Black Liberation Movement Research Articles

Africana Political Theory as Decolonial Critique

ABSTRACT This article illuminates a fundamental problem at the core of canonical political theory: the racialization of knowledge. It contends that the history of canonical thought as being necessarily Western and, therefore, European American, means the emergence of epistemic racism produces enormous consequences for the practice of philosophical thought—namely, Africana political theory (APT). Thus, this article raises important questions such as the colonization of reason, as well as the ongoing relationship between political theory and race, such that the specter of anti-black racism manifests and becomes intertwined with the foundations of the canon. Ultimately, the article proffers APT as decolonial critique to complicate and expand the parameters of philosophical practice. The overall consequences for the discipline, its students, and its practitioners actualize an ongoing movement for black liberation.

Close to Home: Suburbanization, Residential Segregation, and Jewish-Black Relations in St. Louis Park and North Minneapolis, MN

This study examines the suburbanization of Minneapolis’ Jewish community during the postwar period, focusing on the ethnic enclave of North Minneapolis and the Jewish ethnoburb of St. Louis Park. It argues that as part of this process, Jewish leaders adopted a strategy of self-discipline, in which they would go to extraordinary lengths to ensure that instances of Jewish racism and other actions that threatened the community’s White, middle-class, and liberal image did not become public knowledge. Minneapolis Jews’ liberal ideology and self-disciplinary practices clashed with the increasingly public and confrontational tactics of the city’s Black liberation movement, facilitating a series of conflicts between Blacks and Jews in the neighborhood during the late 1960s. Jews, conditioned by postwar liberalism not to see how institutional racism affected their Black neighbors, interpreted these conflicts through the same lens they had applied to their experiences with prewar anti-semitism.

Peaceful Strategy to Black National Question in Ralph Ellison’s Juneteenth

This article analyzes the theme of Black national liberation as it appears in Ralph Ellison's novel Juneteenth. The study has relevance to probe into the remedies of Black liberation movement in America. The article addresses on the research problems concerning to the black protagonist's inability to identify and deal with an appropriate path that leads the freedom of blacks in American society. The study analyzes the issues through the research approach (methodology) of the Marxist concept of dialectics. According to this theory, the conflict between society's opposing forces is permanent, while any resolution to it is conditional and only temporary. This idea maintains that the key to the liberation of the oppressed nationality and class is the battle against the oppressor nationality and class. One of the novel's two main protagonists, Reverend Hickman, belongs to the oppressed black nationality and class. Hickman seeks to free the downtrodden Blacks from its constraints, but he chooses the incorrect road by making peace with the country's ruling white class. Hickman believes that the battles of Afro-Americans alone cannot end black national oppression; instead, he looks to some heavenly figure from the white race, such as Abraham Lincoln, to grant Afro-Americans their independence, justice, and equality. Bliss was nurtured by Hickman in the hopes that he would become the American equivalent of Abraham Lincoln, but Bliss betrayed Hickman by becoming into the racial baiting white senator Adam Sunraider. Despite Bliss's betrayal, Hickman continues to have faith in Sunraider. The study reveals that this Hickman's message of peaceful approach while dealing with ruling whites keeps the Afro-Americans weak, far from liberating the oppressed black nationality.

Elasticity in twentieth-century sculpture

How can elasticity be applied as an analytical category for the study of sculpture, here especially of the 1970s? The aim of this article is to circumvent binary, gender-bound approaches to materials. It discusses how elasticity moves from representation (Germaine Richier, Olga Jevrić, Naum Gabo) to materiality and medium, such as nylon and rubber/latex (Rosemary Mayer, Senga Nengudi, Eva Hesse, Claes Oldenburg), leaving behind the paradigm of minimalism in favour of eccentric, bodily and sensuous objects. Rosalind Krauss emphasized how in post-war American art, ‘sculpture and painting have been kneaded and stretched and twisted in an extraordinary demonstration of elasticity’. This breaking out of categories can be seen as a sociopolitical figure of thought, for example in Nengudi’s sculptures, where the (female) body is restrained by the material and enmeshed in a social web of heteronormative ideas, but also in the sociopolitical context, such as the Black Liberation Movement and demonstrations against the Vietnam War.

