Overview

America's ambivalent role in an African liberation struggle In November 1965, lan Smith's white minority government in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) made a unilateral declaration of independence, breaking with Great Britain. With a European population of a few hundred thousand dominating an African majority of several million, Rhodesia's racial structure echoed the apartheid of neighboring South Africa. Smith's declaration sparked an escalating guerrilla war that claimed thousands of lives. Across the Atlantic, President Lyndon B. Johnson nervously watched events in Rhodesia, fearing that racial conflict abroad could inflame racial discord at home. Although Washington officially voiced concerns over human rights violations, an attitude of tolerance generally marked U.S. relations with the Rhodesian government: sanctions were imposed but not strictly enforced, and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of American mercenaries joined white Rhodesia's side in battle with little to fear from U.S. laws. Despite such tacit U.S. support, Smith's regime fell in 1980, and the independent state of Zimbabwe was born. The first comprehensive account of American involvement in the war against Zimbabwe, this compelling work also explores how our relationship with Rhodesia shaped interracial dynarnics in the United States, and vice versa.

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9780807849033

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Excellent. -- The Nation

Excellent. <br> -- The Nation

In the tradition of Walter Rodney, Gerald Horne brilliantly writes black history in a comparative and Pan-African context. From the Barrel of a Gun provides the best historical study to date on the African struggle to overthrow the white minority rule in Zimbabwe. (Manning Marable, Columbia University)

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Gerald Horne teaches at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is author, most recently, of Roce Woman: The Lives of Shirley Graham Du Bois.

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