(2020). In This New Hour: Memory’s Insistence in Black Study. Souls: Vol. 22, Inheriting Black Studies, pp. 1-4.

A speech delivered as the keynote address at Brandeis University's AAAS 50th Anniversary, where Hortense Spillers received Brandeis University's Alumni Achievement Award on February 11, 2019.1

The following article thinks together concepts of the hold and disinheritance through the work and anti-lynching activism of Ida B. Wells-Barnett. In doing so, the paper extends what Wells-Barnett already illuminated on the ways in which the State benefitted from the sexual politics of anti-black lynching violence. The article contends Wells-Barnett’s work and pedagogical implications continue to be

This essay is an exploration of the critical in critical black studies.

In this paper, I revisit the thought-world of nineteenth century black photography between two of its most important practitioners: Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass. In the history of black photography, and increasingly in Black Studies writ large, these two figures drive discourses on visuality and freedom. Typically leading with Douglass’ own lectures on pictures, we study both Douglass and

A central concern of the Black Intellectual Tradition (BIT) since the close of the nineteenth century has been the explicit connection between the historical and structural development of the world capitalist economy on the one hand, and on the other, freedom struggles forged by African descendants. This dynamic, interwoven relationship, according to some critical observers of history, illuminates

Engaging with the contingencies of white national belongings and recognizable human life within the welfare states of Canada and Sweden this article questions whether Black Muslim women have access to grievable existence. Theorizing through the dismissal of Black death and the dread of Black women’s reproductive capacities, this article considers how the Black Muslim woman who dissolves her Blackness

In the 1990s, the political tradition of Afrocentrism came under attack in the Western academy, resulting in its glaring omission from most genealogies of Black thought today. This is despite the fact that Afrocentrism had roots dating back to the 15th century, shaping movements like Pan-Africanism and Négritude. It is also despite the fact that the tradition resulted in important cornerstones of Black

This article employs the tools of Black Studies to critical engage Assata: An Autobiography, by Assata Shakur and aspects of Shakur’s political legacy. Specifically, this article draws upon Black feminist critiques of gender theory to interrogate how Assata and the altering of Shakur’s image elucidate the distinction between Human and Black gender. Thus, I argue the antiblack nature of the (un)gendering

This article thinks about the intellectual inheritances bequeathed to Black Studies scholars, and specifically to scholars of African American religions, from Black women Christian educators of the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century. It focuses on two women: Catherine (Katy) Ferguson (1774-1854), a Presbyterian who started the first Sunday school in New York in 1793, and Emily Christmas

(2020). Personal Reflections on the Road to Black Awakening in Capitalist America. Souls: Vol. 22, Inheriting Black Studies, pp. 118-122.

(2020). “A Greater Truth than Any Other Truth You Know”: A Conversation with Professor Sylvia Wynter on Origin Stories. Souls: Vol. 22, Inheriting Black Studies, pp. 123-137.

(2019). Digna Castañeda’s Shield. Souls: Vol. 21, Black Cuban Revolutionaries, pp. 253-254.

Victor Emilo Dreke Cruz is a walking archive. Today, at age 82, his life represents the arch of the Cuban Revolution. He was fifteen in 1952, when General Batista waged a military coup in order to protect US neo-colonial and Cuban elite interests. It was at this moment that Dreke joined the resistance. First as an organizer, then in charge of a sabotage unit, and then as leader of campaigns against

To be a black revolutionary as defined by someone who fights for black equality, progress and power, has always accompanied a contentious relationship with the Cuban state. Nonetheless, those that are defined as black revolutionaries are often those that are aligned with the state. I call for a wider definition of this term to include those outside of Cuba, those that are independent and critical of

In November 2012, a group of Black women across Cuba came together to form the Red Barrial Afrodescendiente (“Afrodescendant Neighborhood Network”, or RBA). Within its group of initiators were educators, academics, artists, writers, scientists, and activists, all who worked at various levels in both governmental and grassroots capacities. The goal of this newly formed network was to form generative

Finding a sense of belonging in the country of your birth is challenging when one is raised elsewhere. This short reflection poetically examines the repatriation to Cuba of a black women raised in Germany. This a personal story of the joy and pain of such a move, of being a foreigner and yet at home in Havana.

