Black Radical Tradition: Home

From Encyclopedia Britannica

Angela Davis

Angela Davis, in full Angela Yvonne Davis,  (born Jan. 26, 1944, Birmingham, Ala., U.S.), militant American black activist who gained an international reputation during her imprisonment and trial on conspiracy charges in 1970–72.

Audre Lorde

Audre Lorde, in full Audre Geraldine Lorde, also called Gamba Adisa or Rey Domini,  (born February 18, 1934, New York, New York, U.S.—died November 17, 1992, St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands), American poet, essayist, and autobiographer known for her passionate writings on lesbian feminism and racial issues.

Bobby Seale

Bobby Seale, byname of Robert Seale,  (born October 22, 1936, Dallas, Texas, U.S.), American political activist who founded (1966), along with Huey P. Newton, the Black Panther Party; Seale also served as the national chairman. He was one of a generation of young African American radicals who broke away from the traditionally nonviolent civil rights movement to preach a doctrine of militant Black empowerment. Following the dismissal of murder charges against him in 1971, Seale somewhat moderated his more militant views and devoted his time to effecting change from within the system.

C.L.R. James

C.L.R. James, in full Cyril Lionel Robert James, (born Jan. 4, 1901, Tunapuna, Trinidad—died May 31, 1989, London, Eng.), West Indian-born cultural historian, cricket writer, and political activist who was a leading figure in the Pan-African movement.

Eldridge Cleaver

Eldridge Cleaver, in full Leroy Eldridge Cleaver,  (born 1935, Wabbaseka, near Little Rock, Arkansas, U.S.—died May 1, 1998, Pomona, California), American Black militant whose autobiographical volume Soul on Ice (1968) is a classic statement of Black alienation in the United States.

Frantz Fanon

Frantz Fanon, in full Frantz Omar Fanon, (born July 20, 1925, Fort-de-France, Martinique—died December 6, 1961, Bethesda, Maryland, U.S.), West Indian psychoanalyst and social philosopher known for his theory that some neuroses are socially generated and for his writings on behalf of the national liberation of colonial peoples. His critiques influenced subsequent generations of thinkers and activists.

Harriet Tubman

Harriet Tubman, née Araminta Ross,  (born c. 1820, Dorchester county, Maryland, U.S.—died March 10, 1913, Auburn, New York), American bondwoman who escaped from slavery in the South to become a leading abolitionist before the American Civil War. She led hundreds of enslaved people to freedom in the North along the route of the Underground Railroad—an elaborate secret network of safe houses organized for that purpose.

Ida B. Wells

Ida B. Wells-Barnett, née Ida Bell Wells,  (born July 16, 1862, Holly Springs, Mississippi, U.S.—died March 25, 1931, Chicago, Illinois), African American journalist who led an antilynching crusade in the United States in the 1890s. She later was active in promoting justice for African Americans.

Malcolm X

Malcolm X, original name Malcolm Little, Muslim name el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz,  (born May 19, 1925, Omaha, Nebraska, U.S.—died February 21, 1965, New York, New York), African American leader and prominent figure in the Nation of Islam who articulated concepts of race pride and Black nationalism in the early 1960s. After his assassination, the widespread distribution of his life story—The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965)—made him an ideological hero, especially among Black youth.

Marcus Garvey

Marcus Garvey, in full Marcus Moziah Garvey,  (born August 17, 1887, St. Ann’s Bay, Jamaica—died June 10, 1940, London, England), charismatic Black leader who organized the first important American Black nationalist movement (1919–26), based in New York City’s Harlem.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr., original name Michael King, Jr.,  (born January 15, 1929, Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.—died April 4, 1968, Memphis, Tennessee), Baptist minister and social activist who led the civil rights movement in the United States from the mid-1950s until his death by assassination in 1968. His leadership was fundamental to that movement’s success in ending the legal segregation of African Americans in the South and other parts of the United States. King rose to national prominence as head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which promoted nonviolent tactics, such as the massive March on Washington (1963), to achieve civil rights. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.

