An African American and Latinx History of the United States

Some books about history become more relevant as time passes. This is the case with Professor Paul Ortiz’s book, “An African American and Latinx History of the United States.” Ortiz documents the ignored and hidden history of African American and Latinx leadership and participation in the American and international struggles for labor and human rights. Today, with the scapegoating of the Latinx community by the Trump administration, it is important to recognize the role of the Latinx community in the struggle to end racism.

The book focuses on the organizing and leadership of African Americans and Latinx in the struggle to become full participants in the economic and political life of America. And Ortiz also tells the other side of the story of the ways white Americans have stood in the way of those aspirations. Before briefly discussing three ways I see the book as important and relevant, I want to say something about Paul Ortiz.

Professor Paul Ortiz is an academic, a professor who previously taught at the University of Florida. There he did those things that a good university professor does to help students gain the skills of critical thinking and research based on collecting data. He was the Director of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program. That program taught students to collect and use oral histories from people who have lived experiences to describe or who have heard stories from previous generations.

During the summers he organized field trips for students to collect oral histories. In 2021, he led a group that went to Elaine, Arkansas. While Ortiz was there he not only used it as an opportunity for students to meet with individuals and collect their stories, but he also participated in a community meeting. He told me that the meeting with residents of Elaine was the best discussion he has participated in about the meaning and justification for reparation.

Ortiz is not only a professor, he is an activist. His experiences in the military and as an organizer are at the heart of his writing including “An African American and Latinx History of the United States.” As a young organizer in California he and his future wife went to jail together in support of agricultural workers. While he was at the University of Florida he was the president of the United Faculty of Florida at UF (FEA-AFL-CIO), the union that represents tenured and nontenure-track faculty.

Here are three overlooked issues that strike me as particularly relevant with the Trump administration’s focus on rounding up Latinx people to expel them.. These issues illustrate the importance of bringing Black and Latinx history out of the shadows and into the center of what Americans know about American history.

First, Ortiz puts the experience of Blacks and Latinx people into the context of the Constitution and the Electoral College. In the first chapter he writes, 

“The Electoral College was a check on the rights of ordinary people to directly elect the president, as well as a guarantee that Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe would protect their fellow Virginia plantation owner’s interests for the first decades of the nation’s history.” 

For all of American history the Electoral College has been a “check on the rights of ordinary people” (p. 12).

In 2024, presidential candidates talked about the election process. Donald Trump questioned the security and truthfulness of election outcomes and Joe Biden said the election was about “saving democracy.” Both overlooked the role of the Electoral College in deciding who is president.

The first two times Trump ran for president, he lost the popular vote. Yet, the system of the Electoral College allowed him to become president in 2016. Otiz’s exposure of the history of all the “checks on the rights of ordinary people” is a clear call for those who are anti-racist to address the ways that rights are denied, starting with reforming the Electoral College. This provides an opportunity for a serious national discussion about what kind of a process we want as Americans so that we elect the leaders we want. 

Second, Ortiz reminds us that African American and Latinx Americans have offered perspectives and ideas for America’s future that have been ignored and worse. A telling example is the struggles for workers and civil rights leading up to the 1960s. In his chapter “Emancipatory Internationalism vs. the American Century, 1945 to 1960s,” Ortiz describes how, after World War II, the interests of American global capitalism, using the power of the American military, captured the American government. African American and Latinx workers and leaders had a very different vision. They understood their struggle for human rights in America as part of an international struggle for global human rights and global economic prosperity. The 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom is usually remembered in white history as if the message was only a desire for white and Black children to happily play together. But the dream was much bigger. In 1963, A. Philip Randolph helped organize the march. By then, he was a veteran human rights organizer. As early as 1924, “he pointed out the need for American Blacks to join with Blacks everywhere and present a solid front against the imperialists of every land” (p. 113).

Third, Ortiz’s book shows that throughout American history, whites have not been making history while African Americans and Latinx people were helpless bystanders. As one example, Ortiz describes the role of enslaved people in the success of the north in the Civil War. Over the years, Lincoln has become the “Great Emancipator.” However, it isn’t quite so. Without the actions of thousands of enslaved people, there would have been no emancipation. As the war started, there was a mass exodus of enslaved people from the south to the north. W.E.B. Du Bois called this the “first national general strike in US history” (p. 69). This refusal to live and work in the southern slave culture was decisive. As Ortiz explains,

“Without the uprising of the plantation workers, the nation would have been permanently broken in two: they were not merely heroes – they were the saviors of the republic” (p. 69).

The idea of white people doing things for minorities comes out of the historical myth of whites making history. More than that, it is based on a racist perspective that only whites can exercise power. The history that Ortiz describes is one where whites have done everything they could, including using appalling violence, to limit the participation of non-whites in American society.

The most compelling lesson we can learn from the book is Ortiz' summary in the closing sentence. 

“An African American and Latinx history of the United States teaches us that the self-activity of the most oppressed is the key to liberty in the future of the Americas” (p. 184).