In Third Worlds Within, Daniel Widener expands conceptions of the struggle for racial justice by reframing antiracist movements in the United States in a broader internationalist context. For Widener, antiracist struggles at home are connected to and profoundly shaped by similar struggles abroad. Drawing from an expansive historical archive and his own activist and family history, Widener explores the links between local and global struggles throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. He uncovers what connects seemingly disparate groups like Japanese American and Black communities in Southern California or American folk musicians and revolutionary movements in Asia. He also centers the expansive vision of global Indigenous movements, the challenges of Black/Brown solidarity, and the influence of East Asian organizing on the US Third World Left. In the process, Widener reveals how the fight against racism unfolds both locally and globally and creates new forms of solidarity. Highlighting the key strategic role played by US communities of color in efforts to defeat the conjoined forces of capitalism, racism, and imperialism, Widener produces a new understanding of history that informs contemporary social struggle.

Daniel Widener is Professor of History at the University of California, San Diego, and author of Black Arts West: Culture and Struggle in Postwar Los Angeles, also published by Duke University Press.

Vijay Prashad is the Executive Director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, and the author of numerous books.

Foreword / Vijay Prashad  ix
A Note on Terminologies of Race and Place  xiii
Acknowledgments  xv
Introduction: The Dream of a Common Language  1
Part I. Communities
1. The Afro-Asian City: African American and Japanese American Los Angeles  33
2. An Art for Both My Peoples: Visual Cultures of Black and Brown Unity  61
Part II. Cultures
3. People’s Songs and People’s Wars: Paredon Records and the Sound of Revolutionary Asia  91
4. Many Fronts, One Struggle: Visual Histories of Indigenous Radicalism  113
Part III. Campaigns
5. The Korea Blues: Black Dissent during the Korean War  175
6. Continent to Continent: Black Los Angeles against Apartheid  203
Epilogue: On the Current Conjuncture  235
Notes  241
Bibliography  307
Index  347