The African-American political tradition

I was really happy to see the superb new collection of essays about some of the giants of African-American political thought co-edited by Melvin Rogers and my colleague Chip Turner get a shout-out in Jamelle Bouie’s newsletter:

One of the works I cited in my column this week is the volume “African American Political Thought: A Collected History,” edited by the political theorists Melvin L. Rogers and Jack Turner.

The book is a series of essays on the luminaries of African American political thought, across the history of the United States, by some of the most impressive scholars currently working. It is as close to a comprehensive overview of the African American political tradition as I’ve read, with chapters on figures from Phillis Wheatley and David Walker (two of the most important Black political thinkers of the early American republic) to Angela Davis and Clarence Thomas.

Standout chapters, in my view, are Carol Wayne White’s essay on Anna Julia Cooper, “Radical Relationality and the Ethics of Interdependence”; Michael McCann’s chapter on A. Philip Randolph, “Radicalizing Rights at the Intersection of Class and Race”; and George Shulman’s chapter on Bayard Rustin, “Between Democratic Theory and Black Political Thought.”

One of the things I hope to do this year is engage with African American political thought even more than I already have in the hundreds of thousands of words I’ve written for my column. The reason relates to my interest in the past, present and future of American democracy.

We spend an afternoon and evening last fall celebrating the intellectual legacy of my mentor Michael McCann, which firmly established that an afternoon and evening was not nearly enough. His essay in this volume is reflective of the quality of his work. The whole thing is definitely recommended if you’re interested in the subject, for reasons the more impartial Jamelle goes on to explain.