2006 Democrats gained dominance in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Senator elect Barock Obama has emerged as a central progressive charismatic figure in the Democratic Party. If he can develop and consolidate a progressive bloc inside the Democratic Party it may stimulate young people to become politically involved “again and lead to another breakthrough.
2007 The year two thousand and seven will be recorded as an historical year. In this year there has become a public outcry against President George W. Bush’s war against the people of Iraq. Many Republican congress people sensing an aura of “defeat” are reluctantly beginning to urge Bush to de-escalate the imperialist war: The assumptions which the American people originally supported the invasion and overthrow of the Saddan Hussein regime was that he had “weapons of mass destruction” and connections to Ibn Laden. After four years of involvement now in an Iraqi civil war, no weapons of mass destruction have been found or connections to Al Quadi. While protest in the U. S. is not as great as it was during the Vietnam war due to the fact of no draft and a professional volunteer army; if the projected “surge” of U. S. troops doesn’t subdue the Iraqi resistance by late September 2007, there may be an upsurge of anti-war protest in the U. S. But with the recent U. S. Supreme Court rulings, it seems like “the people’s movement in the U. S. for human rights, democracy and justice has been setback. Part of the ultra right conservative agenda has been to reverse affirmative action and abortion rights. It sought this by seizing all three branches of government, congress, the presidency and the Supreme Court, which it succeeded in doing in the election of 2000 and consolidated in the election of 2004 with a majority conservative Supreme court; conservative Republicans were able to pull off the “Legal counter-revolution” of 2007. Linda Greenhouse reporting for the New York Times news Service in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Sunday July 1, 2007 said
As a result, the court upheld a federal antiabortion law, cut back on the free speech rights of public school students, strictly enforced procedural requirements for bring and appeal cases, and limited school districts’ ability to use racially conscious measure to achieve or preserve integration.
As a result, the young generation of the 21st century needs to become active in a new movement to reverse “the conservative” legal “counter revolution of 2007. As we go to press Senator Barack Obama has emerged as a the new progressive figure in the democratic presidential primary for 2008.
Barack Hussein Obama (born August 4, 1961) is the junior United States Senator from Illinois and a member of Democratic Party. The U. S. Senate Historical Office lists him as the fifth African American Senator in U. S. history and the only African American currently serving in the U. S. Senate.
Born to a Kenyan father and an American mother, Obama grew up in culturally diverse surroundings. He spent most of his childhood in the majority-minority U. S. state of Hawaii and lived for four years in Indonesia. After graduating from Columbia University and Harvard Law School, Obama worked as a community organizer, university lecturer, and civil rights lawyer before entering politics. He served in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004 . launching his campaign for U. S. Senate in 2003.
Obama delivered the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention while still an Illinois state legislator. Boosted by increased national standing, he went on to win election to the U. S. Senate in November 2004 with a landslide 70% of the vote in an election year marked by Republican gains. As a member of the Democratic minority in the 109th Congress, Obama co-sponsored the enactment of conventional weapons control and transparency legislation and made official trips to Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. 402 Though his candidacy may not win, the new population demographics of a recent report of the census campaigns similar to his may fare better in the near future. According to the report one in three Americans belong to a minority group.
Of the 300 million people living to the U. S., nearly 200 million are Whites; 40 million are African Americans and 44 million are Hispanics, the largest minority group Asians account for 14 million and Native Hawaiian and other pacific islanders make up 1 million. American Indian and Alaska Natives comprise 4 million of the population.
Such a growth rate of people of color or minority combined with the shifts back to the center or left of center of the majority (200 million white Americans) could lead to the opportunity for a more equalitarian new America in the 21st Century.
1 Harvey Wish, American Slave Insurrections Before 1861", The Journal of Negro History, XXII [July 1947] 299-320.
2 Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States [New York: Harper Colaphon Books, 1980] p.169.
3 Robert S. Starobin, Industrial Slavery in the Old South [New York: Oxford University Press, 1975], especially Chapter 5.
