Featuring a new foreword by Robin D. G. Kelley, this updated edition of the classic exploration of the economic inequality that fuels systematic racism, from one of the leading Black public intellectuals of the 19th century, is as timely and radical today as it was when it was first published.

“The preeminent Black journalist of his age” (Henry Louis Gates, Jr., author of The Black Church) and an early agitator for civil rights, T. Thomas Fortune astutely and compellingly analyzes the relationship between capitalism and racism in the United States. He reveals that the country’s racial hierarchy has been part of our national fabric since the first European set foot here and is rooted in a much larger system of economic exploitation. He argues that in order for the United States to realize its founding ideals and end racial discrimination, this system must be dismantled, reparations made, and labor fairly remunerated.

Fortune’s passionate analysis and radical vision of the United States will force you to rethink what America could have been if his arguments had been heeded in the 1880s and what must be done for us to move forward as a unified nation.