“No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them. Nobody is going to teach you your true history, teach you your true heroes, if they know that that knowledge will help set you free.” — Assata Shakur

This Black August, we will gather to read and discuss four books that challenge the ways we think about our world, about Blackness, about Hawai‘i, and our places in the midst of all of it.

The White Pacific: US Imperialism and Black Slavery in the South Seas after the Civil War by Gerald Horne (2007)

Worldwide supplies of sugar and cotton were impacted dramatically as the U.S. Civil War dragged on. New areas of production entered these lucrative markets, particularly in the South Pacific, and plantation agriculture grew substantially in disparate areas such as Australia, Fiji, and Hawaii. The increase in production required an increase in labor; in the rush to fill the vacuum, freebooters and other unsavory characters began a slave trade in Melanesians and Polynesians that continued into the twentieth century. The White Pacific ranges over the broad expanse of Oceania to reconstruct the history of "blackbirding" (slave trading) in the region. It examines the role of U.S. citizens (many of them ex-slaveholders and ex-confederates) in the trade and its roots in Civil War dislocations. What unfolds is a dramatic tale of unfree labor, conflicts between formal and informal empire, white supremacy, threats to sovereignty in Hawaii, the origins of a White Australian policy, and the rise of Japan as a Pacific power and putative protector. It also pieces together a wonderfully suggestive history of the African American presence in the Pacific.

Facilitator: Dr. Ethan Caldwell

Dr. Ethan Caldwell is an assistant professor in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. He is an interdisciplinary African American specialist from a mixed race background who focuses on how members of the Black diaspora construct conceptions of Blackness, race, and empire throughout their experiences in the Pacific. His research interests include the Black Diaspora in Oceania, Black-Asian relations, mixed race studies, militarism, and visual culture. In his current book project, he focuses on post-WWII intersections in Okinawa as they impact constructions of race, gender, empire, and Blackness abroad, analyzing how these dynamic constructions are historically and visually formed, challenged, and impacted through interactions between African American soldiers and Okinawan civilians. His photography projects include collaborative exhibits that analyze war, historical memory, and foodways.

$5 suggested donation to help defray the costs of the space