0:14

Hello, and welcome to the History of Africana

0:16

Philosophy, by Tchiki Jeffers and Peter Adamson,

0:19

brought to you with the support of the King's College

0:21

London Philosophy Department and the LMU

0:23

in Munich, online at historyofphilosophy.net.

0:27

Today's episode, The Marx Brothers,

0:30

Cedric J. Robinson. The

0:34

Scottish philosopher David Hume's 1740

0:36

Treatise of Human Nature is widely

0:39

appreciated today as a masterwork of modern

0:41

European philosophy,

0:42

but when Hume first published the book, it did

0:45

not receive much attention. He famously

0:47

described it in a later writing as having fell

0:49

dead-born from the press.

0:52

Our subject in this episode, the African-American

0:54

historian and political theorist Cedric

0:56

J. Robinson published a book in 1983

0:59

titled Black Marxism, the Making

1:01

of the Black Radical Tradition.

1:04

In ways that are somewhat camouflaged by the

1:06

book's title, this was a very philosophically

1:08

ambitious work, just as was Hume's treatise.

1:11

It is perhaps fitting, then, that the book initially

1:14

issued forth from the London-based publisher Z.

1:16

Press to a similarly lifeless

1:18

reception. Some of the first scholars

1:21

to draw attention to the book's value in the late

1:23

1980s were professional philosophers.

1:26

Leonard Harris, who appeared on the podcast back in episode 79,

1:30

drew on Robinson's notion of a black radical

1:32

tradition in his 1987 article

1:34

Historical Subjects and Interests, Race,

1:37

Class, and Conflict.

1:38

Cornel West, who we will be discussing

1:41

in an upcoming episode, published a review

1:43

essay on Black Marxism in 1988, aiming

1:46

to interrupt the silence surrounding the book.

1:49

He lamented that it had already fallen through

1:51

the cracks and argued that it should now be acknowledged

1:53

as a towering achievement, even as

1:55

he went on to make serious criticisms of the book

1:58

over the course of his review.

