31 May 1989: CLR James dies

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31 May 1989: CLR James dies

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On this day, 31 May 1989, CLR James, Trinidadian Marxist and author of The Black Jacobins, the definitive history of the Haitian Revolution, as well as other texts on class, colonialism and cricket, died aged 88 in Brixton, London.
As a young man he joined the movement against British colonialism, and later moved to England and became cricket correspondent for the Manchester Guardian, forerunner to the Guardian newspaper.
He lived in the US for a time, where alongside Raya Dunayevskaya and Grace Lee Boggs (pictured L-R), he formed the influential Johnson-Forest Tendency. Returning to Britain, he continued to write fiction and non-fiction, including a history of the Ghanaian revolution, until his death at home.
We have some of his works available here: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/all/c-l-r-james

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