We hope this summer 2012 edition of Radical Black Reading can offer some respite from the hurly burly of an increasingly anti-Black World. High up on our list of summer reads is a classic from CLR James, one of The Public Archive’s spiritual mentors. A History of Pan-African Revolt , James’ pioneering account of global Black resistance against colonialism and racism, returns to print this summer. Originally published during a period of activity when James somehow managed to pen The Black Jacobins while translating Boris Souvarine’s biography of Josef Stalin, A History of Pan-African Revolt has been rediscovered, as historian Robin D.G. Kelley notes in its introduction, by successive generations of Black intellectuals and activists. It was published as a FACT monograph in 1938, by Drum & Spear in 1969 , by Charles H. Kerr in 1995, and now by Oakland, California’s PM Press . For his part, Kelley has followed up on his astounding biography of Thelonius Monk with a volume that implicitly nods to the transnational politics evoked by James. In Africa Speaks, America Answers : Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times (Harvard), Kelley maps the sonic interchange between jazz and African liberation in the music and thought of pianist Randy Weston, bassist Ahmed Abdul-Malik, drummer Guy Warren, and vocalist Sathima Bea Benjamin.
