Introduction : The Enigma of Arrival -- I. Documents from the Discussions with Leon Trotsky. Preliminary Notes on the Negro Question (1939). Notes Following the Discussions (1939) -- II. Pages from an Organizer's Notebook. "My Friends": A Fireside Chat on the War by Native Son (1940). With the Sharecroppers (1941). The Economics of Lynching (1940). The Race Pogroms and the Negro (1943). White Workers' Prejudices (1945). The Rapid Growth of the NAACP (1947) -- III. The Politics of Culture. On Gone With the Wind (1939-40). On Native Son by Richard Wright (1940). Public Awareness of the Negro Question (1945). Joe Louis and Jack Johnson (1946) -- IV. Towards a Synthesis. The Historical Development of the Negroes in American Society (1943) -- V. Historical Sketches. The Destiny of the Negro: An Historical Overview (1939). Negroes in the Civil War: Their Role in the Second American Revolution (1943). The Two Sides of Abraham Lincoln (1949). The 1919 Race Riots in Chicago (1939).

Marcus Garvey (1940). The Communist Party's Zigzags on Negro Policy (1939). On The Negro in the Caribbean by Eric Williams (1943). Key Problems in the Study of Negro History (1950) -- VI. Aspects of Marxist Theory. Lenin on Agriculture and the Negro Question (1947). From the Master-Slave Dialectic to Revolt in Capitalist Production (1946). Capitalism and the Welfare State (1950) -- VII. After Ten Years. The Revolutionary Answer to the Negro Problem in the United States (1948).