We Are Internationalists

Prexy Nesbitt and the Fight for African Liberation

Martha Biondi

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9780520417724
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: History

Explores forgotten solidarity with African liberation struggles through the life of Black Chicagoan Prexy Nesbitt.
 
For many civil rights activists, the Vietnam War brought the dangers of US imperialism and the global nature of antiracist struggle into sharp relief. Martha Biondi tells the story of one such group of activists who built an internationalist movement in Chicago committed to liberation everywhere but especially to ending colonialism and apartheid in Africa.
 
Among their leaders was Prexy Nesbitt. Steeped from an early age in stories of Garveyism and labor militancy, Nesbitt was powerfully influenced by his encounters with the exiled African radicals he met in Dar es Salaam, London, and across the United States. Operating domestically and abroad, Nesbitt's cohort worked closely with opponents of Portuguese and white minority rule in Mozambique, Angola, and South Africa. Rather than promoting a US conception of Black self-determination, they took ideas from African anticolonial leaders and injected them into US foreign policy debates.
 
The biography of a man but even more so of a movement, We Are Internationalists reveals the underappreciated influence of a transformative Black solidarity project.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Map 1. The Continent of Africa
• Map 2. Southern Africa
• Introduction
• 1. From the West Side to Dar es Salaam: The Roots and Routes of Prexy Nesbitt’s Internationalism
• 2. The Tilt Toward Internationalism: Race and Ideology in the 1970s
• 3. The Global and Local Dimensions of the Anti-Apartheid Struggle
• 4. Our Sophisticated Weapon: The Forgotten Story of Internationalist Mozambique
• 5. Internationalist Chicago and the End of Apartheid
• 6. A Luta Continua: Reflections on Solidarity in a Neoliberal Age
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• Index