Mary Church Terrell

Mary Eliza Church Terrell, née Mary Eliza Church, (born Sept. 23, 1863, Memphis, Tenn., U.S.—died July 24, 1954, Annapolis, Md.), American social activist who was cofounder and first president of the National Association of Colored Women. She was an early civil rights advocate, an educator, an author, and a lecturer on woman suffrage and rights for African Americans.

Mumia Abu-Jamal

Mumia Abu-Jamal, originally Wesley Cook, (born April 24, 1954, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.), American journalist and political activist sentenced to death and then to life in prison for the 1981 murder of a police officer, Daniel Faulkner, in Philadelphia.

Sojourner Truth

Sojourner Truth, legal name Isabella Van Wagener,  (born c. 1797, Ulster county, New York, U.S.—died November 26, 1883, Battle Creek, Michigan), African American evangelist and reformer who applied her religious fervour to the abolitionist and women’s rights movements.

Stokely Carmichael

Stokely Carmichael, original name of Kwame Ture,  (born June 29, 1941, Port of Spain, Trinidad—died November 15, 1998, Conakry, Guinea), West-Indian-born civil rights activist, leader of Black nationalism in the United States in the 1960s and originator of its rallying slogan, “Black power.”

W.E.B. DuBois

W.E.B. Du Bois, in full William Edward Burghardt Du Bois,  (born February 23, 1868, Great Barrington, Massachusetts, U.S.—died August 27, 1963, Accra, Ghana), American sociologist, historian, author, editor, and activist who was the most important Black protest leader in the United States during the first half of the 20th century. He shared in the creation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909 and edited The Crisis, its magazine, from 1910 to 1934. His collection of essays The Souls of Black Folk (1903) is a landmark of African American literature.

Important Figures not in Britannica

Assata Shakur

JoAnne Deborah Chesimard, a.k.a. Assata Olugbala Shakur, (born July 16, 1947) is a former member of the Black Liberation Army (BLA), who was convicted of being an accomplice in the first-degree murder of State Trooper Werner Foerster during a shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike in 1973. Shakur was also the target of the FBI's COINTELPRO (counterintelligence program) directed against Black Power movement groups and activists.

(Hinds, 1987)

Fred Hampton

Fredrick Allen Hampton (August 30, 1948 – December 4, 1969) was an American activist and revolutionary socialist.^[4] He came to prominence in Chicago as chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party (BPP), and deputy chairman of the national BPP. In this capacity, he founded the Rainbow Coalition, a prominent multicultural political organization that initially included the Black Panthers, Young Patriots, and the Young Lords, and an alliance among major Chicago street gangs to help them end infighting and work for social change.

(Haas, 2010)

George Jackson

George Lester Jackson (September 23, 1941 – August 21, 1971) was an African-American author, activist, and convicted criminal. While serving a sentence for armed robbery in 1961, Jackson became involved in revolutionary activity and co-founded the Marxist–Leninist Black Guerrilla Family

(Cummins, 1994)

Lynch Law in America by Ida B. Wells

The Case for Abolition by Ruth Wilson Gilmore

Civil Rights History Project (Black Panthers) by LOC

Black Panther Community Resource

Stokely Carmichael on Black Power

Women in Prison: How it is With Us by Assata Shakur

Selected Essays of W.E.B. DuBois

Essays by C.L.R. James

Whenever you are doing research it is good to get an overview of your topic. Use the Encyclopedia databases below to better understand your topic. Pull information and keywords from the articles found in these articles to guide your searches in other sources. NOTE: These are starting points only!

*The Black Radical Tradition is a very broad and expansive framework. All of the above topics are elements of this so called tradition, but there is also so much more than what can be shared here. Each of these topics stand on their own. Like a lot of our displays and guides, this is meant to be a starting point for our learning community to build on their curiosity and intellectually engage with our world through a specific lens.