American Defender of One Nigeria: James Meredith, the Nigerian Civil War and the Politics of American Intervention in the Global South

Following the Biafran allegations of genocide against the Nigerian government during the Civil War, pro-Biafran groups emerged in the United States to pressure the American government into political intervention in the form of recognizing the Biafran republic. In response, African-American Civil Rights hero James Meredith counter-balanced the pro-Biafran groups, and advocated for one Nigeria in the United States. By analyzing public speech, correspondences, fact-finding mission reports, congressional hearing testimonies, and oral interviews, this paper examines Meredith’s pro-One Nigeria (Pan-African) activism during the Nigerian Civil War, and promotes a nuanced understanding of the international dimension of the Nigerian Civil War. This study proposes an episode of transnational history of the global black liberation movement of the long sixties, and demonstrates that Meredith’s pro-one Nigeria activism during the Nigerian Civil War was influenced by his background as a Civil Rights leader and his pan-African ideology.

Learnings from Black Liberation System Entanglements Part II: Our experience of system traps

Much of the systems community’s explicit justice work has focused on the ecological crisis of climate, but not as much has been shared about the learnings from other intersectional social justice movements such as racial, gender, disability, LGBTQIA+, indigenous, and economic justice. This is partly because this systems practice work is being done outside of the “expert” systemic design communities. In this paper, I explore an updated understanding of adverse system entanglements, or traps, contextualized to the lived experience and global struggle for Black liberation in conversation with other inextricably entangled struggles (feminist, queer, womanist, mujerista, queer womanist, Latin American liberation, disability, and more). Classical system traps still apply, but they are insufficient to capture our full, lived experience of entanglements. In other words, you can avoid the traditional system traps and still become ensnared in other traps. For there are further, deeper, more insidious traps that work against our justice movements and flows. These shapeshifting traps require that we also are shapeshifting. I highlight learnings we already have, embody, carry, and through which we tell stories to the systemic design community to facilitate inter-ontological and inter-epistemic conversation. This is the second in a short series of papers to explore updated Black Liberation adverse system entanglements (or traps), movements (or interventions), and praxeology (instead of methodology).

Decolonial love as a pedagogy of care for Black immigrant post-secondary students

This paper explores ‘decolonial love’ as a pedagogy of care among 16 first generation Black immigrants enrolled in predominantly White four- year colleges in the United States and Canada. The term ‘decolonial love’ and extensions of this original conceptualization focus on radical self-love and resistance to colonial oppression. Scholars have also connected decolonial love with Black liberation movements. Through a narrative analysis of the Black immigrant student experiences in university, this article uses a decolonial and intersectional approach to explore how higher educational institutions can embrace a radical decolonial praxis. This approach affirms and supports Black identities in a climate of anti-Black racism. The paper will discuss implications for institutions and educators whose aim it is to decolonize their teaching practices.

Pinning down Pan-Africanism: Exploring the Definition(s), Utility, and Durability of an Ideology and the Movements It Engendered