4 W.E.B. DuBois, Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880 [New York: Atheneum, 1973], especially Chapter 4.
5 Grant, Susan-Mary, History Today, September 1998, “Pride and Prejudice in the American Civil War” http://www.findarticles.com.Grant
6 Cornish, Dudley Taylor, The Sable Arm, Black Troops in the Union Army, 1861-1865, [University Press of Kansas, 1987] p. 108).
7 Cornish, Dudley Taylor, The Sable Arm, Black Troops in the Union Army, 1861-1865, [University Press of Kansas, 1987] p. 108).
8 Grant, Susan-Mary, History Today, September 1998, “Pride and Prejudice in the American Civil War” www.findarticles.com.Grant
9 Grant, Susan-Mary, History Today, September 1998, “Pride and Prejudice in the American Civil War” www.findarticles.com.Grant
10 Redkey, Edwin S. A Grand Army of Black Men, [Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, 1992] p. 7.)
11 Trudeau, Noah Ander, Like Men of War, Black Troop in the Civil War 186201865. (Little, Brown, and Company 1998, p. 168).
12 Trudeau, Noah Ander, Like Men of War, Black Troop in the Civil War 1862-1865. (Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, 1992, pg. 171).
13 Washington, Varsalle F., Eagles on Their Buttons: A Black Infantry Regiment in the Civil War, (University of Missouri Press, 1999. p. 59).
14 Trudeau, Noah Ander, Like Men of War, black Troop in the Civil War 1862-1865, (Little, Brrown, and Company 1998. p. 249).
15 Taylor, Dudley. The Sable Arm Black Troops in the Union Army, 1861-1865, (University Press of Kansas, p. 168).
16 Wilson, Joseph T. The Black Phalanx, African American Soldiers in the War of Independence, The War of 1812 & The Civil Wa, (Da Capo Press, 1994, p. 319-320)
17Washington, F. Versalle, Eagles on Their Buttons a Black Infantry Regiment in the Civil War, (University of Missouri Press, 1999, p. 38).
18 Washington, F. Versalle, Eagles on Their Buttons a Black Infantry Regiment in the Civil War, (University of Missouri Press, 1999, p. 40).
19 Trudeau, Noah Ander, Like Men of War, Black Troop in the Civil War 1862-1865, (Little, Brown, and Company 1998, p. 254).
20 Trudeau, Noah Ander, Like Men of War, Black Troop in the Civil War 1862-1865, (Little, Brown, and Company 1998, p. 255).
21 Cornish, Dudley Taylor, The Sable Arm, Black Troops in the Union Army, 1861-1865, (University Press of Kansas, 1987).
22 Wilson, Joseph T. The Black Phalanx, African American Soldiers in the War of Independence, The War of 1812 & The Civil War, (Da Capo Press, 1994).
23 Wilson, Joseph T. The Black Phalanx, African American Soldiers in the War of Independence, The War of 1812 & The Civil War, (Da Capo Press, 1994).
24 Darlene Clark Hine, William C. Hine, Stanley Harold, The African-American Odyssey [Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2000] pp.259 -260.
25 Ibid. p. 260
26 From Susan Altaian, The Encyclopedia of African-American Heritage {New York: Facts on File Inc., 1997] p. 19. Also see: Andrew Ward, River Run Red: The Fort Pillow Massacre in the American Civil War [EnRland: Viking, 2005]
27 From Darlene Clark Hine, William C. Hine, Stanley Harrold, African-American Odyssey pp 234-235
28 Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution 1853-1877 [New York: Harper and Row, 1988] p. 553-563
29 Jacqueline Jones Royster (ed). Southern Horrors and other Writings: The Anti-Lynching. Campaign of Ida B Wells, 1892-1900 [Boston:Bedford Books, 1997] pp.10.
30 Martin Dann, “Black Populism: A Study of the Colored Farmers’ Alliance Through 1891”, The Journal of Ethnic Studies, Volume 2, Number 3, Fall, 1974, pp. 58071.
