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Malcolm X arrives in New York City in 1964 after a tour of the Middle East.

Malcolm X and the Difficulties of Diplomacy

In 1964, he toured Africa and the Middle East on a journey that would both transform his outlook and reveal the limits of transnational solidarity.
by Alex White via New Lines on July 19, 2024
Map of routes of the Underground Railroad, 1850-1865

Marronage & Police Abolition

Marronage as a placemaking practice, pointing to histories that shape and inspire abolitionist struggles.
by Elijah Levine, Celeste Winston via Edge Effects on March 14, 2024
Black Panther Party members demonstrating outside the New York County Criminal Court, April 11, 1969.

The Black Radical Tradition Can Guide Our Struggles Against Oppression

Uncovering a tradition of African American radicalism that was—and is—a crucial part of the American left’s history.
by Robin D. G. Kelley, Daniel Denvir via Jacobin on July 6, 2023
Headshot illustration of Angela Davis

‘Hell, Yes, We Are Subversive’

For all her influence as an activist, intellectual, and writer, Angela Davis has not always been taken as seriously as her peers. Why not?
by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor via New York Review of Books on September 1, 2022
Illustration of Hubert Harrison by Joe Ciardiello.

Hubert Harrison, Giant of Harlem Radicalism

A two-volume biography tracks the life and times of one of Harlem’s leading socialists.
by Robert Greene II via The Nation on June 1, 2022
Illustration of Cedric Robinson by Joe Ciardiello.

Cedric Robinson’s Radical Democracy

Rejecting the resignation of the 1970s and ’80s, Robinson found in the disinvested ruins of the city a new egalitarian form of politics.
by Jared Loggins via The Nation on April 18, 2022
Jesse Jackson talking to a Black woman and her children, surrounded by supporters and the press.

The Locked Out

Understanding Jesse Jackson and the radicalism of 1980s Black presidential politics.
by Joshua Myers via Picturing Black History on October 8, 2021
Robin D.G. Kelley

The Future of L.A. Is Here

On L.A. solidarity and the Black radical tradition.
by Robin D. G. Kelley, Vinson Cunningham via Los Angeles Times on March 17, 2021
George Padmore

Black Americans in the Popular Front Against Fascism

The era of anti-fascist struggle was a crucial moment for Black radicals of all stripes.
by Mohammed Elnaiem via JSTOR Daily on November 12, 2020
"Black Panther" comic book cover.

Black Panther and the Black Panthers

Much is at stake in understanding the history and relationship between black superheroes and black revolutionaries.
by Amy Ongiri via Los Angeles Review of Books on June 23, 2018

Coates and West in Jackson

America loves pitting black intellectuals against each other, but today's activists need both Coates and West.
by Robin D. G. Kelley via Boston Review on December 22, 2017

Race and the American Creed

Recovering black radicalism.
by Aziz Rana via n+1 on December 7, 2015
A Black man in a hoodie.

The Hoodie and the Hijab

Arabness, Blackness, and the figure of terror.
by Leah Mirakhor via Los Angeles Review of Books on June 6, 2015
Attica after state police stormed the prison, 1971.

How Should We Remember Attica?

Orisanmi Burton’s "Tip of the Spear" uncovers the obscured and radical demands of the inmates who staged the 1971 prison uprising—a world without prisons.
by Charlotte Rosen via The Nation on May 26, 2025
A contact sheet of portraits of James Baldwin, 1972.

For Those Who Would Be Real

James Baldwin’s testimony in images.
by Harmony Holiday via Harper’s on April 29, 2025
Malcolm X on the newspaper with Jimmy Breslin and Langston Hughes in the background.

How Two of America’s Biggest Columnists Reacted to the Assassination of Malcolm X

What Jimmy Breslin and Langston Hughes failed to imagine.
by Ted Hamm via Literary Hub on February 21, 2025
W.E.B. DuBois, seated in garden reading book, while Shirley Graham DuBois waters plants.

How Black Marxists Have Understood Racial Oppression

Black Marxist thought emphasizes the centrality of capitalism to racial oppression and the destructiveness of that oppression for all workers.
by Jeff Goodwin, Jonah Birch via Jacobin on February 17, 2025
Repeated photo of Ericka Huggins fading in.

How Ericka Huggins and the Black Panther Party Attempted to Liberate Black Women in America

On John Huggins, Angela Y. Davis, and the complex history of an oft-misunderstood political movement.
by Mary Frances Phillips via Literary Hub on January 10, 2025
An artistic collage juxtiposing a transatlantic slave ship with a tenement in Harlem.

How the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Continues to Impact Modern Life

A new Smithsonian book reckons with the enduring legacies of slavery and capitalism.
by Jennifer L. Morgan via Smithsonian on November 7, 2024
"Stayed on Freedom" book cover

A History of Black Power We Need and Deserve

A history that is as tactical as it is analytical, as global as it is local, and as based in love as it is in politics.
by Say Burgin via Monthly Review on November 1, 2024
Sakinah Ahad Shannon.

The Story of Sakinah Ahad Shannon, an Early Hero of Abortion Liberation

Sakinah discovered Chicago’s Abortion Counseling Service, better known as Jane, because she wanted to help a friend. Then she became an essential part of it.
by Renee Bracey Sherman, Regina Mahone via The Nation on October 1, 2024
Communist Party USA members march for unemployed relief during the Great Depression in San Francisco.

Bring American Communists Out of the Shadows — and Closets

In the 20th century, American Communists were seen as an enemy within. In reality, they were ordinary people with complex lives that deserve to be chronicled.
by David Bacon via Jacobin on August 15, 2024
A rally for the 1970 Revolutionary People’s Constitutional Convention hosted by the Black Panthers.

Democracy Was a Decolonial Project

For generations of American radicals, the path to liberation required a new constitution, not forced removal.
by Aziz Rana via Boston Review on May 30, 2024
Nell Irvin Painter.

Nell Irvin Painter’s Chronicles of Freedom

A new career-spanning book offers a portrait of Painter’s career as a historian, essayist, and most recently visual artist.
by Elias Rodriques via The Nation on May 7, 2024
Angela Davis

The AAUP and the Angela Davis Case

Revisiting the AAUP's 1971 UCLA investigation.
by Emily Houh via Academe on April 30, 2024
partner

No Place to Make a Vote of Thanks

On the long tradition of Black third-party activism.
by Marc Blanc via HNN on April 23, 2024
A photograph of Billie Holiday singing.

The Perfectionist Tradition

The African American perfectionists offered “faith” instead of “hope”—emphasizing the struggle to realize a vision of justice.
by William P. Jones via Dissent on February 6, 2024
Nicki Minaj and the autobiography of Malcolm X written by Alex Haley.

It’s Bigger Than Hip-Hop

We cannot understand the last fifty years of U.S. history—certainly not the first thing about Black history—without studying the emergence and evolution of rap.
by Austin McCoy via The Baffler on January 9, 2024
Gun on the cover of Kellie Carter Jackson's book "Force and Freedom: Black Abolitionists and the Politics of Violence."

Words to Weapons: A History of the Abolition Movement from Persuasion to Force

With "Force and Freedom," Carter Jackson makes a stimulating and insightful debut which will have a major influence on abolition movement scholarship.
by William Morgan Sr. via Commonplace on December 18, 2023
Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway standing on stage singing to each other.

Radical Light

The cosmic collision of Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway.
by Ashawnta Jackson via Oxford American on December 5, 2023
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