Written by Scott Nearing after his 1928 national tour in support of the Communist Party presidential campaign, this is searing, heavily illustrated and documented look at the economic and political landscape of Black America. It also represents Nearing’s evolution in thinking; from a supporter of Booker T. Washington, to a Debsian ‘non-racist’, to an advocate of A. Philip Randolph’s campaign, to this embrace of Black nationhood. The book was rediscovered in the late Civil Rights movement and for many years has remained a valuable source on conditions of that time.

Black America by Scott Nearing. The Vanguard Press, New York. 1929.

Contents: Introduction, PART ONE MAN STEALING) Labor Shortage, Black Slaves, The Slave Trade, 4500000 Negroes in 1863, PART TWO AN OPPRESSED RACE) Negroes on the Land, The Black Belt, Land Ownership, Wages and Income, Living Conditions, Centers of Economic Power, Negroes in Industrial Centers, The Negro Goes to Town, Job Finding for Negroes, Economic Discrimination, Negro Centers in Industrial Cities, Economic Penalties of Blackness, Keeping Negroes in Their Place, The Color Line, Race Superiority, Consciousness of Blackness, Segregation, Lynch Law, A Subject Race, PART THREE THE NEGRO STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM) The Black Man’s Burden, The Farce of Political Democracy, Runaways, Reaching for Power, Breaking the Economic Shackles, List of Important Facts, Books Cited, Index. Over 150 photographs, with graphs and maps. 280 pages.

Scott Nearing (1883-1983) was a left intellectual and prolific writer on a vast array of subjects. He came to prominence for his outspoken rejection of World War One, a pacifist position he retained his whole life. Joining the Socialist Party and teaching at the Rand School, Nearing was indicted, like so many leftists, under the Espionage Act. Nearing was deeply sympathetic to the Bolshevik Revolution, though he remained in the SP until 1923. His pacifism meant his application to join the Communist Party was at first rejected, though he eventually became a Party member writing for the Daily Worker until he left/was expelled in 1930. Nearing remained a committed left activist and writer, even after ‘going back to the land’ and embracing vegetarianism in the 1930s. He traveled and wrote widely in the post-World War Two era of the Socialist Bloc. Nearing’s work and ideas gained new interest with the New Left, and he was prominent as an elder of the pacifist anti-Vietnam War movement and has a column in Monthly Review. He is the author of well over 100 books and pamphlets.

PDF of full book: https://www.marxists.org/archive/nearing/Black-America_Scott-Nearing.pdf