BOOK
Written by E.M.S. Namboodiripad and P. Govinda Pillai, this book is a comprehensive introduction to the political and social theories of Antonio Gramsci.

SPEECH
In this speech, Amilcar Cabral, leader of the liberation movement in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde, described the role of indigenous culture in national liberation movements.

SONG
"Which Side Are You On?" is a historic 1931 American protest song written by activist Florence Reece during the brutal Harlan County, Kentucky coal mining wars. It was a pro-union song challenging workers to choose between joining the union or supporting the mine owners/thugs. Read about the long history of the song here

BOOK
Frances Stonor Saunders investigates how the CIA covertly funded cultural institutions to shape global intellectual life during the Cold War.

ESSAY
In this seminal essay, Langston Hughes argues against white cultural superiority, and asserts a call for Black artists to reject assimilation and embrace the richness of Black cultural expression.

SPEECH
Delivered in 1937, Bertolt Brecht’s "Speech at the Second Congress of Writers for the Defense of Culture" argued that culture is a material, not just spiritual, entity that must be defended against fascism with material weapons, not just intellectual ones.

ESSAY
In this essay, June Jordan argues for a democratic, accessible poetry rooted in everyday people’s lives, positioning culture as a shared and collective practice rather than an elite domain.

ART
A visual collection highlighting how revolutionary Cuba used graphic design as an internationalist tool for political education and anti-imperialist solidarity.

BOOK
Black Panther: The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas is the first book to show the revolutionary and groundbreaking posters and graphics of the Black Panther Party. 

BOOK
Fusing the personal and the political in high-voltage verse, Amiri Baraka was one of the preeminent literary innovators of the past century. This volume comprises the fullest spectrum of his rousing, revolutionary poems, from his first collection to unpublished pieces composed during his final years.

FILM
The Black Power Mixtape 1967–1975 is a 2011 Swedish documentary film directed by Göran Hugo Olsson, that examines the evolution of the Black Power movement in American society from 1967 to 1975, with appearances by Angela Davis, Bobby Seale, Huey P. Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, and other activists, artists, and leaders central to the movement

FILM
This film tells the story of the 1937 staging of Marc Blitzstein's pro-union musical, set against the political battles over the Federal Theatre Project and the collision of art, money, and power in Depression-era America

ART
A visual collection highlighting how revolutionary Cuba used graphic design as an internationalist tool for political education and anti-imperialist solidarity.

Good morning Revolution:
You are the best friend
I ever had….

The Slave Narrative Collection represents the culmination of a literary tradition that extends back to the 18th century, when the earliest American slave narratives began to appear. In 1936 employees of Florida's active black FWP unit, which included the novelist-anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston, interviewed a substantial number of former slaves as an integral part of their quest for indigenous African American folk materials. Check out some of the collection at the Library of Congress website

This stirring collection of Negro spirituals, edited by the great Negro poet James Weldon Johnson and arranged for voice and piano by his brother J. Rosamond Johnson, presents 120 of these melodic -- and intensely moving -- religious folk songs for contemporary performance. The original language has been faithfully preserved in this convenient performing edition, so that the spirituals can be sung today exactly as they were more than a hundred years ago.

“You Are the Un-Americans, and You Ought to be Ashamed of Yourselves”: Paul Robeson Appears Before HUAC

In the following testimony to a HUAC hearing, ostensibly convened to gain information regarding his passport suit, Robeson refused to answer questions concerning his political activities and lectured bigoted Committee members Gordon H. Scherer and Chairman Francis E.Walter about African-American history and civil rights. In 1958, the Supreme Court ruled that a citizen’s right to travel could not be taken away without due process and Robeson’ passport was returned. Read here and listen here

Mary Helen Washington recovers the vital role of 1950s leftist politics in the works and lives of modern African American writers and artists. While most histories of McCarthyism focus on the devastation of the blacklist and the intersection of leftist politics and American culture, few include the activities of radical writers and artists from the Black Popular Front. Washington's work incorporates these black intellectuals back into our understanding of mid-twentieth-century African American literature and art and expands our understanding of the creative ferment energizing all of America during this period.

The photography department’s mission was multi-fold. It relayed uncontestable visual information about the Movement, provided materials for organizing, and acted as a tool for fundraising, as well as worked to capture the “meaningful details of everyday life.” SNCC’s photos documented lived experiences, from rural life to political organizing, and provided stark proof of the brutality of racist violence that those in the Movement faced. The “pictures became organizers…” said Julian Bond,

But the Freedom Singers did more than raise funds; they brought the Movement vividly alive wherever they went. Using songs, “interspersed with narrative, to convey the story of the Civil Rights Movement struggles,” Bernice Johnson explained, “they became a major way of making people who were not on the scene feel the intensity of what was happening in the South.” She described the group as “a singing newspaper” that forced the issue of Black second-class citizenship into public consciousness.

The Hollywood Ten is a 1950 American short documentary film. Shot in 16mm with a runtime of 15 minutes, it was created quickly to raise public awareness and legal funds for the ten screenwriters and directors who comprised the "Hollywood Ten".[1] At the time of filming in April 1950, the ten blacklisted men were facing prison sentences for contempt of Congress stemming from their non-cooperation with the House Un-American Activities Committee 

United Nations, 1960: the Global South ignites a political earthquake, jazz musicians Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach crash the Security Council, Nikita Khrushchev bangs his shoe, and the U.S. State Department swings into action, sending jazz ambassador Louis Armstrong to Congo to deflect attention from the CIA-backed coup. Director Johan Grimonprez captures the moment when African politics and American jazz collided in this magnificent essay film, a riveting historical rollercoaster that illuminates the political machinations behind the 1961 assassination of Congo’s leader Patrice Lumumba. Richly illustrated by eyewitness accounts, official government memos, testimonies from mercenaries and CIA operatives, speeches from Lumumba himself, and a veritable canon of jazz icons, Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat interrogates colonial history to tell an urgent and timely story of precedent that resonates more than ever in today’s geopolitical climate.

You Are the Un-Americans, and You Ought to be Ashamed of Yourselves”: Paul Robeson Appears Before HUAC

In the following testimony to a HUAC hearing, ostensibly convened to gain information regarding his passport suit, Robeson refused to answer questions concerning his political activities and lectured bigoted Committee members Gordon H. Scherer and Chairman Francis E.Walter about African-American history and civil rights. In 1958, the Supreme Court ruled that a citizen’s right to travel could not be taken away without due process and Robeson’ passport was returned. Read here and listen here