Today on Sojourner Truth, a special roundtable as the nation marks the Fourth of July.
We discuss the foundation on which the United States was built. We also discuss what the Fourth of July has meant for the conquered, the U.S. wars with Mexico, the expansion of the United States and Black, Indigenous and Latinx relationships. What is the shared history? What have been the conflicts? As the movement against racism is on the rise, Black Lives Matter protests are now the largest in the history of the United States. How are brown communities addressing anti-Black racism? How are Black communities addressing anti-immigrant sentiment? Does history itself need to be retold reflecting the true history of Black and Brown history?
Our guests are Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, Bill Gallegos and Dr. Gerald Horne.
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz is a historian, author, memoirist, and speaker who researches Western Hemisphere history and international human rights. She is the author of "An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States" and "Roots of Resistance: A History of Land Tenure in New Mexico." Her forthcoming book is "Not 'A Nation of Immigrants': Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion."
Bill Gallegos is a longtime Chicano Liberation and Environmental Justice activist. He is the author of "The Sunbelt Strategy and Chicano Liberation, and Reflections on The Green Economy." He is also the former executive director of Communities for a Better Environment, one of the leading environmental justice organizations in the U.S. Bill recently authored an article entitled "Ethnic Cleansing: A Program of Resistance." He is also the author of the article "The Historical and Political Significance of the US Annexation of Mexico's Northern Territories."
Dr. Gerald Horne, Moores Professor of History & African-American Studies at the University of Houston, has written more than 30 books. His most recently published book is "The Dawning of the Apocalypse: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and Capitalism in the Long Sixteenth Century," published in June 2020. He is also the author of "White Supremacy Confronted: U.S. Imperialism and Anti-communism vs. the Liberation of Southern Africa, From Rhodes to Mandela," "Jazz and Justice: Racism and the Political Economy of the Music," "Facing the Rising Sun: African Americans, Japan and the Rise of Afro-Asian Solidarity," "The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy and Capitalism in Seventeenth-Century North America and the Caribbean," and "Storming the Heavens: African Americans and the Early fight for the Right to Fly."