Pinning down Pan-Africanism: Exploring the Definition(s), Utility, and Durability of an Ideology and the Movements It Engendered Kenja McCray Adi, Hakim–Pan-Africanism: A History. London: Bloomsbury, 2018. 297 p. Rabaka, Reiland, ed.–Routledge Handbook of Pan-Africanism. London: Routledge, 2021. 548 p. People are likely to provide a myriad of responses if asked to describe Pan-Africanism. This diversity of perceptions reflects the enduring challenge of defining and discussing the topic. Hakim Adi begins Pan-Africanism: A History by employing a broad understanding of the term as an ideology and the movements it catalyzed. He writes that Pan-Africanism is “the striving for the unity and liberation of Africa and Africans” (p. 221). According to Adi, a single, universally accepted definition has never existed. He goes further, determining that the hazards of pinning some authors down to a definitive meaning stem from the reality that Pan-Africanism has assumed so many different forms over time and space (p. 2). Adi’s conception of its protean and enduring nature dovetails with the central framing of the Routledge Handbook of Pan-Africanism, which is edited by University of Colorado, Boulder Professor of African, African American, and Caribbean Studies, Reiland Rabaka, and contains multiple, adaptable meanings. Both books address the critical need to formulate a clear, concise definition of Pan-Africanism. They also wrestle with conceptions like Ashley D. Farmer’s. A specialist in Black women’s intellectual history, Farmer writes, “the destruction of racism, capitalism, sexism, and homophobia will not come from a uniform idea but rather from the recognition and implementation of the array of political imaginings that those fighting oppression develop.”1 Adi and Rabaka deliberate on several interrelated issues in delineating Pan-Africanism. They examine its durability and [End Page 177] critique its pragmatic expressions from two different but equally useful entry points: a single-authored survey and a multi-authored compilation of essays. Undergraduate professors and scholars of Black liberation movements will appreciate Adi’s Pan-Africanism for its concise survey of a central topic in African and diasporic history, which he covers with appropriate depth. The book emerged from Adi’s experiences as a Professor of History at the University of Chichester in the United Kingdom. Few suitable, up-to-date texts existed for instructors such as himself to assign to undergraduate students. Adi’s interests include the African continent and diaspora, with an emphasis on twentieth-century Britain. His specialization in Africa and the diaspora in Britain gives the book a particular focus on aspects of Pan-African history occurring outside the United States. He decentres both the United States and Whiteness, for example, when discussing the formation of the diaspora (p. 2). In contrast to Adi’s succinct survey, the term “handbook” is a misnomer for Rabaka’s hefty tome of detailed essays. With 36 chapters, it could be more precisely identified as a compendium on Pan-Africanism. A strength of this approach is that, like Adi’s survey, it generally avoids a longstanding tendency within the literature on Pan-Africanism to emphasize diasporic countries (especially the United States) and metropolitan cities in the West instead of centring continental African locales and Global South perspectives. The Handbook sidesteps this pitfall, in part, by showcasing diverse voices hailing from Kampala to Mexico City. When read together, these two books cover a breadth of subjects at the intersections of Pan-Africanism, race, class, gender, sexuality, politics, economics, and culture. Adi delineates Pan-Africanism by outlining two major phases. The first era began during the transatlantic trade with the concerted endeavours of eighteenth-century African-descended activists in the diaspora to either end the trafficking and enslavement of Africans or to emigrate to the continent. This initial period ended with the 1945 Manchester Pan-African Congress (PAC). Adi identifies the second phase as one during which “Pan-Africanism returns home” to the continent (p. 129). It emerged from anti-colonial struggles, beginning with the post-Second World War period, and ended with the establishment of the African Union (AU) and the reparations movement during the last years of the twentieth century. The way Adi organizes his chapters reveals a shorter, thematically driven periodization...

Queer Hostages for Hanoi

Abstract This memoir of peace activism in the United States in the early 1970s, as the Vietnam war was drawing to a close, focuses on the difficulties of sustaining an effective anti-war campaign. It describes several key protests: sit-ins outside the Senate chamber in Washington, after one of which the writer was briefly jailed; the attempt to secure the Nobel Peace Prize for all those Americans who refused to fight in Vietnam; and in particular a keenly debated and eventually unsuccessful initiative, led by sexual dissidents, to enlist prominent Americans to travel to Hanoi to deter American bombing of the North Vietnamese capital. Based on his own experiences and recollections, Martin Duberman discusses the overlap between the peace movement, the emerging gay and feminist movements, and the sporadic attempts to ally with the Black liberation movement. He speculates, as well, about the overall effectiveness of the anti-war movement in helping to bring the disastrous conflict in Vietnam – which claimed more than two-million lives – to a close.

