“Independence Day” for Who?

Published: July 2, 2020, 10 p.m.

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker is joined by Dr. Gerald Horne, a professor of history at the University of Houston and the author of many books, including “The Counterrevolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America.”

The successful 1776 revolt against British rule in North America has been hailed almost universally as a great step forward for humanity. But the Africans then living in the colonies overwhelmingly sided with the British. Gerald Horne argues that in the prelude to 1776, the abolition of slavery seemed all but inevitable in London, delighting Africans as much as it outraged slaveholders, and sparking the colonial revolt. The so-called Revolutionary War was in part a counter-revolution, a conservative movement that the founding fathers fought in order to preserve their right to enslave others.