Gerald Horne

Gerald Horne (born January 3, 1949) is an American historian who currently holds the John J. and Rebecca Moores Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston.
Background.
Gerald Horne was raised in St. Louis, Missouri. After undergraduate education at Princeton University he received his Ph.D. from Columbia University and a J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Father of Flora Horne.
Career.
Horne holds the John J. and Rebecca Moores Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston.
Horne is a frequent contributor to "Political Affairs" magazine.
Writing.
Horne has published on W. E. B. Du Bois and has written books on neglected but by no means marginal or minor episodes of world history. He writes about topics he perceives as misrepresented struggles for justice, in particular communist struggles and struggles against imperialism, colonialism, fascism, racism and white supremacy. A Marxist, individuals whose lives his work has highlighted in their historical contexts have included the blacklisted Hollywood screenwriter John Howard Lawson, Ferdinand Smith (a Jamaican-born communist, sailor, labor leader, and co-founder of the National Maritime Union), and Lawrence Dennis, an African American fascist and racist who passed for white.
While many of Horne's books use a celebrated, intriguing or politically engaged individual as a prism to inspect the historical forces of their times, Horne has also produced broad canvas chronicles of infrequently examined periods and aspects of the history of white supremacy and imperialism such as the post-civil war involvement of the US ruling class—newly dispossessed of human chattels—with slavery in Brazil, which was not legally abolished until 1888, or the attempts by Japanese imperialists in the mid-20th century to appear as the leaders of a global war against white supremacy, thus allies and instruments of "liberation" for people of color oppressed by imperialism.
Manning Marable has said: "Gerald Horne is one of the most gifted and insightful historians on racial matters of his generation."
Historiography in and for the radical tradition.
At the "Black Women and the Radical Tradition" conference held at the Brooklyn College Graduate Center for Worker Education, in a session devoted to Shirley Graham Du Bois, he said:
In a speech given at an event marking the depositing of the Communist Party USA archives at the Tamiment Library at New York University, Horne remarked at length on the writing of history, its importance, and what he perceives as the grievous proliferation of propagandistic historiography in the US:
In August 2014, "The Real News" posted a series of six interviews, "Reality Asserts Itself" conducted by Paul Jay with Horne.