A major work in the Black Communist tradition by worker-intellectual Harry Haywood, now in a new edition featuring a foreword by Dr. Rebecca Hall and an introduction by Dr. Charisse Burden-Stelly.
In 1948, Harry Haywood, a leading member of the Communist Party USA, published Negro Liberation, a pathbreaking book that lays out his argument that the Black Belt South constitutes a distinct nation and an internal colony of U.S. imperialism. Applying a Marxist-Leninist lens to questions of nationalism, colonialism, and land distribution, Haywood lays out the dire stakes of Jim Crow violence and oppression and critiques the emptiness and insufficiency of liberal solutions. Along the way, he makes a powerful case for Black self-determination.
Framed by Rebecca Hall’s moving meditation on her father’s legacy and Charisse Burden-Stelly’s clear-eyed case for how Haywood reveals the contradiction between ruling-class politics and Black liberation today, this new edition of Negro Liberation is a must-read for anyone fighting against oppression.
Harry Haywood (1898–1985) was a leading member of the Communist Party of the United States.
Charisse Burden-Stelly is associate professor of African American studies at Wayne State University and the author of Black Scare / Red Scare: Theorizing Capitalist Racism in the United States. She lives in Detroit.
Rebecca Hall, JD PhD is an independent scholar, activist, and educator. Her paternal grandparents were born enslaved and she is the daughter of Harry Haywood. Dr. Hall writes and publishes on the history of race, gender, law, and resistance as well as articles on climate justice and intersectional feminist theory. She is a graduate of Swarthmore College, Berkeley Law, and University of Santa Cruz.
Her most recent book, Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts (Simon & Schuster, 2021) has won multiple awards, and was a finalist for the N.A.A.C.P. Image Awards and the Pen America Open Book Award. Wake has been listed as a Best Book of 2021 by NPR and The Washington Post, Forbes, Ms. Magazine, and has been released in eight languages. She has been a fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute (2022-23) The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and The Stanford Humanities Center 2023-24). Her work has been supported by numerous grants and fellowships.
ISBN: 9798888904633
Publication date: January 27, 2026
Foreword by Dr. Rebecca Hall
Introduction by Dr. Charisse Burden-Stelly
Preface
Appendix
Index
“Thanks to Haymarket’s timely re-release, Negro Liberation will have a second life, not as a newly discovered relic but as a provocation for thinking about our current struggles. The lesson is clear: The future of American democracy and the prospects for dismantling imperialist capitalism rest in the hands of a working-class-led Black liberation movement.” —Robin D. G. Kelley
"All interested in the destiny of the Black Liberation Movement and the struggle for socialism in the U.S. should welcome this edition of this classic text by the justly heralded 'Black Bolshevik' himself, Harry Haywood. The value of this marvelous and stimulating volume is enhanced by the moving words of his daughter, Rebecca Hall, and the fighting antifascist spirit of the rising star: Charisse Burden-Stelly." —Gerald Horne, author and historian
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