(2019). Black Man. Souls: Vol. 21, Black Cuban Revolutionaries, pp. 353-354.

This piece examines the key necessity of having the Black Lesbian voice within notions of feminism and the ongoing women’s movement. For two long this voice has been marginalized, and along with tr...

Figure 1. Alexey.el tipo este.of the hip hop duo OBSESION performing at the Rhythm, Love, and Poetry festival in Havana, Cuba 2019.Figure 2. DJ Drew, an influential DJ in Havana’s new electronic mu...

In post-colonial Jamaica, the iconic portrayal of “sun, sex, and smiles” clashes with the disproportionate rates of HIV among working-class black Jamaican women. Even though the Caribbean has both ...

Marlon M. Bailey and Darius Bost: We have brought this group together because we know that your varying perspectives will produce a robust conversation. Thank you again for your participation, and ...

This essay examines the significance of the work of three black lesbian feminist intellectuals--Cathy Cohen, Evelynn Hammonds, Linda Villarosa--to intellectual genealogies of HIV/AIDS. Since the ea...

(2018). Editor’s Note. Souls: Vol. 20, Black Politics, Reparations, and Movement Building in the Era of #45, pp. 343-344.

This article recounts the origins and history of the Freedmen's Bank (1865–1874), providing an important reminder of the lingering injustices we must address lest they continue to repeat themselves. Rooted in documented and recorded Black financial losses, I suggest that the Freedmen's Bank offers a necessary platform for Black reparations. Shifting the reparations focus to the Freedmen's Bank, I conclude

Working from the injunction of C. L. R. James about the requirement to understand the “new forms created in the context of slavery,” this essay argues that there is a political requirement for the study of the intellectual history and political thought of the African enslaved. The essay also notes that the Black enslaved body represented a distinct form of labor in which it produced commodities while

In the wake of the Movement for Black Lives, activists, artists, and scholars have highlighted the need to connect issues of state-sanctioned violence, the historical lack of protection offered to Black women, and experiences of gendered intraracial violence, arguing that these issues are inseparable. Sistas Liberated Ground, a Brooklyn-based campaign in the early 2000s, was an embodied example of

On May 6, 2015, the Chicago City Council adopted legislation that formally sought to repair the damage wrought by a decades-long pattern of police torture. After months of careful negotiations between City Hall and the advocates for torture survivors, the council unanimously passed a package of laws providing for both financial and nonfinancial compensation, or reparations, for torture survivors and

How might we understand the current political formations that emerged from the election of Donald Trump in the United States and the parliamentary coup in Brazil? Despite the U.S. disavowal for human rights violations in foreign policies, the victory of explicitly anti-black, anti-female, anti-gay, anti-poor forces in both democracies seems to be part of the vociferous restructuring of global racial

(2018). Review of Development Drowned and Reborn: The Blues and Bourbon Restorations in Post-Katrina New Orleans, by Clyde Woods. Souls: Vol. 20, Black Politics, Reparations, and Movement Building in the Era of #45, pp. 433-436.

As authors of their own series, Mara Brock Akil, creator of Being Mary Jane, and Issa Rae, creator of Insecure, have articulated their commitment to constructing black women as multidimensional subjects that embody contradictions. This article explores how Akil and Rae strategically deploy vulnerability in their televisual narratives to reframe black women as human; countering the Hollywood convention

We are three art educators, Women of Color (WoC), in higher education. In this article, we use trioethnography, a dialogic methodology, to provide context for understanding our struggles as such. We describe our challenges navigating a field (art education) that has embraced feminist scholarship, yet has historically paid little attention to how the intersections of race and gender systemically marginalizes

This article examines Black communities’ engagement with practices of place and alternative figurations of land and water in the antebellum and post-emancipation periods around the lower–Chesapeake Bay. It historicizes the work of enslaved, free, and emancipated communities to create a distinctive and often furtive social architecture rivaling, threatening, and challenging the infrastructures of abstraction

