Gerald Horne
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252037924
- eISBN:
- 9780252095184
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252037924.003.0015
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This introductory chapter provides an overview of William L. Patterson's ultimate vision, his socialist project. Patterson was a self-proclaimed revolutionary who sought to abolish capitalism and ...
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This introductory chapter provides an overview of William L. Patterson's ultimate vision, his socialist project. Patterson was a self-proclaimed revolutionary who sought to abolish capitalism and install socialism in a step-by-step process that involved the continuous struggle for expansion of democratic rights. As he saw things, capitalism as it evolved in the United States had been grounded in a racist slavery and Jim Crow and in order for justice to arrive for the beleaguered Negro, this system had to be extirpated root and branch. The chapter then argues that the nation might be better off today if Patterson's path of amity toward Moscow had been followed. Though Patterson was never accused of espionage, U.S. patriots need to acknowledge that just as Nelson Mandela's African National Congress owed no allegiance to an illegitimate apartheid state and was justified in collaborating with Moscow, Jim Crow was similarly illegitimate and certainly required a like amount of obeisance.Less
This introductory chapter provides an overview of William L. Patterson's ultimate vision, his socialist project. Patterson was a self-proclaimed revolutionary who sought to abolish capitalism and install socialism in a step-by-step process that involved the continuous struggle for expansion of democratic rights. As he saw things, capitalism as it evolved in the United States had been grounded in a racist slavery and Jim Crow and in order for justice to arrive for the beleaguered Negro, this system had to be extirpated root and branch. The chapter then argues that the nation might be better off today if Patterson's path of amity toward Moscow had been followed. Though Patterson was never accused of espionage, U.S. patriots need to acknowledge that just as Nelson Mandela's African National Congress owed no allegiance to an illegitimate apartheid state and was justified in collaborating with Moscow, Jim Crow was similarly illegitimate and certainly required a like amount of obeisance.
Gerald Horne
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252037924
- eISBN:
- 9780252095184
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252037924.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
A leading African American Communist, lawyer William L. Patterson (1891–1980) was instrumental in laying the groundwork for the defeat of Jim Crow by virtue of his leadership of the Scottsboro ...
More
A leading African American Communist, lawyer William L. Patterson (1891–1980) was instrumental in laying the groundwork for the defeat of Jim Crow by virtue of his leadership of the Scottsboro campaign in the 1930s. This watershed biography shows how Patterson helped to advance African American equality by fostering and leveraging international support for the movement. The book highlights key moments in Patterson's global activism: his early education in the Soviet Union, his involvement with the Scottsboro trials and other high-profile civil rights cases of the 1930s to 1950s, his 1951 “We Charge Genocide” petition to the United Nations, and his later work with prisons and the Black Panther Party. Drawing from government and FBI documents, newspapers, periodicals, archival and manuscript collections, and personal papers, the book documents Patterson's effectiveness at carrying the freedom struggle into the global arena and provides a fresh perspective on twentieth-century struggles for racial justice.Less
A leading African American Communist, lawyer William L. Patterson (1891–1980) was instrumental in laying the groundwork for the defeat of Jim Crow by virtue of his leadership of the Scottsboro campaign in the 1930s. This watershed biography shows how Patterson helped to advance African American equality by fostering and leveraging international support for the movement. The book highlights key moments in Patterson's global activism: his early education in the Soviet Union, his involvement with the Scottsboro trials and other high-profile civil rights cases of the 1930s to 1950s, his 1951 “We Charge Genocide” petition to the United Nations, and his later work with prisons and the Black Panther Party. Drawing from government and FBI documents, newspapers, periodicals, archival and manuscript collections, and personal papers, the book documents Patterson's effectiveness at carrying the freedom struggle into the global arena and provides a fresh perspective on twentieth-century struggles for racial justice.
