’t just an uprising for LGBT rights — it was also part of a broader movement that fought racism, war, and poverty. To go beyond today’s tepid gay activism, we need to remember its anti-capitalism.
Gary Dorrien Is Christian Socialism’s Greatest Champion
The theologian and historian Gary Dorrien has made it his mission to chronicle and revive the tradition of Christian democratic socialism. His work reminds the American left of our project’s spiritual dimensions.
When Nelson Mandela Came to America
In the summer of 1990, Nelson Mandela toured the United States to raise money for the South African anti-apartheid struggle. His trip highlighted the historic links between the struggle for freedom in South Africa with the Civil Rights Movement in the US — a spirit of international solidarity that the US left must rekindle.
How Black Marxists Have Understood Racial Oppression
The rich tradition of Black Marxist thought — one that includes W. E. B. Du Bois, C. L. R. James, and Frantz Fanon, among many others — emphasizes the centrality of capitalism to racial oppression and the destructiveness of that oppression for all workers.
“Solidarity Is the Only Thing That Can Save Us”
Without cultivating a strong sense of solidarity with mass numbers of people we’ll never meet, we’re doomed to slip further into atomized isolation and defeat.
The Black Panthers Who Never Came Home
Fifty-nine years after Huey Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panthers, Charlotte and Pete O’Neal remain in exile in Tanzania. Their story, told through interviews, archives, and firsthand reporting, reveals the movement’s enduring legacy.
J. Edgar Hoover Tried to Destroy the Left — and Liberals Enabled Him
J. Edgar Hoover is notorious for his decades-long campaign to stamp out the Left by surveilling and even killing radicals like Fred Hampton. What is less well known is that liberals played an important role in enabling Hoover’s antidemocratic crusade.
Mike Davis Revisits His 1986 Labor History Classic, Prisoners of the American Dream
The late socialist writer Mike Davis’s first book was Prisoners of the American Dream, a deep exploration of how the US labor movement became so weakened. Nearly four decades later, Davis revisited the book in an interview with Jacobin.
The Lost Caucus
The story of the Congressional Black Caucus reflects the class contradictions of black politics in the post–civil rights era.
It’s Their Party
A generation ago, socialists and civil rights activists tried to transform the Democratic Party. Why did they fail?
Jacobin’s Racial Justice Reading List
The point of a reading list should be to understand the world in order to change it. Here are ten essential books that can help inform the struggle for racial justice today.
The Cops Can Be Defeated — But Not by Taking Obama’s Advice
Barack Obama recently lectured protesters about the need to move past protesting and focus on electing Democrats. The former president misunderstands the power of protest, which is not just to “raise awareness,” but to actually disrupt the institutions that control policy and force them to make concessions.
Ernest Calloway Fused Civil Rights and Class Struggle
Twentieth-century black labor leader Ernest Calloway never became a household name. But through his work in both the Teamsters and the NAACP, he embodied the transformative potential of a united labor and civil rights movement.
Can the UAW Rise Again?
Despite the ravages of deindustrialization, the United Auto Workers remain the US’s most important industrial union. Members recently elected a new leadership promising democracy, militancy, and an end to corruption. But change isn’t coming easy to the UAW.
True to Life: An Interview with Martin Hägglund
Martin Hägglund speaks about This Life, his new book about love, grief, wealth, and Karl Marx.
The All-American Crack-Up in 1960s Hollywood Cinema
Starting in the 1960s, more and more Hollywood films depicted an increasingly violent and alienated American society quickly losing its mind. It’s hard not to see their relevance to our times.
The Murder of Malcolm X
There was nothing J. Edgar Hoover feared more than a charismatic black radical who could inspire the oppressed to fight back. And that’s why, according to a compelling new series, the FBI had its fingerprints all over Malcolm X’s murder.
The FBI’s Secret War
Sixty years ago, the FBI launched COINTELPRO. Its mission was simple: destroy the Left.