Introduction by Scott McLemee
The Caribbean writer and revolutionary C.L.R. James and his family hosted Martin Luther King, Jr. and his wife in London in 1957. The following day, James wrote an account of their discussion that circulated among his comrades in Correspondence, a small Marxist group in the United States that published a newspaper of the same name. Much of the text is self-explanatory, but it is worth clarifying a few references and matters of context first.
Someone at the FBI probably read the letter before its intended recipients. C.L.R. James had visited the United States on a lecture tour shortly after the publication of The Black Jacobins (1938); he also made a side trip to Mexico for a series of discussions with Leon Trotsky focused mainly on the African-American liberation struggle. Overstaying his visa in the U.S., he eventually drew the combined attentions of the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the FBI.
In 1953 he was effectively deported as an undesirable (meaning, left-wing) alien. After that, his political co-thinkers in the U.S. remained under surveillance — as did the young Rev. King beginning with the Montgomery bus boycott (December 1955-December 1956).
https://solidarity-us.org/a-visit-with-martin-luther-king-jr/
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Caribbean Great, CLR James - Part 1 of 2
C. L. R. James is one of the twentieth-century's most important radical intellectuals. C. L. R. James (1901-1989) was born and raised in Trinidad and became one of the most prominent figures to emerge out of the West Indian diaspora. He authored numerous books and essays on Caribbean history, Marxist theory, literary criticism, Western civilization, African politics, Hegelian philosophy and popular culture. His best known works, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution, and Beyond a Boundary are classics of twentieth-century thought. James played an active part in democratic movements in the West Indies and Africa as well as in left-wing and Pan-African campaigns in Britain, the United States, and Trinidad.
Caribbean Great, CLR James, Part 2 of 2