C.l.r. james american civilization pdf

January 4, 1901 to May 31, 1989

As an historian, cultural critic, and intellectual, Cyril Lionel Robert James internationalized Pan-Africanist ideas while making contributions to global Leftist political thought.

After speaking to Martin Luther King in 1957, James wrote his colleagues that the Montgomery bus boycott was “one of the most astonishing events of endurance by a whole population that I have ever heard of” (James, 25 March 1957).

James was born on 4 January 1901, in Port of Spain, Trinidad, and educated at the Queens Royal College.

He worked in the fields of journalism, academia, and politics, but was particularly concerned with black independence movements and the politics of colonialism.  In 1938, he published his influential book, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution, a study of the slave revolts that led to the independence of Haiti.

That same year, James left England for the Unite