“The Black Radical Tradition of Resistance”

In recent years, there has been renewed attention to issues of disproportionate police brutality targeting Black citizens and communities, Black voter suppression tactics, racial inequalities in health care, and other types of discrimination and anti-Black racism. This attention has sparked mobilization of individuals and groups across diverse Black and ally communities. Such mobilization is a part of the fabric and legacy of Black American history and indeed, of American history. That is, while more recent iterations of resistance to systems of oppression are associated with efforts such as Black Lives Matter or the Movement for Black Lives, the ongoing struggle for Black liberation has taken on different forms throughout several centuries. It is important to understand this historical legacy of resistance, or as scholar Cedric Robinson coined it, the Black radical tradition. The Black radical tradition is a collection of cultural, intellectual, action-oriented labor aimed at disrupting social, political, economic, and cultural norms originating in anticolonial and antislavery efforts.