31 Ferald J. Bryan, Henry Grody or Tom Watson? [Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1994] pp 63-87
32 Gerald H. Gaither, Blacks and the Populist Movement [Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2005] pp 135-136
33 Alfreda M. Duster, Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells [Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1980]
34 Emma Lou Thombrough, T. Thomas Fortune: Militant Journalist [Chicago: The University of Chicago, 1972] p. 370
35 Mary Frances Berry, My Face is Black is True: Callie House and the Struggle for Ex-Slave Reparations [New York: Alfred A. Knoff] p. 27
36 Ibid p. 28
37 Op. Cit., (Berry) p. 78
38 Mary Frances Berry, John W. Blassingame. Long Memory: The Black Experience in America [New York: Oxford University Press, 1982] pp.406.
39 Review by Michael Vorenberg “My Face is Black Is True: Callie House and the Struggle for Ex-Salve Reparations,” [NationTime, Summer 2008]p. 18
40 Ibid, P.18
41 Op. Cit., (Berry) p. 52
42 Walter R. Vaughan, Vauhgan’s A Freedman’s Pension Bill [Freeport, New York: Books For Libraries Press, 1971] pp.33.
43 Mari Jo Buhle, Paul Buhle and Dan Georgakas, Encyclopedia of the American Left [New York: Oxford University Press, 1998] pp. 417-419
44 Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery [ ] and Louis R. Harlan, Booker T. Washington: The Wizard of Tuskagee, 1901-1915 [New York: Oxford University Press, 1983] pp 295-458
45 Jacqueline Jones Royster (ed.) Southern Horrors and other Writings: The Anti-Lynching Campaign of Ida B. Wells, 1892-1900 [Boston: Bedford Books, 1997]
46 Lea E. Williams, Servants of the People, [New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1998] pp 4
47 Nell Irvin Painter, Exodusters [New York: W. W. Norton & company, 1986] pp. 108-117
48 Edward W. Blyden, Christanity, Islam and The Negro Race [Baltimore, MD: Black Classic Press, 1991] pp. i-xv
49 Wilson, Jeremiah Moses, edited, introduction, Destiny and Race: Selected Writings, 1840-1898, Alexander Crumell [Massachusetts: The University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, 1992]
50 Amy Alexander, Fifty Black Women Who Changed America [Seaucus, NJ: A Birch Lane Press Book, 1999] pp. 35, 38
51 Edwin S. Redkey, Black Exodus [New Haven: Yale University Press] pp 24-46
52 John Hope Franklin, George Washington Williams: A Biography [Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1961] pp xvi, introduction
53 Gale Ahrens (ed.) Lucy Parsons: Freedom, Equality and Solidarity: Writings and Speeches 1878-1937 [Chicago: Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company, 2004] p. 169
54 W. E. B. DuBois, The autobiography of W. E. B. DuBois [New York: International Publishers, David Levering Lewis, W. E. B. DuBois: Biography of a Race: 1868-1919 [New York: A John MaCrae Book, 1993, David Levering Lewis, W. E. B. DuBois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919-1963 [New York: A John Macrae/Ciy Book, 2000]
55 Elliot Rudwick, W.E.B. DuBois: Propagandist of Negro Protest [New York: Antheneum Press, 1972] p. 23
56 Ibid., p. 23
57Columbus Salley, The Black 100 [Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1993] p. 19
58Henry Moon, The Emerging Thought of W.E.B. DuBois [New York: Simon and Shuster, 1972] p. 20
59 ibid., p. 22
60 Op. Cit. (Elliot Rudwick) p. 96
61Ibid., p. 118
62Edgar Toppin, A Biographical History of Blacks in America Since 1528 [New York: David McKay Co., Inc., 1971] p. 285
63 Ibid., p. 285
64 Stephen R. Fox, The Guardian of Boston: William Monroe Trotter [New York: Athenaeum, 1970] p. 140
65 Louise Daniel Hutchinson, Anne J. Cooper: A Voice from the South [Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1982] p. 187
66 Carson Clayborne, Emma J. Lobsansky-Werner, Gray B. Nash, African-American Libes: The Struggle for Freedom [New York: A Lisa Drew Book, 2001] p. 231
