Dr. Gerald Horne Book Release

Dr. Gerald Horne is an African American historian, author, and Communist who currently holds the John J. and Rebecca Moores Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston. He received his PhD from Columbia University and a J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. He is a frequent contributor to Political Affairs magazine.

“Storming the Heavens: African Americans and the Early Fight for the Right to Fly”

The recent Hollywood film Hidden Figures presents a portrait of how African-American women shaped the U.S. effort in aerospace during the height of Jim Crow. In Storming the Heavens, Gerald Horne presents the necessary back story to this story and goes further to detail the earlier struggle of African-Americans to gain the right to fly. This struggle involved pioneers like Bessie Coleman, who traveled to World War I era Paris in order to gain piloting skills that she was denied in her U.S. homeland; and John Robinson, from Chicago via Mississippi, who traveled to 1930s Ethiopia where he was the leading pilot for this beleaguered African nation as it withstood an invasion from fascist Italy, became the personal pilot of His Imperial Majesty, Haile Selassie and became a founder of Ethiopian Airways, which to this very day is Africa’s most important carrier. Additionally, Horne adds nuance to the oft told tale of the Tuskegee Airmen but goes further to discuss the role of U.S. pilots during the Korean War in the early 1950s.

“The Rise and Fall of the Associated Negro Press: Claude Barnett’s Pan-African News and the Jim Crow Paradox”

For more than fifty years, the Chicago-based Associated Negro Press (ANP) fought racism at home and grew into an international news organization abroad. At its head stood founder Claude Barnett, one of the most influential African Americans of his day and a gifted, if unofficial, diplomat who forged links with figures as diverse as Jawaharlal Nehru, Zora Neale Hurston, and Richard Nixon. Gerald Horne weaves Barnett’s fascinating life story through a groundbreaking history of the ANP, including its deep dedication to Pan-Africanism. An activist force in journalism, Barnett also helped send doctors and teachers to Africa, advised African governments, gave priority to foreign news gathering, and saw the African American struggle in global terms. Yet Horne also confronts Barnett’s contradictions.

EVENT
Gerald Horne – Book Signing
Esowon Books
4331 Degnan Blvd, Los Angeles
Saturday. Oct 7
4:00 PM