The Black Jacobins

C. L. R. James was born January 4, 1901, in Trinidad. In 1918 James received his teaching certificate from Queens Royal College. One of his pupils, Eric Williams, was later the first Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago. During the 1930s and after World War II, he covered cricket for the Manchester Guardian. In 1938 James came to the United States, but he was deported fifteen years later, during the McCarthy era. While interned on Ellis Island, James wrote Mariners, Renegades and Castaways: The Story of Herman Melville and the World We Live In. His other books include Minty Alley, World Revolution, A History of Negro Revolt, Notes on Dialects, and At the Rendezvous of Victory. The United States government allowed James to return in 1970, and became a member of the faculty at Federal City College in Washington. Before his death on May 31, 1989, in London, James was awarded Trinidad and Tobago's highest honor, the Trinity Cross.

Ron Butler is a Los Angeles-based actor and voice artist with over a hundred film and television credits (playing everything from brooding doctors to screwball hipsters). Most kids will recognize him from the three seasons he spent on Nickelodeon's True Jackson, VP. Ron works regularly as a commercial and animation voice-over artist and has voiced a wide variety of audiobooks. He is a member of the Atlantic Theater Company and an Independent Filmmaker Project Award winner for his work in the HBO film Everyday People. Originally from the Bahamas, Ron grew up singing calypso onstage with his father (the country's number-one recording artist) before touring (and recording) in Europe with a jazz band. In his spare time, he impersonates the president while playing the ukulele.