Mumia Abu-jamal's Radio Essays

The Power of History: (Haiti) [col. writ. 8/19/07] (c) '07 Mumia Abu-Jamal Recently, while speaking with a younger journalist, I made mention of several points of Haitian history, and the writer looked at me blankly. Although he was well-read, and had even traveled to Haiti, he hadn't the faintest idea of many of the historical facts to which I made reference. He simply had never read nor heard of them. As a student of history, I recommended he read the work of the late radical scholar-activist, C.L.R. James on Haiti: The Black Jacobins: Toussaint Louverture and the San Domingo Revolution, originally published in 1938. He knew of the book, but he never read it. C.L.R. James was a man of remarkable brilliance, and a man who wore many hats and mastered many skills. His book, The Black Jacobins, is regarded as a masterwork of history, with perhaps the best telling of the story of the Haitian Revolution (at least in English). James, a revolutionary organizer as well as an accomplished scholar