Ending British Rule in Africa: Writers in a Common Cause

Manchester University Press, US Distribution by Palgrave  2009

On the eve of World War II, a small, impoverished group of Africans and West Indians in London dared to imagine the unimaginable: the end of British rule in Africa. In books, pamphlets, and periodicals, they launched an anti-colonial campaign that used publishing as a pathway to liberation. West Indians George Padmore, C. L. R. James, and Ras Makonnen; Kenya’s Jomo Kenyatta and Sierra Leone’s I. T. A. Wallace Johnson made their point: that colonial rule was oppressive and inconsistent with the democratic ideals Britain claimed at home.

Reviews

History Workshop Journal: “Ending British Rule in Africa is a path-breaking book. Polsgrove’s excavation of one rich seam of the black presence in British print culture, and her exploration of some of the often underground networks of ‘black internationalism’ in and around the imperial metropole, is an important advance.” As an inspirational account of the achievements of the Pan-Africanists around Padmore, it serves too as a reminder of the even deeper historical excavations needed to bring to light a host of lesser-known black anti-colonial thinkers and activists, of which at present we have only tantalising glimpses.”

Reviews in History: “excellent book…invaluable.”

20th Century British History: “a novel approach to both black British histories and the histories of anti-imperialism and pan-Africanism.”

The Journal of African History: “provides valuable new information on the relationship between these writers, their diverging opinions, and the personal antagonisms that grew up between them over decades….As a journalist herself, Polsgrove pays attention to the practical details of relations between agents, publishers, and editors – an aspect of writing that she notes is too often ignored in intellectual histories.”

Divided Minds: Intellectuals and the Civil Rights Movement

W.W. Norton 2001

Reviewed by The New Yorker: “Between 1954, when the Supreme Court declared segregated schools unconstitutional, and the mid-sixties, when Congress passed civil-rights and voting-rights bills, American academics and writers were invited to opine on race relations. In this brisk and understated account, Polsgrove shows that, with a few brave exceptions, whites told blacks to be patient rather than risk white Southerners’ violence. Editors were slow to call on black thinkers, and, in the McCarthy era, racists found support for their argument that desegregation was a Communist plot. In 1960, the sit-ins staged by black students interrupted the timid debate, and, soon after, James Baldwin’s New Yorker essay ‘Letter from a Region in My Mind’ gave condescending white intellectuals a sense of black anger and suffering.” (Copyright © 2001 The New Yorker)

Excerpts:  on Howard Zinn, on Ralph Ellison

It Wasn’t Pretty Folks, But Didn’t We Have Fun: Surviving the 60s with Esquire’s Harold Hayes

RDR Books (paper), W.W. Norton (hardback) 1995

“Indispensible” – Jack Shafer, Slate

“Captivating” – Chicago Tribune

“Fascinating”–Booklist

“The most intense history of a magazine I have ever read”–Nutty, Dry, and  a Hint of Vanilla

Reporting Civil Rights, Parts One and Two

Editorial advisory board: Clayborne Carson, David J. Garrow, Bill Kovach, and Carol Polsgrove

Library of America 2003

The Enduring Book: Print Culture in Postwar America

Edited by David Paul Nord, Joan Shelley Rubin, Michael Schudson

University of North Carolina Press 2009

Carol Polsgrove, “Magazines and the Making of Authors”

David Abrahamson, Carol Polsgrove: “The Right Niche: Consumer Magazines and Advertisers”

Selected articles

“A Historic Day in West Virginia: March on Blair Mountain,” Counterpunch

“Reflections on the Baby Track and the Tenure Track,” Berkeley Daily Planet

“Silencing Voices for Racial Change During the 1950s,” Nieman Reports

“Where this Road Has Led Us–and How We Can Turn Around,” Berkeley Daily Planet

“Bloomington Bulldozer: Indiana DOT Shoves I-69 Down College Town’s Throat,” Huffington Post

Use the contact form below to write to Carol Polsgrove.