Gerald Horne (born January 3, 1949) is an American historian who holds the John J. and Rebecca Moores Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston.
Background
Gerald Horne was raised in St. Louis, Missouri. After his undergraduate education at Princeton University, he received his Ph.D. from Columbia University and a J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.
Career
Horne holds the John J. and Rebecca Moores Chair of
History and African American Studies at the University of Houston.
He was a contributing editor of Political Affairs magazine.[ "Gerald Horne", Political Affairs.]
Politics
In 1992, Horne was a candidate for United States Senate on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket.
Writing
Horne has published extensively on W. E. B. Du Bois and has written books on neglected episodes of world history including Hawaii and the Pacific.
He writes about topics he perceives as misrepresented struggles for justice; in particular
communism struggles and struggles against
imperialism,
colonialism,
fascism,
racism, and
white supremacy. Horne is a Marxist.
Much of his work highlights and analyzes specific individuals in their historical contexts, including figures such as the
Blacklisting Hollywood screenwriter John Howard Lawson,
Ferdinand Smith (a
-born communist, sailor, labor leader, and co-founder of the National Maritime Union), and
Lawrence Dennis, a man described as "the brains behind American fascism".
While many of Horne's books use an individual as a prism to inspect the historical forces of their times, Horne has also produced broad canvas chronicles of infrequently examined periods and aspects of the history of white supremacy and imperialism. For example, he has written on the post-civil war involvement of the US ruling class—newly dispossessed of human chattels—in relation to slavery in Brazil, which was not legally abolished until 1888.
One of Horne's more notable claims is that the American Revolution was, contrary to conventional Marxist theory which identifies it as a bourgeois revolution, a counter-revolution whose primary goal was to counteract the anticipated abolition of slavery in the British Empire. Horne has applied this framework of counter-revolution to other conflicts as well, including the Glorious Revolution (in his account, a revolt of merchants seeking to overcome the Royal African Company's regulations on slavery), the Texas Revolution (a rebellion against the Mexican government's anti-slavery stance and ambivalence to the presence of indigenous peoples), and the American Civil War. According to David Waldstreicher, Horne's framework aims to develop a "grand theory of US history" as a series of devastating counter-revolutions which continue into the present.
Manning Marable has said: "Gerald Horne is one of the most gifted and insightful historians on racial matters of his generation."[ NYU Press. ]
Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Horne published an article, placing the blame for the conflict on the United States and NATO:
Historiography in and for the radical tradition
At the
Black Women and the Radical Tradition conference held at the
Brooklyn College Graduate Center for Worker Education, in a session devoted to Shirley Graham Du Bois, he said:
In a speech given at an event marking the depositing of the Communist Party USA archives at the Tamiment Library at New York University,
From 2013 to date, Horne has discussed his historical, socio-economic and political research findings in a series of conversations with Paul Jay.
