Intellectual Foundations
This federal housing and lending practice mapped “risk” by race and helped produce the modern racial wealth gap.
What is / Who is: Redlining?
This 1960s–70s movement aligned with Black Power and advanced politically engaged Black artistic production.
What is / Who is: The Black Arts Movement?
This political philosophy, articulated in 1966 by Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton, emphasized self-determination and institutional control.
What is / Who is: Black Power?
This 1865–1877 period saw brief Black political gains followed by violent backlash and the rollback of federal protections.
What is / Who is: Reconstruction?
This Martinican writer’s Discourse on Colonialism critiqued European imperialism and the “civilizing mission.”
What is / Who is: Aimé Césaire?
This 1966 organization’s platform included community self-defense and “survival programs” like free breakfast for children.
What is / Who is: The Black Panther Party?
This term describes how race and capitalism are historically intertwined in producing inequality and extractive labor regimes.
What is / Who is: Racial capitalism?
This term describes speculative cultural production centered on Black futures, technology, and reimagined histories.
What is / Who is: Afrofuturism?
This concept describes overlapping systems of oppression (race, gender, class) and was formally theorized in 1989.
What is / Who is: Intersectionality (Kimberlé Crenshaw)?
This Supreme Court decision in 1896 legitimized “separate but equal,” shaping segregation policy for decades.
What is / Who is: Plessy v. Ferguson?
This 1925 anthology edited by Alain Locke symbolized the Harlem Renaissance’s intellectual flowering.
What is / Who is: The New Negro?
This 1935 work reframed Reconstruction as a period of democratic possibility undermined by white supremacy and capital.
What is / Who is: Black Reconstruction in America (W.E.B. Du Bois)?
This historian and political economist authored How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, arguing colonialism structurally extracted wealth from the continent.
What is / Who is: Walter Rodney?
This concept explains how dominant groups secure power through consent and ideology rather than force, shaping cultural politics.
What is / Who is: Cultural hegemony (Antonio Gramsci)?