In
this intellectual history, Minkah Makalani reveals how
early-twentieth-century black radicals organized an international
movement centered on ending racial oppression, colonialism, class
exploitation, and global white supremacy. Focused primarily on two
organizations, the Harlem-based African Blood Brotherhood, whose
members became the first black Communists in the United States, and
the International African Service Bureau, the major black
anticolonial group in 1930s London, In
the Cause of Freedom
examines the ideas, initiatives, and networks of interwar black
radicals, as well as how they communicated across continents.
Through
a detailed analysis of black radical periodicals and extensive
research in U.S., English, Dutch, and Soviet archives, Makalani
explores how black radicals thought about race; understood the ties
between African diasporic, Asian, and international workers'
struggles; theorized the connections between colonialism and racial
oppression; and confronted the limitations of international leftist
organizations. Considering black radicals of Harlem and London
together for the first time, In
the Cause of Freedom
reorients the story of blacks and Communism from questions of
autonomy and the Kremlin's reach to show the emergence of radical
black internationalism separate from, and independent of, the white
Left.