History Talk: The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture & the San Domingo Revolution

2018 is the 80^th year of publication of The Black Jacobins, about the only successful revolution by enslaved peoples in history.  Join Dr. Mychal Matsemela-Ali Odom for a discussion of this timeless classic of revolution and liberation theory, and of C.L.R. James, the political philosopher and giant of the Black radical tradition who wrote it. Co-sponsored with grassroots community organizing group, Pillars of the Community. Presented in conjunction with the 2018 One Book One San Diego selection March by Congressman John Lewis.

Registration encouraged. Please scroll down below.

From the book cover: “This powerful, intensely dramatic book is the definitive account of the Haitian Revolution of 1794-1803, a revolution that began in the wake of the Bastille but became the model for Third World liberation movements from Africa to Cuba. It is the story of the French colony of San Domingo, a place where the brutality of master toward slave was commonplace and ingeniously refined. And it is the story of a barely literate slave named Toussaint L'Ouverture, who led the black people of San Domingo in a successful struggle against successive invasions by overwhelming French, Spanish, and English forces and in the process helped form the first independent nation in the Caribbean, the second independent country in the Americas.

Professor Odom holds a doctorate in history from UC San Diego. His research emphasis is in the history of pan-African and Black internationalist social movements. He is currently working on a book manuscript titled “From Southern California to Southern Africa: Translocal Black Internationalism in Los Angeles and San Diego from Civil Rights to Antiapartheid, 1960 to 1994.” Prof. Odom is currently a postdoctoral fellow in Interdisciplinary humanities at the University of San Diego.