ONEIL CANNON:
The Story of a Radical Black Printer
Published by Candace Wolf
ONEIL CANNON. His life spanned the years 1917 to 2017. He was Los Angeles’ first African-American member of the International Typographical Union (ITU). Oneil’s print shop became a headquarters for community activism—a school for youth—and would eventually generate the Paul Robeson Center, a multi-cultural oasis in South Central Los Angeles. If there was a Cause, Oneil was in the center of it; his love for people was both human and revolutionary. In the telling of Oneil Cannon’s story, there is also the story of the community of South-Central Los Angeles and its people who struggled to overcome racist neglect and racist policing; and there is the story of courageous Communist rank and file people who stood by the community even through the darkest days of the Red Scare Witch Hunts. This is a very readable book that will make you laugh, cry, and want to fight for justice the way Oneil spent his life.
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“This is a book that, of course, strikes close to home for me. I don’t believe I’ve ever read a book that deals with this history from the people who lived through it. Was there ever a bigger or more compelling story that needed to be told! Oneil never missed an opportunity to educate, to inform people about the world they lived in… All these voices passing through his life made me feel that he is still very much alive, still teaching and informing. He, and all those other great people who stood their ground, who never wavered and relentlessly fought for all those great truths have been rendered invisible by the powers in our society. Through your great work you have opened a window to another side of our history and freed that incredible, personal story for all to see. Through these great interviews you have humanized the politics of those times which have forever been a kind of “third rail,” a place you are never supposed to go to. In a world that I call “fast food books” it is so great to read a book of such substance and truth…”
—Robert Rinaldo (son of Fred Rinaldo, the blacklisted co-screenwriter of the Abbot & Costello films)