Marxism, Memory, and the Black Radical Tradition: Introduction to Volume 13

Abstract

Black political culture in the United States during the 19th century was divided between integrationist and black nationalist ideology. Following Reconstruction, however, a third political tradition emerged, Black Radicalism. This intellectual tradition was characterized by sharp opposition to institutional racism, class inequality, and women's oppression. The chief architect of early Black Radicalism was W.E.B. Du Bois. In subsequent generations of Black Radicals, key figures included C.L.R. James, Hubert H. Harrison, A. Philip Randolph, and Oliver Cromwell-Cox. Most of these intellectuals had a relationship to socialist or Marxism political organizations parties. The article traces three generations of Black Radicals who emerged following World War II. The first of these generations emerged during the Civil Rights and Black Power periods, and included Amiri Baraka, Walter Rodney, and James Baldwin. The second generation, women and men born between 1946 and 1964, prominently include Cornel West, Michael Eric Dyson, Lani Guinier, Patricia Williams, and Charles Ogletree. Finally, the hip-hop culture of the late 20th century produced a new school of activist intellectuals, such as Robin D.G. Kelley and Melissa Harris-Lacewell. These generations of Black Radicals are connected by the memory of resistance to racism and to the integration of gender race and class in their analysis. What is unsolved is whether this radical tradition will continue in the age of globalized capitalism.

Keywords:

• black counter-public
• black political memory
• Black Radicalism
• Marxism
• PanAfricanism
• race class and power
• socialism
• structural racism

Notes

Michael Dawson, Black Visions: The Roots of Contemporary African-American Political Ideologies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 23–35.

One of the clearest expressions of Frederick Douglass's liberal integrationist address of 1865, “What The Black Man Wants,” in Let Nobody Turn Us Around: An African-American Anthology, ed., Manning Marable and Leith Mullings, Second Edition (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2009), 122–128.

The best, and essential, source on Reconstruction and its aftermath remains W.E.B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America, 1860–1880 (New York: Atheneum, 1971).

See David Levering Lewis, W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919 (New York: Holt, 1993); August Meier, Negro Thought in America, 1880–1915 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 19693); and Manning Marable, W.E.B. Du Bois: Black Radical Democrat, Revised Edition (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Press, 2005).

See Manning Marable, “The Pan-Africanism of W.E.B. Du Bois,” in W.E.B. Du Bois on Race and Culture: Philosophy, Politics and Poetics, ed. Bernard Bell, Emily Grosholz, and James Stewart, (New York and London: Routledge, 1996), 193–218; and W.E.B. Du Bois, The World and Africa: An Inquiry Into the Part Which Africa Has Played in World History (New York: International Publishers, 1965).

Marable, W.E.B. Du Bois: Black Radical Democrat, pp. 99–120.

See John G. Jackson, Hubert Henry Harrison (Austin, TX: American Atheist Press, 1987); and Winston James, Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia: Caribbean Radicalism in Early Twentieth Century America (London: Verso, 1998).

W.E.B. Du Bois, “The Negro and Radical Thought,” Crisis 22 (July 1921): 102–104.

W.E.B. Du Bois, “The Browsing Reader,” Crisis 35 (June 1928): 202, 211; and Claude McKay to W.E.B. Du Bois, in Herbert Aptheker, ed., The Correspondence of W.E.B. Du Bois, Volume I (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1973), 374–375.

Marcus Garvey, “Home to Harlem: An Insult to the Race,” Negro World (September 29, 1928).

W.E.B. Du Bois, “Close Ranks,” Crisis 16 (July 1918).

Hubert H. Harrison, “The Descent of Du Bois,” in When Africa Awakens ed. Hubert H. Harrison, (New York: Porro Press, 1920).

See Mildred I. Thompson, Ida B. Wells-Barnett: An Exploratory Study of an American Black Woman (Brooklyn, NY: Carlson Publishing, 1990).

See Mary Church Terrell, A Colored Woman in a White World (Washington, DC: Ransdell, 1940); Sharon Harley, “Mary Church Terrell: Genteel Militant,” in Black Leaders in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Leon Litwack and August Meier (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 291–307.

A. Jacques Garvey, “Women As Leaders,” Negro World (October 25, 1925). Also see Ula Yvette Taylor, “The Veiled Garvey: The Life and Times of Amy Jacques Garvey,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of California at Santa Barbara, 1992.

The best introductions to C.L.R. James's philosophical thought are James, The Future in the Present (London: Allison and Busby, 1977); and James, Notes on Dialectics: Hegel-Marx-Lenin (London: Allison and Busby, 1980).

A bibliography of Oliver C. Cox's major works includes: Caste, Class and Race (New York: Doubleday, 1948); The Foundations of Capitalism (New York: Philosophical Library, 1959); Capitalism and American Leadership (New York: Philosophical Library, 1962); Capitalism as a System (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1964); and Race Relations: Elements and Social Dynamics (Detroit: Wayne State University, 1976).