The article has three movements. First, it draws out some of the contours of historical trauma suffered by Black and Brown people in South Africa since the 17th century as “bodily and psychic wounds.” Second, the article argues that 1994 did not signal the end of racial domination in South Africa but rather, marked the advancement of racial domination in new and nuanced techniques hidden in place sight

In 1983, Michael Jackson brought the world to its feet by spinning into the moonwalk while performing “Billie Jean” on live television during the Motown 25 special. In this article, I chart how the analog synthesizers in “Billie Jean” both helped facilitate Jackson's movement towards black futurity and connected him back to black rhythmic histories encapsulated in disco and funk. By unpacking how he

The article examines black activists' use of sports and protest in the 1960s to elaborate on the meaning of black advancement in the period, especially Black Power. Mainstream opponents labeled scholar-activist Harry Edwards a "black militant" for initiating the Olympic Project for Human Rights (OPHR), a black boycott campaign of the 1968 Olympics. As part of a plan to counter that repression and attract

The death of Sandra Bland on July 13, 2015, coupled with the dashcam footage that documented the verbal and physical violence she experienced as Texas law enforcement officials arrested and detained her, marked a critical historical moment in the Black Lives Matter era. Yet, the “Sandy Speaks” videos she recorded in the months preceding her death left profound digital traces of her words and thoughts

This article highlights the history of black women’s efforts to end state-sanctioned violence in New York during the 1980s. It centers on the political activities of Mary Bumpurs and Veronica Perry, two black women who led a grassroots initiative in New York City to combat police violence in black communities. Foreshadowing the kinds of activities organized by the Mothers of the Movement, Mary and

This article presents a preliminary sketch of a broader investigation into encounters between “engaged Buddhism” and Black liberation theology in the United States from 1965–1968, motivated by the eventual goal of articulating a different approach toward a politics of death, or what scholars now call “necropolitics,” at this interface. Focusing on a world-transformative dialogue between Thich Nhat

This article, which serves as an introduction to this special issue, explores the relationship between white supremacy, carceral violence, and black womanhood and it examines the symbiosis of gendered violence enacted against black women by state agents and everyday white men using the 1910 trial of Bessie Banks. It also discusses the articles included in the special issue, calling attention to the

This article recovers the life of Bronx resident Eleanor Bumpurs from historical obscurity, moving beyond her tragic death and departing from disability and legal studies that primarily focus on her killing and New York Police Department officer Stephen Sullivan’s 1987 bench trial.

The North Carolina Industrial School for Negro Girls was established in 1925 by the local branch of the National Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs. Also known as Efland Home, this institution, like others across the South, was designed to rehabilitate young black women “destined for pregnancy, prostitution, or prison.” The quasi-private reformatory negotiated its relationship with the state, receiving

This article examines the Virginia Industrial School for Colored Girls (VISCG), the state’s only reformatory for delinquent black girls, which was established by the Virginia State Federation of Colored Women's Clubs in 1915. Rather than punishing them for their adolescent misbehaviors, the founding organization intended to protect troubled black girls from inappropriate incarceration with adults and

Mary Fitzpatrick's historical life sheds light on the role of liberal discourse and racialized and gendered affective politics in entrenching black captivity. Her imprisonment and coerced domestic servitude reveal the role of black women's carceral exploitation in a pivotal 1970s moment in which the future of the U.S. carceral state was contested and contingent.

Nicki Minaj and Beyoncé are two of the most successful Black women artists in today’s popular culture. They occupy a hypervisible and invisible position in Black and mainstream popular culture, and therefore exist as a crucial discursive site to understand Black girls’ self-articulation as “blackgirlmagic” at this moment. Faced with the rise of public feminist and postracial discourses presented in

In the spring of 1921, a young Kongo prophet named Simon Kimbangu launched a revival that won thousands of followers and posed a growing threat to Belgian rule in the Congo. This article examines the dynamic confluence of the Kimbanguist revival and the spread of Garveyism along the west coast of Africa. Scholarly treatments of Kimbanguism have not satisfactorily explained this connection, in large

