Spending more than 200 years this book is a revolutionary, politically charged narrative history, arguing that the " global South" was crucial to the development of America as we know it. Scholar and activist Paul Ortiz shows how placing African American, Latinx, and Indigenous voices unapologetically front and center transforms US history into one of the working class organizing against imperialism. Drawing on Rich narratives and primary source documents, Ortiz links the struggles of African American civil rights activist fighting Jim crow laws, of Mexican Labor organizers warring against capitalism, of abolitionist, end of Latin American revolutionaries, revealing the radically different ways people of the diaspora have addressed issues still plaguing the US today.

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Aconcise, alternate history of the United States “about how people across the hemisphere wove together antislavery, anticolonial, pro-freedom, and pro-working-class movements against tremendous obstacles.”

In the latest in the publisher’s ReVisioning American History series, Ortiz (History/Univ. of Florida; Emancipation Betrayed: The Hidden History of Black Organizing and White Violence in Florida from Reconstruction to the Bloody Election of 1920, 2005, etc.) examines U.S. history through the lens of African-American and Latinx activists. Much of the American history taught in schools is limited to white America, leaving out the impact of non-European immigrants and indigenous peoples. The author corrects that error in a thorough look at the debt of gratitude we owe to the Haitian Revolution, the Mexican War of Independence, and the Cuban War of Independence, all struggles that helped lead to social democracy. Ortiz shows the history of the workers for what it really was: a fatal intertwining of slavery, racial capitalism, and imperialism. He states that the American Revolution began as a war of independence and became a war to preserve slavery. Thus, slavery is the foundation of American prosperity. With the end of slavery, imperialist America exported segregation laws and labor discrimination abroad. As we moved into Cuba, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico, we stole their land for American corporations and used the Army to enforce draconian labor laws. This continued in the South and in California. The rise of agriculture could not have succeeded without cheap labor. Mexican workers were often preferred because, if they demanded rights, they could just be deported. Convict labor worked even better. The author points out the only way success has been gained is by organizing; a great example was the “Day without Immigrants” in 2006. Of course, as Ortiz rightly notes, much more work is necessary, especially since Jim Crow and Juan Crow are resurging as each political gain is met with “legal” countermeasures.

A sleek, vital history that effectively shows how, “from the outset, inequality was enforced with the whip, the gun, and the United States Constitution.”

-Kirkus Review

While this book is not in fact an African American and Latinx history of the US, it's worth reading.

The first half focuses on the inspiration Black people in the US drew from liberation movements across Latin America, and the support they espoused for all anti-imperialist efforts. Latinx people (that is, US residents of Latin American extraction) hardly make an appearance until the second half, which concentrates mostly on unionization efforts that brought African Americans and Latinx people together.

There are too many great books on the African American experience for me to list, but to learn about Latinx history I strongly recommend Our America: A Hispanic History of the United States, and Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America, two excellent (and complementary) books. ( )