Robert Greene II is an assistant professor of history at Claflin University and the book review editor for the Society of US Intellectual Historians' blog.
In the Red Summer of 1919, racist violence hit America as the Spanish flu ravaged the country. With mass protests against police murders sweeping the pandemic-plagued United States, it appears we might be now living in a Red Spring.
Florida Republicans just passed a poll tax that disenfranchises many of the same felons who recently won the right to vote. It's a chilling throwback to previous eras of black voter suppression — and a reminder that we still have to fight for basic democratic rights today.
We should remember the Civil War and Reconstruction for what they were: periods of liberation that were snuffed out by white elites.
W. E. B. Du Bois's Black Reconstruction in America thrust African Americans into the role of historical actors and showed that the black freedom struggle has always been one for radical democracy.
On VE Day, we remember black Americans' Double V campaign: victory in Europe against fascism, victory at home against racism.
The Left struggles to speak with the kind of moral clarity Martin Luther King exemplified — but that shouldn't stop us from trying.
Black voters will be at the core of any resurgence in left politics in the South.
A look back at Liberator, an anticolonial magazine that operated during a golden age for black radical publications.
The Left can't allow itself to be consumed by debates about antifa. We need a proactive program and patient organizing.
More than five decades after its founding, the Black Panther Party's antiracist, anticapitalist vision remains just as relevant today.
African Americans were willing and able participants of the New Deal — reshaping the very meaning of American liberalism.
No political revolution in the United States can succeed without the South.
A new documentary on the Black Panther Party overlooks the group’s socialist core.