This article examines Leonard P. Howell’s understanding of repatriation as a form of black resistance aimed at decolonizing Jamaica. Howell, who is considered a Rastafari founder, engaged in political activities that indicated an investment in psychological repatriation as opposed to physical repatriation to facilitate a Rastafari black nationalist agenda for Jamaica. The Rastafari movement was inspired

This article outlines the distinct logics that govern embodied, affective forms of anti-Black racism in order to theorize cultural countermeasures that disrupt them. I argue that attempting to dismantle affective forms of racism by creating “positive” representations of Black people is an ineffective strategy in the long term. This approach tends to amplify investments in racial exceptionalism, fetishism

(2017). Remembering Two Black Radical Intellectual Giants. Souls: Vol. 19, No. 4, pp. 399-400.

This conversation meditates on the ways in which Black Feminism and Trans Feminism relate to one another, how they speak to and supplement one another, and how they are in fact constitutive. Considering that Black feminism, historically, has attempted to interrogate the capaciousness of the very term “woman” and to gender, if you will, an androcentric “Blackness,” one might say, as Che Gossett has

This article examines the Cuban exile of Assata Shakur, a former Black Panther who was granted formal political asylum by the government of Fidel Castro in 1984. Cuba’s provision of sanctuary to Shakur and other U.S. Black activists offers new insights into the complex relationship between the African American freedom struggle and the Cuban Revolution. This article examines the politics of Shakur’s

Following the death of Michael Brown, an unarmed Black teenager, at the hands of a white Ferguson police officer in 2014, a social media hashtag emerged drawing attention to the power (and potential bias) of the media in representing Black youth. #IfTheyGunnedMeDown asked the semi-rhetorical question, “Which picture would the media choose to represent me if I were killed by police?” and offered a choice

Inspired by the seminal Black Feminist Anthropology volume edited by Irma McClaurin, I examine how Black feminist ethnographies have theorized intersectionality or what the Combahee River Collective called the “simultaneity” and “interlocking” of oppressions. One overlooked theoretical contribution by Black feminist ethnography in terms of analyzing race, class, and gender is the conception of the

(2017). Editor’s Note. Souls: Vol. 19, Combahee at 40: New Conversations and Debates in Black Feminism, pp. 239-240.

Reproductive justice activists have dynamically used the concept of intersectionality as a source of empowerment to propel one of the most important shifts in reproductive politics in recent history. In the tradition of the Combahee River Collective, twelve Black women working within and outside the pro-choice movement in 1994 coined the term “reproductive justice” to “recognize the commonality of

We are representative of the power and potential to black feminist thought upon two generations of women of color. We were brought together as members of a course on black feminist thought and within this class the Combahee River Collective Statement played a central role in defining and transmitting the healing power of black feminist thought. This article adheres to the form, structure, and tradition

This roundtable describes the creation and evolution of the Intersectional Black Panther Party (BPP) History Project, a feminist collective created by Angela D. LeBlanc-Ernest, Tracye A. Matthews, Mary Phillips, and Robyn C. Spencer, four Black women historians who have spent decades researching and writing about Panther women’s lives. Our discussion centers around the intellectual legacy of the Combahee

Between January and May of 1979, twelve similarly situated black women were murdered in Boston, Massachusetts. Just two years past the writing of what would become their canonical feminist statement, the Combahee River Collective (CRC) mobilized around the series of deaths along with other grassroots organizations and members of the local community. The CRC’s most significant intervention in that crisis

This article examines “insurgency” as a tradition within Black women’s activism in the United States. Connecting contemporary insurgent acts of Black women activists to their Black feminist foremothers, I explore a distinct genealogy of Black women’s radical activism. Anchored in intersectional praxes, committed to combating interlocking oppression, and warring against multiple jeopardy, Black women

This article is focused on a critical and oppositional approach to diversity work on college campuses--what we call “anti-diversity” work—that builds on and operationalizes various principles of black feminist thought articulated by the Combahee River Collective and other black feminist thinkers. At our small, Midwestern, residential, liberal arts college, we are “doing” anti-diversity work through