67 A; Lelia Bundles On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker [New York: A Lisa Drew Book, 2001] p 231
68 Earl Ofari, A Black Radicalism in the 19th Century, Black Scholar Vol.5, No.5 [February, 1994], pp.5.
69Florette Henri, Black Migration Movement North, 1900-1920 [Garden City, New York: Anchor Press Doubleday, 1975] pp.17
70 Amy Jacques Garvey, Garvey and Garveyism [New York:Collier Books, 1963] pp.40.
71 Interview with Queen Mother Audley Moore, New York, March 1975. (Queen Mother Moore joined the UNIA, Garvey Movement in New Orleans in 1919)
72 Robert Brisbane, The Black Vanguard [Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 1970] pp.97.
73 Jeff Henderson, A. A.Philip Randolph and the Dilemmas of Socialism in the United States, 1917-1941, ARace and Class, No. XX, 2-pp.143.
74 Kevin K. Gaines, Uplifting the Race: Black Leadership Politics and Culture in the Twentieth Century [Chapel Hall: The University of North Carolina Press, 1996] pp. 234-260
75p. 33
76 John G. Jackson, Hubert Henry Jackson, The Black Socrates [Austin: American Atheist Press, 1987] p. 4
77 J. A. Rogers, World’s Great Men of Color: Volume II [New York: MacMillan, 1947] p. 433
78 Ibid. p. 434
79 Mari Jo Buhle, Paul Buhle, Dan Georgakas (ed.) Encyclopedia of the American Left [Chicago: St. James Press, 1998] p. 292
80 Ibid. p. 4
81 Wilfred David Samuels, Five Voices in American Culture, 1917-1929: Hubert H. Harrison, Wilfred A. Domingo, Richard B. Moore, Cyril Briggs, and Claude McKay (Ph.D. The University of Iowa, 1977: Dissertation Abstracts International Volume: 38-07 unpublished) p. 54
82 Ibid. p. 61
83 Mari Jo Buhle, Paul Buhle, Dan Georgakas, Encyclopedia of the American Left [Chicago: St. James Press, 1992] p. 292
84 Op. Cit., (Winfred David Samuels) p. 67
85 Ibid., p. 70
86 Op. Cit., (Samuels) p. 73
87 Op. Cit., (John G. Jackson) p. 5
88 Op. Cit., (Samuels) p. 75
89 Op. Cit., (Rogers) p, 434
90Wiiliam Seraile, “Ben Fletcher, I.W.W. Organizer, Pennsylvania History 46 (1979) p. 214
91Ibid
92 Op. Cit. (p. 217)
93 Peter Cole, Ben Fletcher: the Life and Times of a Black Wobbly [Chicago: Charles H. Kerr Publishing company 2007] p. 9
94 Fellow worker Ben Fletcher a Legacy of Solidarity P. http://www.iww.org/culture/biography/benfletcher____
95 Op. Cit. (Cole), p. 19
96 Ben Fletcher, “The Task of Local 8 The Marine Transport Workers of Philadelphia”, printed in the Messenger 3 (October 1921): 262-63, from Peter Cole, Ben Fletcher: The Life and Times of a Black Wobbly [Chicago: Charles H. Kerr Publishing company, 2007] p. 90
97 Ibid., p. 21
98 Op. Cit. (Servaile) p. 228
99 Op. Cit. (Cole) p. 30
100 Will Haygood, “Keeping the Faith”, Winter 1998, American Legacy pp. 26
101 Martin Kilson, “Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.: The Militant”, August Meier, ed., Black Leaders of the Twentieth Century, [Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1982, p. 269]
102 Ibid, pg. 269
103 Charles H. Loeb, The Future is Yours [Cleveland, Ohio: Future Outlook League, May 1, 1947] pp. 82
104 Paula F. Pfeffer, A. Philip Randolph, Pioneer of the Civil Rights Movement [Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1990] pp. 8
105 Dorothy C. Salem, The Journey: A History of the African American Experience [Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, 1997] pp. 298
106 Philip Foner, Organized Labor and the Back Worker, 1619-1981 [New York: International Publishers, 1982] p. 177
107 Ibid, p. 178
108 William Harris, Keeping the Faith: A. Philip Randolph, Milton P. Webster and The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (1925-1937) England: University of Illinois Press, 1977] p. 35
109 Op. Cit., (Philip Foner) p. 179
110 Op. Cit., (Philip Foner) p. 182
111 Ibid., p. 182
112 Ibid., p. 184
113 Ibid., (Foner)
114Harry Haywood, Black Bolshevik [Chicago:Illinois Liberator Press, 1978] pp.123.
