We Are Internationalists: Prexy Nesbitt and the Fight for African Liberation

by Martha Biondi

Explores forgotten solidarity with African liberation struggles through the life of Black Chicagoan Prexy Nesbitt.
 
For many civil rights activists, the Vietnam War brought the dangers of US imperialism and the global nature of antiracist struggle into sharp relief. Martha Biondi tells the story of one such group of activists who built an internationalist movement in Chicago committed to liberation everywhere but especially to ending colonialism and apartheid in Africa.
 
Among their leaders was Prexy Nesbitt. Steeped from an early age in stories of Garveyism and labor militancy, Nesbitt was powerfully influenced by his encounters with the exiled African radicals he met in Dar es Salaam, London, and across the United States. Operating domestically and abroad, Nesbitt's cohort worked closely with opponents of Portuguese and white minority rule in Mozambique, Angola, and South Africa. Rather than promoting a US conception of Black self-determination, they took ideas from African anticolonial leaders and injected them into US foreign policy debates.
 
The biography of a man but even more so of a movement, We Are Internationalists reveals the underappreciated influence of a transformative Black solidarity project.

319 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 11, 2025

Reviews

[Sarah Schulman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating book- through the lens of Prexy Nesbitt, the author Martha Biondi exposes the strengths and difficulties of international solidarity work. This example of US- and particularly African-American-solidarity with southern African liberation movements- we can extrapolate many relevant insights to the contemporary US movement in solidarity with Palestine. The experience of having your counterparts murdered, of seeing enforced starvation imposed with the money and intention of the US government, negotiating factions that may not be entirely legible, racial (or in the contemporary case, religious) difference among solidarity activists, all of these questions are relevant and enlightening to exam historically. And the ultimate success of divestment in the fight against South African apartheid shows us that our current demands for divestment from Israeli holdings are winnable because that have already been achieved. A provocative and mind opening book.

[Grace · Rating 5 out of 5]

obviously was gonna be 5 stars, but I was struck by 1. How familiar some of this felt, and 2. Even more so- how much I thought of Uncle James in this book. Even though he’s not mentioned (except for the photo on p.112) I feel like I was meeting him and his work for the first time as an adult. I do think about him all the time in my own organizing, so this felt like a way to connect with him about it.