2:00

Someone else who early on recognized the importance

2:02

of black Marxism is the historian

2:05

Robin D. Telly, who provided

2:07

a foreword when the book was republished in a new edition

2:10

by the University of North Carolina Press in

2:12

the year 2000. The story

2:14

of his encounter with the book is indicative of the

2:16

power of its title to intrigue and

2:18

potentially mislead. Affirming

2:21

in no uncertain terms that this book changed

2:23

his life, Telly explains that he was just

2:25

a few months into his graduate studies at UCLA

2:28

when a review copy was sent to Ufa

2:30

Hamu, a graduate student journal published

2:33

by the University's African Studies Center. Telly

2:35

had previously heard missing about the book or its

2:38

author, who was then director of the Center

2:40

of Black Studies at the nearby UC Santa

2:42

Barbara. The book's title automatically

2:44

attracted Telly. His interest in historical

2:46

research at that point was primarily motivated

2:49

by his concern too, as he put it, know

2:51

how to build a left-wing movement among people

2:54

of color so that we could get on with the ultimate

2:56

task of making revolution. Given

2:59

this interest, the book titled Black Marxism,

3:01

the Making of the Black Radical Tradition, seemed

3:04

almost heaven-sent. Telly excitedly

3:06

set himself the task of reviewing it for Ufa

3:09

Hamu. He never did manage

3:11

to write that review, something he admits meant

3:13

contributing unwittingly to the conspiracy

3:15

of silence that has surrounded the book since its

3:17

publication. The problem

3:20

was that Telly felt so overwhelmed by reading

3:22

Black Marxism that he suffered a crisis

3:24

in confidence, which he managed to fix only

3:26

by calling Robinson on the telephone and begging

3:29

to be taken on as a student. It

3:31

was an understandable reaction. It is indeed

3:33

an overwhelming work. The footnotes alone

3:36

could make for a whole separate book. It's

3:38

also a surprising book. Given

3:40

the title, one might expect a sympathetic or

3:42

at least constructively critical account of

3:44

Black Marxist thought and activity. What

3:47

Telly and readers since have found instead

3:49

is a searing critique of Marxism's limitations

3:52

and a definition of Black radicalism grounded

3:54

not in Marxism, but in a unique interpretation

3:57

of indigenous African traditions. Here

4:00

is how Kelly sums up the work. Robinson

4:02

literally rewrites the history of the rise of

4:05

the West from ancient times to the mid-20th century,

4:07

tracing the roots of Black radical thought to

4:10

a shared epistemology among diverse African

4:12

people and providing a withering critique

4:14

of Western Marxism and its inability

4:16

to comprehend either the racial character

4:19

of capitalism and the civilization in which

4:21

it was born or mass movements outside

4:23

Europe. Especially

4:26

since its republication in 2000, Black

4:28

Marxism has become much more widely appreciated

4:31

and has even attained a level of influence among

4:33

activists beyond the academy. The

4:35

phrase racial capitalism, for instance,

4:37

has become widely used in many activist circles,

4:40

mainly through Robinson's influence. The

4:42

phrase had already been used before him by South

4:45

African historians Martin Leitgastik and

4:47

David Hemson in their 1976 pamphlet,

4:50

Foreign Investment and the Reproduction of Racial Capitalism

4:52

in South Africa, but Robinson denied

4:55

having learned the phrase from them. Indeed,

4:57

while Leitgastik and Hemson sought merely

4:59

to show how apartheid and capitalism worked

5:02

hand in hand in the case of South Africa, Robinson's

5:04

claim in the first chapter of Black Marxism was

5:07

much broader and much bolder, namely

5:09

that capitalism is always inextricably

5:11

intertwined with racism. All capitalism

5:14

is racial, according to Robinson, because

5:16

it grew out of a proto-racist context

5:18

and, as he goes on to show in later parts of the book,

5:21

developed in lockstep with the racism of the

5:23

Atlantic slave trade. In

5:26

an essay published more than a decade later called

5:28

Slavery and the Platonic Origins of Anti-Democracy,

5:31

Robinson went so far as to trace the patterns of

5:33

thought we associate with modern slavery right

5:36

back to Plato's Republic. He

5:38

finds in that dialogue an oppressive slave-owning

5:41

ideal society that can justify itself

5:43

only with a racial myth. This

5:46

refers to the infamous noble lie, according

5:48

to which the people of the city are divided into classes

5:51

and told that this assignment is due to the different

5:53

metals in their blood. Robinson

5:56

points out that even Plato's diagnosis of how

5:58

cities go wrong is fun. fundamentally elitist.

6:02

Despite the many popular revolts that occurred in

6:04

his own time, Plato assumes that corruption

6:06

of the political system can only spread from the

6:08

top down. It is as if,

6:10

comments Robinson, the rest of Greek humanity

6:13

was not real time. Robinson

6:16

goes on to connect what he views as Plato's proto-racism

6:19

to a classic example of modern racism we have

6:21

had occasion to mention a number of times on this podcast,

6:24

Thomas Jefferson's Thoughts on Black Inferiority,

6:27

in his Notes on the State of Virginia. Connecting

6:30

this with other forms of elitism expressed by

6:32

America's sounding fathers, Robinson concludes,

6:35

In its anti-democratic, budacronic prejudice,

6:38

the republic provides an authority rich in

6:40

intellectual stratagems, apropos

6:42

to the political discourse embedded in the American

6:44

political order.

6:46

Plato survives, because if he had not

6:48

existed, he would have had to be invented.

6:52

This rather critical interpretation of ancient

6:54

and modern Western thought, usefully illustrates

6:56

Robinson's methods, themes, and historical

6:59

and intellectual range. It

7:01

presumably also helps to make it clear that his critique

7:03

of Marxism in black merchism was

7:05

not born out of conservatism or

7:07

a desire to defend capitalism. A

7:10

look at his life story will provide further confirmation

7:12

of that. Robinson

7:15

was born in 1940 and grew up in Oakland. The

7:17

family's story, illustrative of the drama

7:19

and heartache of the Great Migration, was that

7:21

his grandfather had fled to California from Alabama

7:24

after beating a white man for attempting to have

7:26

his way with Robinson's grandmother. Robinson

7:29

attended UC Berkeley, where he was a student

7:32

activist with the NAACP. He

7:34

worked to bring iconic leaders like Robert

7:36

F. Williams, who we discussed in Episode 110, to

7:39

speak on campus. An attempt

7:42

to bring Malcolm X to the campus

7:44

was blocked by the university, but Robinson

7:46

and his fellow organizers were still able to hear him

7:48

speak at a local YMCA. That

7:51

encounter with X made a major impact

7:53

on another figure we've discussed before, Donald

7:55

Morden, who founded the Afro-American

7:58

Association.

