Black Radical Thought
Academic Essay
This post is based on an academic essay titled: A Re-Introduction to the New Negro Movement and Pioneers of Modern Black Radical Thought, by Dr. David M. Walton (aka Kalonji A. Butholenkosi), Assistant Professor of History, The University of North Carolina at Pembroke. Dr. Walton analyses speeches given by “Black Radicals of Harlem…of the early twentieth century…and historicizes these radicals and their philosophies as well as traces their evolution and development”.
Comment
What caught my attention was “Black internationalism”. In an unrelated article, historian Keisha Blain believes Black internationalism “captures African Americans global racial consciousness…the way in which they engage the world…understanding that the challenges facing people of African descent in the United States need to be understood within a larger context… linked to the challenges of people across the globe”.
I view this statement as a starting point. For me, it extends much further to embody the very concept of global human development inclusive of its many components that include: spirituality, the oneness of the human species, both global and emphatic consciousness, a greater unification, and beyond the misnomer of race and the limitations imposed through nationalism.
Hubert Henry Harrison
Hubert H. Harrison (1883-1927) was a brilliant writer, orator, educator, critic, and radical political activist described as “perhaps the foremost Afro-American intellect of his time.”
Civil rights and labor leader A. Philip Randolph, described Harrison as “the father of Harlem Radicalism.” Bibliophile Arthur Schomburg, outstanding collector of materials on people of African descent, eulogized at Harrison’s Harlem funeral that he was “ahead of his time.”
See: Facebook
Cyril Briggs
Cyril Valentine Briggs (1888 – 1966) was an African-Caribbean American writer and communist political activist. Briggs is best remembered as founder and editor of The Crusader, a seminal New York magazine of the New Negro Movement of the 1920s and as the founder of the African Blood Brotherhood dedicated to advancing the cause of Pan-Africanism.
Briggs proposed a “new solution” then emerging, in which the African American had come to the realization that “the salvation of his race and an honorable solution of the American Race Problem call for action and decision in preference to the twaddling, dreaming, and indecision of ‘leaders.”
See: Black Pass & Wikipedia
Marcus Garvey
Marcus Mosiah Garvey Jr. (1887 – 1940) was a proponent of Black nationalism in the United States and most importantly Jamaica. He was a leader of a mass movement called Pan-Africanism and he founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League.
Garvey urged African-Americans to be proud of their race and return to Africa, their ancestral homeland. To facilitate the return to Africa that he advocated, in 1919 Garvey founded the Black Star Line, to provide transportation to Africa, and the Negro Factories Corporation to encourage black economic independence.
See: BBC History & Wikipedia
Claudia Jones
Claudia Jones was one of the most influential Black woman thinkers and leaders of her time, whose theories and politics have shaped the world in ways most fascinating and unimaginable. The importance of her contributions to Black liberation movements.
As a member of the Communist Party USA and a black national feminist, Jones identified with black women’s oppression, known as triple oppression. Her ideology consisted of a conceptualization of race, class, and gender within a Marxist lens. Her focus was on “an anti-imperialist coalition, managed by working-class leadership, fueled by the involvement of women.”
See: Wikipedia & Everlivingroots
Pan-Africanism
Pan-Africanism is a worldwide intellectual movement that aims to encourage and strengthen bonds of solidarity between all people of African descent. “Pan-Africanism represents the complexities of black political and intellectual thought over two hundred years.” Watch the video.
Ref. Africana Age
