One of those rare leaders on the American left who appealed to both blacks and whites, George Breitman helped lay the foundations for one of the most remarkable developments of American political history after World War II: the brief but promising relationship between black liberationist Malcolm X and the Trotskyist Socialist Workers' Party (SWP). As the founder of the SWP, Breitman developed an early interest in the Black Nationalist movement and viewed African Americans as potentially the vanguard of an American proletarian revolution (the "third revolution" after the War of Independence and the emancipation of the slaves following the Civil War). After the death of Malcolm X, Breitman was responsible for saving the black leader's speeches and bringing them to millions of readers worldwide. As a leader of American Trotskyism for almost fifty years, Breitman was also the editor of the definitive fourteen-volume collection of the writings of Leon Trotsky.

Now Anthony Marcus has brought together for the first time in one volume a representative selection of George Breitman's works, along with four new critical essays about his contributions to the American left and to the Civil Rights movement. The popularly presented essays and speeches in this carefully chosen selection are highly readable and come from every period of Breitman's life as an activist and scholar. They range from his emergence in the 1930s and 1940s as a leader of the "unemployed movement," founder of the Socialist Workers Party, and editor of their national weekly, The Militant, to his work as a party organizer, trade unionist, antiracist leader in Detroit during the 1950s and 1960s, and his final struggle in the 1970s and 1980s against the political and organizational degeneration of the SWP.

This valuable collection of the key writings of a leading figure on the radical American left provides a unique view into important social movements and major events of 20th-century American history.