115 Scott Ellsworth, Death in a Promised Land: The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press 1982] and Michael D’Orso, Rosewood: Like Judgment Day [New York: Boulevard Books, 1996]
116 W. Burghardt Turner and Joyce Moore Turner (ed), Richard B. Moore, Caribbean Militant in Harlem: Collected Writings 1920-1972 [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988] pp 27-68
117 Harry Haywood, Black Bolshevik: Autobiography of an Afro-American Communist [Chicago Illinois: Liberator Press, 1978] pp. 391-415
118Theodore G. Vinent, Black Power and the Garvey Movement [San Francisco: Ramparts Press, 1971]
119Ibid, pp.77.
120Herbert Apthecker, ed., A Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States, 1910 - 1932, Vol.II [Secaucus, New Jersey: The Citadel Press, 1973], pp.413 -420.
121R. Halliburton, Jr., AThe Tulsa Race War of 1921, AJournal of Black Studies, Vol. 2, No.3 [March 1972], pp.333.
122 A Programme of the African Blood Brotherhood, The Communist Review, Vol.2, No. 6 [April 1922], pp.453 -454
123 Harry Haywood, Black Bolshevik [Chicago: Liberator Press, 19078], pp.124.
124 Ibid.
125 Mark Maison, Marxism and Black Radicalism in America: The Communist Party Experience pamphlet.
126Martin O. Ijere, W.E.B. BuBois and Marcus Garvey as Pan Africanists: A Study in Contrast, Prescence African, No. 89, 1st Quarterly 1974, pp.188-206.
127 Clarence Norris and Syril D. Washington, The Last of the Scottsboro Boys: An Autobiography [New York: A. P. Putnam’s Sons 1979] p. 17-63
128 Susan Altman, The Encyclopedia of African American Heritage [New York: Facts on File, Inc., 1997] p. 183
129 Ibid, pp. 148, 149
130 Martin Duberman, Paul Roberson: A Biography [New York: The New Press, 1989] pp. 351-404
131 Ron Ramdin, Paul Robeson: The Man and his Mission (New York: Peter Owen Publishers) p. 31
132 Ibid., p. 32
133 Ibid., p. 30
134 Edwin Embree, Thirteen Against the Odds (Port Washington: The Viking Press, 1944) p. 248
135 Op. Cit. (Columbus Salley) p. 95
136 Ibid., p 97
137 Ibid., p. 95
138 Ibid., p. 95
139 Ibid., p96
140 Ibid., p. 96
141 Lloyd Brown, Paul Robeson Rediscovered (New York: The American Institute for Marxist Studies, 1976) p. 9
142 Bid., p. 14
143 Ibid., p. 14
144 Op. Cit., (Columbus Salley) p. 98
145 Joyce A. Hanson, Mary McLeod Bethune and Black women Political Activism [Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2003] pp. 56-205
146 Karl Evenzz, The Messenger The Rise and Fall of Elijah Muhammad [New York: Pantheon Books, 1999] pp. 73-112
147 Robert H. Brisbone, The Black Vanguard [Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 1970] pp.137.
148 Louise D. Freeman, AJohn O. Holly and The Future Outlook League, Renaissance Magazine, February, 1990, pp.15 -18, Kimberley L. Phillips, Alabama North: African-American Migrants, Community and Working-Class Activism in Cleveland, 1915- 45 [Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999]