7:59

episode 111, Gordon's

8:02

Afro-American Association was a campus

8:04

reading group that gradually moved toward off-campus

8:07

activism and in the process provided an

8:09

intellectual training ground for both the Black Panthers

8:11

and Malana Karenga. Robinson

8:13

was part of the group, as was his good friend, a graduate

8:16

student from India named Shyamala Gopalan,

8:19

and the man she married, a graduate student from Jamaica

8:21

named Donald Harris. The

8:23

fact that Gopalan and Harris met through the Afro-American

8:26

Association is a rather significant historical

8:28

event given that the first child produced

8:30

by their marriage is the current Vice President

8:32

of the United States, Kamala Harris. We're

8:35

not sure whether the Vice President has read the network

8:37

system, and we wouldn't be surprised. After

8:40

all, her mother is listed in the books preface as

8:42

among those with whom the project had

8:44

its beginnings. In 1962,

8:48

Robinson went to Africa as part of a government project

8:50

called Operation Crossroads Africa. He

8:53

spent the most time in what is now Zimbabwe,

8:55

but was then still Southern Rhodesia, and he

8:57

was struck by his encounter with Ndaba Ngingi

8:59

Sitole, whose 1959 book

9:02

African Nationalism was a pioneering work

9:04

of autobiography and anti-colonial political

9:07

analysis. Upon his return,

9:09

he was drafted, but fortunately never deployed

9:11

to Vietnam. From then on,

9:13

his life was lived within academia. He

9:16

attained a master's degree in political science from

9:18

San Francisco State, and then a PhD

9:20

in the same discipline from Stanford, enjoyed

9:22

a fruitful research stay in England, funded by

9:24

a previous supporter of this podcast, the

9:26

Liberium Trust, and then held close

9:28

at the University of Michigan, and SUNY Binghamton,

9:31

before taking up leadership of the Center of Black Studies

9:34

at UC Santa Barbara, as previously

9:36

mentioned. If

9:38

it isn't the most eventful of biographies in

9:40

political terms, in contrast with the life

9:42

of his fellow California academic Angela

9:44

Davis, Robinson's life was plenty stimulating

9:47

on the intellectual front. It

9:49

can seem like every figure who has come up in this podcast

9:51

series is either mentioned in Black Marxism or

9:54

met Robinson personally or both. The

9:56

book sites, among others, Shaykh Antatayev,

9:58

Oliver Cox, Eric Williams, and James, Emile Codd Cabral,

10:01

Alexander Cromwell, Mary Church Terrell, Ida

10:03

B. Wells, Carter G. Woodson, and returner

10:06

Edward Blige, J.J. Thomas, and the American

10:08

Negro Academy. As for his

10:10

personal contacts, they included C.L.R. James

10:13

and Walter Rodney, who came to speak at Michigan

10:15

while Robinson was there. At a single

10:18

event held at the Center of Black Studies in 1989, Robinson

10:20

spoke alongside Stuart

10:23

Hall, Paul Gilroy, Cobina Mercer,

10:25

and Sylvia Winter. We'll be covering her

10:27

next time. This man's address book,

10:29

good with light editing, be used as the table

10:31

of contents for a book on Africana thought in the

10:33

late 20th century. He

10:36

used his connections with other intellectuals to bring

10:38

attention to current events, at home or abroad.

10:41

For example, he worked on finishing Black Marxism

10:43

during the 1981-1980 school year in England,

10:46

funded by a postdoctoral fellowship. This

10:49

brought him to London not long after the black community

10:51

there was rocked by the mysterious New

10:53

Cross house fire, which killed 13 black

10:56

young people, and a series of riots

10:58

in response to racial discrimination. During

11:01

his day, Robinson worked with the Institute of Race

11:03

Relations, the British think tank, to bring

11:05

over Tony Cade Bambara, whom we have

11:08

recently covered as a pioneering black

11:10

feminist of the 1970s. Cade

11:12

Bambara was based in Atlanta at the time and

11:15

had been consumed with the horror of the infamous

11:17

child murders that took place in that city between 1979

11:19

and 1981. By

11:22

bringing her to speak in England, Robinson

11:24

grabbed an opportunity to draw attention, as

11:26

his biographer Joshua Myers put it, to

11:29

the global vulnerability of black children and

11:31

the need for transnational resistance to racial

11:34

capitalism. On the topic

11:36

of his collaborations with women thinkers, we

11:38

must also mention Robinson's wife Elizabeth, who

11:40

was born in the US to Lebanese parents

11:43

and was very much his intellectual partner. She

11:46

was instrumental in encouraging the project of

11:48

Black Marxism and collaborated with

11:50

him on a long-running series produced for local

11:52

Santa Barbara radio and then public access

11:54

television called Third World News

11:57

Review. On October of 1983, The

12:00

Robinsons reacted to the major events of the moment,

12:02

the bombing of military barracks in Beirut and

12:05

the US invasion of Grenada by appearing

12:07

at a rally, with Elizabeth speaking about

12:09

Lebanon and Cedric focusing on Grenada.

