An African American and Latinx History of the United States

Spanning more than two hundred years, An African American and Latinx History of the United States  challenges the notion of westward progress as exalted by widely taught formulations like “manifest destiny” and “Jacksonian democracy,” and shows how placing African American, Latinx, and Indigenous voices unapologetically front and center transforms U.S. history into one of the working class organizing against imperialism.

Author Paul Ortiz draws from rich narratives and primary sources to link  racial segregation in the Southwest and the rise and violent fall of a powerful tradition of Mexican labor organizing in the twentieth century, to May 1, 2006, known as International Workers’ Day, when migrant laborers — Chicana/os, Afrocubanos, and immigrants from every continent on earth — united in resistance on the first “Day Without Immigrants.” In stark contrast to the resurgence of “America First” rhetoric, Black and Latinx intellectuals and organizers today have historically urged the United States to build bridges of solidarity with the nations of the Americas.

This bottom-up history, told from the interconnected vantage points of Latinx and African Americans, reveals the radically different ways that people of the diaspora have addressed issues still plaguing the United States today, and it offers a way forward in the continued struggle for universal civil rights. [Description from the publisher.]

ISBN: 978-080700593-4 | Beacon Press

Reviews

“An epic, panoramic account of class struggles in the Western Hemisphere. At center stage are the Black, Latinx, and Indigenous people who built the ‘new world.’” — Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination

“From Crispus Attucks and José Maria Morelos to César Chávez and Martin Luther King Jr . . . The result is simultaneously invigorating, embarrassing, and essential to anyone interested in what the revolutionaries of years past can teach us about struggles for freedom, equality, and democracy today.” — William P. Jones, author of The March on Washington: Jobs, Freedom, and the Forgotten History of Civil Rights