Climbing Jacob's ladder

"Climbin' Jacob's Ladder collects for the first time the writings of Jack O'Dell and restores one of the great unsung heroes of the civil rights movement to his rightful place in the historical record. Jack O'Dell's early experiences of race and class conflict in the U.S. Merchant Marines during World War II, his anti-racist organizing in the National Maritime Union and in the Jim Crow South of the 1940s and 1950s, his voter registration campaigns with Martin Luther King, Jr. in the early 1960s, his anti-war and international solidarity work with the Rainbow Coalition during the 1970s and 1980s - these stories illuminate what is often missing from conventional narratives of the effort to secure racial justice in the United States." "A member of the outlawed Communist Party in the 1950s, consistently redbaited throughout his long social justice career, O'Dell shows in his life and writings that the black freedom movement was longer in duration and more radical and international in scope than typically understood. Historian Nikhil Pal Singh gathered and edited the essays for this volume and provides an introduction to a nearly forgotten figure whose life and work were central to the development of several decades of anti-racist struggle and remain relevant today."--Jacket.