Works
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Black and Red: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Afro-American Response to the Cold War. SUNY Press (1986)
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Communist Front? The Civil Rights Congress, 1946–1956. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press (1987)
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Black Liberation/Red Scare: Ben Davis and the Communist Party. University of Delaware Press (1994)
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Fire This Time: The Watts Uprising And The 1960s. Da Capo Press (1997)
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From the Barrel of a Gun: The United States and the War against Zimbabwe, 1965–1980. University of North Carolina Press (2000)
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Class Struggle in Hollywood, 1930–1950 : Moguls, Mobsters, Stars, Reds and Trade Unionists. University of Texas Press (2001)
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Race Woman: The Lives of Shirley Graham Du Bois. New York University Press (2002)
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(2004)
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Black and Brown: African Americans and the Mexican Revolution, 1910–1920. New York University Press (2005)
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The Final Victim of the Blacklist: John Howard Lawson, Dean of the Hollywood Ten. University of California Press (2006)
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Cold War in a Hot Zone: The United States Confronts Labor and Independence Struggles in the British West Indies. Temple University Press (2007)
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The White Pacific: U.S. Imperialism and Black Slavery in the South Seas After the Civil War. University of Hawaii Press (2007)
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The Deepest South: The United States, Brazil, and the African Slave Trade. New York University Press (2007)
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Blows Against the Empire: U.S. Imperialism in Crisis. International Publishers (2008)
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Red Seas: Ferdinand Smith and Radical Black Sailors in the United States and Jamaica. New York University Press (2009)
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Mau Mau in Harlem?: The U.S. and the Liberation of Kenya. Palgrave MacMillan (2009)
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The Color of Fascism: Lawrence Dennis, Racial Passing, and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism in the United States. New York University Press (2009)
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W.E.B. Du Bois: A Biography. Greenwood Press (2009)
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The End of Empires: African Americans and India. Temple University Press (2009)
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Fighting in Paradise: Labor Unions, Racism, and Communists in the Making of Modern Hawaii. University of Hawaii Press (2011)
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Negro Comrades of the Crown: African Americans and the British Empire Fight the U.S. Before Emancipation. New York University Press (2013)
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Black Revolutionary: William Patterson & the Globalization of the African American Freedom Struggle. University of Illinois Press (2013)
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The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America. New York University Press (2014)
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Race to Revolution: The U.S. and Cuba during Slavery and Jim Crow. Monthly Review Press (2014)
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Confronting Black Jacobins: The U.S., the Haitian Revolution and the Origins of the Dominican Republic. Monthly Review Press (2015)
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Paul Robeson: The Artist as Revolutionary. Pluto Press (2016)
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The Rise and Fall of the Associated Negro Press: Claude Albert Barnett's Pan-African News and the Jim Crow Paradox. University of Illinois Press (2017)
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Storming the Heavens: African Americans and the Early Struggle for the Right to Fly. Black Classic Press (2017)
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Facing the Rising Sun: African Americans, Japan, and the Rise of Afro-Asian Solidarity. New York University Press (2018)
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. Monthly Review Press (2018)
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Jazz and Justice: Racism and the Political Economy of the Music. Monthly Review Press (2019)
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White Supremacy Confronted: U.S. Imperialism and Anti-Communism vs. the Liberation of Southern Africa from Rhodes to Mandela. International Publishers (2019)
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. Monthly Review Press (2020)
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The Bittersweet Science: Racism, Racketeering, and the Political Economy of Boxing. International Publishers (2020)
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The Counter-Revolution of 1836: Texas Slavery & Jim Crow and the Roots of U.S. Fascism. International Publishers (2022)
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Revolting Capital: Racism & Radicalism in Washington D.C., 1900-2000 International Publishers (2023)
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Armed Struggle? Panthers and Communists; Black Nationalists and Liberals in Southern California through the Sixties and Seventies International Publishers (2024)
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The Capital of Slavery: Washington, D.C. 1800-1865 International Publishers (2025)
See also
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List of African-American United States Senate candidates
External links
- Recorded speeches and interviews
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On The Global Civil Rights Struggle at the conference, The Long Civil Rights Movement: Histories, Politics, Memories, given by the Southern Oral History Program, April 2–4, 2009 (Video)
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On Shirley Graham Du Bois at the Graduate Center for Worker Education at Brooklyn College (Video)
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On the Red Scare and the Hollywood Blacklist on NPR
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Horne challenges the mainstream narrative of US history (August 2014). Six-part discussion, The Real News ( all TRNN segments)
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"Counter-Revolution of 1776": Was U.S. Independence War a Conservative Revolt in Favor of Slavery? on Democracy Now!, June 27, 2014
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The Summit of the Americas in the Context of US Imperialism (April 2015). "Scholar and activist Gerald Horne traces modern-day US foreign policy in Latin America to its colonial roots." The Real News
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Police Killings Won't Stop Until U.S. Comes to Grips with its Racist Foundations The Real News. July 8, 2016.
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Historian: "You Can't Disconnect History of the 2nd Amendment From the History of White Supremacy" on Democracy Now!, July 12, 2016 ( all DN! segments)
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Appearances on On the Ground radio show
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One Historian's Journey 2011 essay in The Journal of African American History