12:13

This same year, 1983 saw the publication

12:15

of Black Marxism. Dissilling

12:17

the argument of this book into one sentence is

12:19

no easier than it was with Gilroy's Black Atlantic,

12:22

but let's give it a shot. Robinson

12:24

wants to argue that, despite its revolutionary intent,

12:27

classical Marxism was itself a manifestation

12:29

of racialized European thinking and that

12:31

black radical thought offers a vital alternative.

12:35

To establish this, he begins, as we've said, with

12:37

a lengthy historical narrative. He

12:39

argues that medieval slavery already anticipated

12:42

the Atlantic slave trade by subjecting certain groups

12:44

to unfreedom. Not for nothing

12:47

does the word slave have an etymological

12:49

link to the word slav. And

12:51

from the very beginning of capitalism in Italian

12:53

city-states, racialized slavery was part

12:55

of the story. Modern cargo was transported

12:58

in the ships of these early capitalists. Furthermore,

13:01

Europe never developed independently but was always

13:04

developing through interactions with non-European

13:06

peoples, whether this meant fighting the armies

13:08

of Islam or exploiting the resources

13:10

and population of Africa. These

13:12

interactions were fundamental to the development of

13:15

modern European states and their economies, so

13:17

a myopic focus on Europe's inner history

13:20

can never discern the true patterns of that

13:22

history. Washington

13:24

detects just such myopia in the thought of Marx

13:26

and Engels. Much as it just didn't

13:29

occur to Plato that the lower classes might be

13:31

the potential revolutionaries in classical Greece,

13:33

it just didn't occur to the classical Marxists that

13:36

anyone but the European proletariat could

13:38

be the historical engine of revolution. The

13:41

root of the methodological and conceptual

13:43

flaws, says Robinson, is the presumption

13:45

that the social and historical processes

13:48

that matter, which are determinative, are

13:50

European. As it overlooked

13:53

the crucial racial part of racial

13:55

capitalism, Marxism's critique of capitalism

13:57

was doomed to be at best incomplete. As

14:00

Robinson puts it, Marxism is its state

14:02

western construction that incorporated

14:05

theoretical and ideological weaknesses that

14:07

stemmed from the same social forces that

14:09

provided the basis of capitalist formation.

14:12

So that's the gist of the first half of black

14:15

Marxism. It paves the way for the

14:17

second half, in which Robinson shows how black

14:19

radicals have done exactly what classical Marxism

14:21

could not have expected by posing a more

14:24

adequate critique from outside the traditional

14:26

European theme. Robinson

14:28

retains enough of a Marxist outlook to imply

14:31

that the emergence of such a critique was inevitable.

14:34

Black radical ideology was, he says, the

14:36

historical antilogic to racism,

14:38

slavery, and capitalism, and informing

14:41

that ideology, black thinkers of the 19th

14:43

and 20th centuries were discovering their theoretical

14:46

task. There's a resonance

14:48

here with Robinson's doctoral thesis, later

14:50

published under the title The Terms of Order,

14:53

Political Science, and the Myth of Leadership. Again,

14:55

this is an ambitious and complicated work, but

14:58

we can just note one of its central themes,

15:00

which is that political leaders do not come up with ideas

15:03

or projects and then take the people with them,

15:05

as usually assumed. Rather, they emerge

15:07

as more or less inevitable crystallizations

15:09

of the concerns the people already have. Robinson

15:12

thus writes, it is in truth the charismatic

15:15

figure who has been selected by social circumstance,

15:18

psychodynamic peculiarities and tradition, and

15:20

not his followers by him.

15:23

One example Robinson discussed in depth was

15:25

Malcolm X, who had been the subject of his very

15:27

first academic publication.