Nadine Gordimer’s July’s People: An imagined Postapartheid South Africa

Through aspects of style in July’s People, Nadine Gordimer provides a dystopian critique of the fallacious ideas and the oppressive patterns inherent in the apartheid regime and unfolds a utopian vision of post-apartheid South Africa. Wrapped in a futuristic narrative mode, the events in the novel examine the lying and dying days of apartheid and its harsh realities and imagine the life of whites in the postapartheid era. The analysis demonstrates that using irony, symbols, and allegory, the author rebukes power differentials, and primitive conditions born from racial hierarchy but also unveils the hypocrisy of white liberals, foregrounded in the representation of the black liberation movement. In doing so, the discussion elaborates on power dynamics and the forging of new identities and roles, with the Smales accommodated by their black servant, July. As a finale, the study argues that Gordimer hints at the future of whites after the demise of apartheid, and draws the contours of the anticipated society, with possible avenues for fairer interpersonal relations, a redefinition of power structures, and a redistribution of economic opportunities. This is, for the writer, an ineluctable road to the building of a new nation, symbolized by the Smales’ children’s immersion into village life, the only gleam of hope for a post-revolutionary rebirth.

The Burning House: Revolution and Black Art

In a 1961 radio discussion about Black art and its relationship to Black nationalism, Lorraine Hansberry asked: “Is it necessary to integrate oneself into a burning house?” James Baldwin quoted Hansberry in The Fire Next Time without citing her—words that circulated widely in the Black liberation movement. Variously attributed to Malcolm X, Baldwin, and King, Hansberry’s role in this literary political genealogy has been unacknowledged. She was riffing on Malcolm X’s idea of Islam as a “flaming fire.” But he also developed his parable of the master’s house on fire after Baldwin quoted Hansberry’s words, using the burning house as a symbol of revolution, class struggle, and the relationship between property and citizenship rights in a racial capitalist system. That Malcolm X influenced the Black Arts Movement is widely acknowledged, but he also read, listened to, and conversed with leftist artists, writers, and intellectuals that influenced the development of his own thought and rhetoric. This article explores the call and response between these intellectuals, their critique of integration, and call for a radical Black art—looking at Hansberry’s seminal contribution to these debates.

The Uses of Mourning

The Uses of Mourning

No privacy, no peace: Urban surveillance and the movement for Black lives

ABSTRACT In mid-2020, the movement for Black liberation reached a new stage after the murder of George Floyd generated unprecedented urban protests against racial injustice. Two years on, these appeals have not translated into widespread policy change. We analyze the movement’s relationship to the U.S. state, focusing on state surveillance of the movement. To grasp this, we consider four distinct but intersecting historical processes: first, the long-standing repression of Black people by the U.S.; second, a political shift in the management of urban protest after September 11, 2001; third, the rapid enhancement of technological means for surveillance; and fourth, the emergence of an evolved political form of authoritarianism since ca. 2009. The political economic conjuncture of these processes is not conducive to the movement for Black lives. This movement, and the campaign to reduce state surveillance, are therefore interdependent struggles for collective liberation.

Black Sisterhood in Gloria Naylor’s The Women of Brewster Place

This article examines the concept of Black Sisterhood employed in the novel, The Women of Brewster Place by Gloria Naylor. The novel exemplifies the mystical relationship between women supporting each other despite shouldering their own burden. Throughout the novel, the oppressions confronted by the black women have been dealt with authentically and the ways they find to overcome is elaborated. Considering the conditions and situations of the women in the novel, it is evident that they are triply marginalized. Black Feministic Movement and other Black Liberation Movements certainly have a telling effect on the novel’s plot construction. This article attempts to bring out the true definition of the established ideology Black Sisterhood and its application in the novel.

