An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States
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- $24.99
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- $24.99
Publisher Description
The first intersectional history of the Black and Native American struggle for freedom in our country that also reframes our understanding of who was Indigenous in early America
Beginning with pre-Revolutionary America and moving into the movement for Black lives and contemporary Indigenous activism, Afro-Indigenous historian Kyle T. Mays argues that the foundations of the US are rooted in antiblackness and settler colonialism, and that these parallel oppressions continue into the present. He explores how Black and Indigenous peoples have always resisted and struggled for freedom, sometimes together, and sometimes apart. Whether to end African enslavement and Indigenous removal or eradicate capitalism and colonialism, Mays show how the fervor of Black and Indigenous peoples calls for justice have consistently sought to uproot white supremacy.
Mays uses a wide-array of historical activists and pop culture icons, “sacred” texts, and foundational texts like the Declaration of Independence and Democracy in America. He covers the civil rights movement and freedom struggles of the 1960s and 1970s, and explores current debates around the use of Native American imagery and the cultural appropriation of Black culture. Mays compels us to rethink both our history as well as contemporary debates and to imagine the powerful possibilities of Afro-Indigenous solidarity.
Includes an 8-page photo insert featuring Kwame Ture with Dennis Banks and Russell Means at the Wounded Knee Trials; Angela Davis walking with Oren Lyons after he leaves Wounded Knee, SD; former South African president Nelson Mandela with Clyde Bellecourt; and more.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
The Black Lives Matter movement may have exploded during the 21st century, but its roots go back hundreds of years. Kyle T. Mays’ eye-opening book lays out an African American– and Indigenous-focused history of the United States. The historian traces his own Black and Saginaw Chippewa ancestry, uncovering the ways that these communities’ struggles evolved and coexisted from prerevolutionary America to present day. Mays isn’t afraid to hit on some discomfiting insights, like how civil rights leaders in the 1960s largely excluded Indigenous Americans from their quest for equality. There are some hard truths in An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States—the kind we can’t afford not to know.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Mays (Hip Hop Beats, Indigenous Rhymes), a professor of African American studies and American Indian studies at UCLA, delivers an accessible and informative look at "the links, both solidarities and tensions, between people of African descent and Indigenous peoples in the United States." He notes that enslaved African labor and expropriated Indigenous land fueled the nation's rapid rise in the 18th and 19th centuries, and explains how the ideology of white settler colonialism shaped the ways in which Black and Indigenous peoples viewed each other. For instance, Black civil rights leaders including W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, and James Baldwin espoused the need for progress for marginalized peoples while perpetuating the myth of the vanishing Native American, according to Mays. In the 1960s and '70s, the Black Power and Red Power movements brought Black and Indigenous peoples together in protest and gave rise to cross-cultural appreciation, which continues in the contemporary Black Lives Matter and Natives Lives Matters movements. Mays's colloquial voice (he refers to Du Bois as "a bad dude") enlivens the often-distressing history, and he draws on his Black and Saginaw Chippewa ancestry to buttress his call for greater solidarity between African Americans and Native Americans. This immersive revisionist history sheds light on an overlooked aspect of the American past.
