The Black radical tradition is a philosophical tradition and political ideology with roots in 20th century

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...

. It is a "collection of cultural, intellectual, action-oriented labor aimed at disrupting social, political, economic, and cultural norms originating in anti-colonial and antislavery efforts." It was first popularised by

Cedric Robinson Cedric James Robinson (November 5, 1940 – June 5, 2016) was an American professor in the Department of Black Studies and the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). He headed the Department of Blac ...

's book '' Black Marxism''. Influential concepts from the Black radical tradition include

abolition Abolition refers to the act of putting an end to something by law, and may refer to: * Abolitionism, abolition of slavery * Abolition of the death penalty, also called capital punishment * Abolition of monarchy *Abolition of nuclear weapons *Abol ...

, racial capitalism, and intersectionality. The Black radical tradition is closely related to anti-colonial, decolonial thought and Marxist

third worldism Third or 3rd may refer to: Numbers * 3rd, the ordinal form of the cardinal number 3 * , a fraction of one third * 1⁄60 of a ''second'', or 1⁄3600 of a ''minute'' Places * 3rd Street (disambiguation) * Third Avenue (disambiguation) * Hig ...

. Prominent figures and movements associated with the Black radical tradition include

W. E. B. Du Bois William Edward Burghardt Du Bois ( ; February 23, 1868 – August 27, 1963) was an American-Ghanaian sociologist, socialist, historian, and Pan-Africanist civil rights activist. Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois grew up in ...

, Malcolm X, the

Black Panther Party The Black Panther Party (BPP), originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, was a Marxist-Leninist and black power political organization founded by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton in October 1966 in Oakland, Califo ...

, Angela Davis, the civil rights movement,

Black feminism Black feminism is a philosophy that centers on the idea that "Black women are inherently valuable, that lack women'sliberation is a necessity not as an adjunct to somebody else's but because our need as human persons for autonomy." Race, gen ...

, Négritude, Afrocentrism, the

Black Consciousness The Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) was a grassroots anti-Apartheid Activism, activist movement that emerged in South Africa in the mid-1960s out of the power vacuum, political vacuum created by the jailing and banning of the African Nationa ...

and Black Power movements; contemporary movements like Black Lives Matter have also been included in the tradition. A prominent Black Radical journal is '' Race & Class''.

Thinkers

Herbert Aptheker Herbert Aptheker (July 31, 1915 – March 17, 2003) was an American Marxist historian and political activist. He wrote more than 50 books, mostly in the fields of African-American history and general U.S. history, most notably, ''American Negro ...

* Ella Baker *

Amiri Baraka Amiri Baraka (born Everett Leroy Jones; October 7, 1934 – January 9, 2014), previously known as LeRoi Jones and Imamu Amear Baraka, was an American writer of poetry, drama, fiction, essays and music criticism. He was the author of numerous bo ...

* Gargi Bhattacharyya *

Steve Biko Bantu Stephen Biko (18 December 1946 – 12 September 1977) was a South African anti-apartheid activist. Ideologically an African nationalist and African socialist, he was at the forefront of a grassroots anti-apartheid campaign known ...

* Amílcar Cabral * Aimé Césaire *

Oliver Cox Oliver Cromwell Cox (24 August 1901 – 4 September 1974) was a Trinidadian- American sociologist noted for his early Marxian viewpoint on fascism. Cox was born into a middle-class family in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago and emigrate ...

Basil Davidson Basil Risbridger Davidson (9 November 1914 – 9 July 2010) was a British journalist and historian who wrote more than 30 books on African history and politics. According to two modern writers, "Davidson, a campaigning journalist whose fir ...

* Angela Davis * Aria Dean * Frederick Douglass *

* Frantz Fanon *

Ruth Wilson Gilmore Ruth Wilson Gilmore (born April 2, 1950) is Prison abolition movement, a prison abolitionist and prison scholar. She is the Director of the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics and professor of geography in Earth and Environmental Sciences at T ...

* Paul Gilroy *

Lewis Gordon Lewis Ricardo Gordon (born May 12, 1962) is an American philosopher at the University of Connecticut who works in the areas of Africana philosophy, existentialism, phenomenology, social and political theory, postcolonial thought, theories of ...

* Stuart Hall * Fred Hampton *

Harry Haywood Harry Haywood (February 4, 1898 – January 4, 1985) was an American political activist who was a leading figure in both the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). His goal was to connect ...

Gerald Horne Gerald is a male Germanic given name meaning "rule of the spear" from the prefix ''ger-'' ("spear") and suffix ''-wald'' ("rule"). Variants include the English given name Jerrold, the feminine nickname Jeri and the Welsh language Gerallt and Iri ...

* George Jackson *

Mumia Abu Jamal Mumia Abu-Jamal (born Wesley Cook; April 24, 1954) is an American political activist and journalist who was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in 1982 for the 1981 murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. While on death r ...

* C. L. R. James *

Claudia Jones Claudia Vera Jones (; 21 February 1915 – 24 December 1964) was a Trinidad and Tobago-born journalist and activist. As a child, she migrated with her family to the US, where she became a Communist political activist, feminist and black national ...

* Robin Kelley * Audre Lorde *

Katherine McKittrick Katherine McKittrick is a Canadian professor and academic, writer, and editor. She is a professor in Gender studies at Queen's University. She is an academic and writer whose work focuses on black studies, cultural geography, anti-colonial and ...

* Achille Mbembe * Mao Zedong *

Fred Moten Fred Moten (born 1962) is an American cultural theorist, poet, and scholar whose work explores critical theory, black studies, and performance studies. Moten is Professor of Performance Studies at New York University and Distinguished Professor ...

* John Narayan *

Huey P. Newton Huey Percy Newton (February 17, 1942 – August 22, 1989) was an African-American revolutionary, notable as founder of the Black Panther Party. Newton crafted the Party's ten-point manifesto with Bobby Seale in 1966. Under Newton's leadershi ...

Kwame Nkrumah Kwame Nkrumah (born 21 September 190927 April 1972) was a Ghanaian politician, political theorist, and revolutionary. He was the first Prime Minister and President of Ghana, having led the Gold Coast to independence from Britain in 1957. An in ...

* Luke De Noronha. * George Padmore * Geronimo Pratt * A Philip Randolph *

* Walter Rodney * Assata Shakur *

Ambalavaner Sivanandan Ambalavaner Sivanandan (20 December 1923 – 3 January 2018), commonly referred to as A. Sivanandan or "Siva", was a Sri Lankan and British novelist, activist and writer, emeritus director of the Institute of Race Relations (IRR), a London-based ...

* Barbara Smith *

Ahmed Sékou Touré Ahmed Sékou Touré (var. Sheku Turay or Ture; N'Ko: ; January 9, 1922 – March 26, 1984) was a Guinean political leader and African statesman who became the first president of Guinea, serving from 1958 until his death in 1984. Touré was am ...

* Kwame Ture * Cornel West * Eric Williams *

Ida B Wells Ida B. Wells (full name: Ida Bell Wells-Barnett) (July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931) was an American investigative journalist, educator, and early leader in the Civil rights movement (1896–1954), civil rights movement. She was one of the foun ...

Robert F. Williams Robert Franklin Williams (February 26, 1925 – October 15, 1996) was an American civil rights leader and author best known for serving as president of the Monroe, North Carolina chapter of the NAACP in the 1950s and into 1961. He succeede ...

* Sylvia Wynter * Malcolm X

References

{{reflist African-American leftism Intersectionality Marxist theory

Thinkers

See also

References