How is the Black Lives Matter relevant to socialism today? Allen Ruff talks with historian William P. Jones to discuss his Jacobin Magazine article reappraising Eugene V. Debs on the struggle for black equality. Written 10 years ago and recently republished, the article’s relevance still stands with the Black Lives Matter movement and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist.
Jones is a history professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a specialist on race and class in the 20th century. He is also the author of The March on Washington: Jobs, Freedom and the Forgotten History of Civil Rights and The Tribe of Black Ulysses: African American Lumber Workers in the Jim Crow South.