Black Lives Matter at School: Using the 13 Guiding Principles as Critical Race Pedagogies for Black Citizenship Education

Traditional notions of civic education often introduce privilege and reproduce Eurocentric notions of citizenship. Proponents of cultural citizenship champion Black cultural knowledge, and critical race pedagogies to help marginalized individuals, including students of color, actualize their agentic selves. This manuscript presents three vignettes to demonstrate how teachers implemented the Black Lives Matter at School's 13 Guiding Principles to develop Black cultural citizenship with students. Three salient aspects emerged: (1) the need for students to be active contributors in the current movement for Black liberation; (2) a call to support students unlearning and relearning Black history; and (3) instruction that provides opportunities for students to recognize and challenge systems of oppression.

We Are Everywhere: Protest, Power, and Pride in the History of Queer Liberation

We Are Everywhere: Protest, Power, and Pride in the History of Queer Liberation

Black in Time: How #BlackLivesMatter Reorients the Human

This essay discusses how Black Lives Matter activists make meaning in relation to history, temporality, and anti-Blackness in the Western world. It analyzes the modalities through which these activists frame resistance, paying particular attention to the movement’s attempts to, in the words of co-founder Alicia Garza, “(re)build the Black liberation movement” (2014) through Black feminist epistemologies. By looking at how the movement pushes against antiBlackness intersectionally through in-person and digital and protests and in popular culture, we might come to understand why it has garnered global significance in reshaping past conceptions of what it means to be “human.”

Living at the Margins: Black Feminist Pedagogy as Transformative Praxis During the 1980s-1990s and Epistemic Exclusion in the 21st Century—Where Do We Go Now?

In this essay I argue that Black women who teach Black feminist pedagogy experience “epistemic exclusion” (Buchanan, 2020) while advocating for the intersections between three disparate contexts: their activism in their communities, the women’s movement, and their work as educators in postsecondary settings. The period examined is the 1980s–1990s. I consider the institutional challenges and limitations Black women have undergone as knowledge producers and teachers. While pushing the boundaries erected between university settings and the Black liberation movement taking place in their communities (Joseph, 2003), they were limited to a precarious status as Black women teaching within White-male dominated institutions. The trailblazing theoretical pedagogical insights Black feminists have advanced in their work as educators in postsecondary settings is discussed at length. Additionally, connections are made to the present-day struggle among Black feminists for inclusion within contemporary educational contexts (Evans-Winters & Piest, 2014; Mogadime, 2002, 2003; Wane, 2009, 2011).

Beleidsdiskriminasie, verandering en entrepreneurskap: Beperkte politieke regte vir "Kleurlinge" in Suid-Afrika tot 1979

Hierdie artikel kontekstualiseer, verduidelik en beoordeel die ontwikkeling van politieke regte vir "Kleurlinge" in Suid-Afrika, tot 1979. Dit word gedoen vanuit die teoretiese perspektief van beleidsentrepreneurs wat verskillende persoonlike, professionele en ander sosiale netwerke tot hulle beskikking gebruik om direkte beleidsbeïnvloeding te doen. Die artikel skets eers kortliks die teoretiese uitgangspunte en kenmerke van beleidsentrepreneurskap en -netwerkbeïnvloeding en som dan die ontwikkeling van politieke regte vir die "Kleurlingge-meenskap" in die land op, tot PW Botha die leierskap van die Nasionale Party oorgeneem het. Die artikel kontekstualiseer en fokus veral op die aanloop tot en die afloop van die Erika Theron-kommissie, wat 'n direkte rol gespeel het by die uiteindelike instelling van 'n fun-damentele nuwe staatsbestel in die land. Die ondersoek illustreer die toepassing en impak wat doelgerigte individuele beleidsentrepreneurskap en -netwerkbeïnvloeding deur strategies geposisioneerde individue, groepe en netwerke op fundamentele samelewingsverandering kan hê. Dit illustreer en staaf verder die belangrike kumulatiewe effek wat beide interne en eksterne politieke druk op beleidsverandering kan hê. Dit het belangrike implikasies vir huidige en toekomstige beleidsaanpassings in Suid-Afrika en in ander demokratiese beleidsveran-deringsprosesse.

Translating Race on the French Stage

Translating Race on the French Stage