15:29

In a subsequent lecture, Robinson said, it

15:31

was not important that he say something new, it was

15:34

not important that he articulate novel insights,

15:36

it was important that he reflect the historical

15:39

experiences, the understanding, the comprehension

15:41

of the masses of black people in this country and

15:43

in the Caribbean. He did not say anything

15:46

new, it was the organized presentation

15:48

which was new. Something

15:51

similar could be said of the radicals at the center of black

15:53

Marxism. No, classical Marxism

15:55

was flawed. Its proponents were ripe

15:57

to discern a dialectical historical process.

16:00

that would generate resistance to capitalist

16:02

oppression. In fact, Marxism

16:05

even implies its own critique, pointing

16:07

beyond itself toward a further line of analysis

16:09

that it was too limited to grasp because

16:11

of its European roots. But

16:13

just as leaders are selected by their followers, so

16:16

radical theorists do not create potentially

16:18

revolutionary forces, they only notice

16:20

and describe them.

16:22

Enormous angles were not members of the proletariat,

16:25

they were educated into rituals,

16:27

and likewise the Black radicals, who most powerfully

16:29

articulated an anti-racist, anti-European

16:32

ideology, were almost without exception

16:34

members of what we might nowadays call the Black-no-claps.

16:37

Robinson instead uses the Marxist

16:39

technical term petit bourgeoisie and

16:42

observes that a long line of Africa thinkers

16:44

belonging to this group, like George Padmore,

16:46

C.L.R. James, Edric Williams, and Oliver Cox.

16:50

All of them, says Robinson, illustrate Frans

16:52

Fanon's phrase, Black skins under white

16:54

masks. We've seen this point before,

16:56

albeit in a rather different context, when

16:58

Émile-Cain-Cambrales posited that petit bourgeois

17:01

men like himself were called to leave the popular

17:03

uprising in Guinea-Bissau in an act

17:06

of last suicide. The

17:08

point was also made by C.L.R. James, with

17:10

reference to M.A. Césaire, who went to the

17:12

Sorbonne and taught Latin, Greek,

17:14

and French literature in Martinique. Césaire,

17:17

observed James, was able to make this

17:19

ferocious attack upon Western civilization

17:21

because he knew it inside out. He

17:23

had spent some 20 years studying it. Three

17:27

Black radicals in particular received especially

17:29

extensive attention in Black Marxism. They

17:32

are W.E.B. Du Bois, C.L.R.

17:34

James, and Richard Wright, all of whom were

17:36

attracted to Marxist thought but eventually, according

17:38

to Robinson, saw its weaknesses. All

17:41

three pointed to the fact that Black people, and

17:43

non-Europeans more generally, are not fated

17:46

to be the inert subject matter of history,

17:49

but agents, who can be producers

17:51

of ideologies, epistemologies, producers

17:53

of history. Robinson

17:55

recognizes Du Bois as especially pioneering,

17:58

because he was the first to discern deep connections

18:00

between racism and capitalism to

18:02

see that racial oppression was a long-standing part

18:04

of the economic system and not an aberration

18:07

or a mistake. James then

18:09

added something new with his account of the Haitian

18:11

Revolution. Here was a concrete

18:13

demonstration that the revolutionary proletariat

18:16

did not have to be European factory workers.

18:19

Instead, the Africans had constructed their

18:21

own revolutionary history. The

18:23

lesson drawn by Robinson is that it was

18:26

the materials constructed from a shared philosophy

18:28

developed in the African past and transmitted

18:30

as culture from which revolutionary consciousness

18:33

was realized and the ideology of struggle

18:35

formed.

18:37

As he says here, Robinson sees the cultural

18:39

heritage of Africa and the diaspora as

18:42

an important counterweight to capitalist imperialism.

18:45

The imperialists know this too, which is

18:47

why they always try to undermine indigenous

18:49

culture, the point we've seen and heard in

18:51

Gugiwa-Chango making eloquently.

18:54

Robinson writes that French colonialism always

18:57

attempted to destroy the people's culture

18:59

in order for those people to become appropriate

19:01

citizens in the French Empire. Thus,

19:04

a favorite line of Robinson's, the first

19:06

attack is an attack upon culture. Since

19:09

the best defense is a good offense, Black

19:12

radicals have responded with a cultural attack

19:14

of their own, subjecting white power structures

19:16

to withering criticism.

19:18

A good example is the third hero of Black

19:20

Marxism, Richard Wright, who was

19:22

unusual in not coming from a middle class background.

19:25

Perhaps for this reason, he saw in all Black

19:28

people the potential for challenging Western civilization

19:30

itself. Wright is also

19:32

important to Robinson because he most obviously

19:35

went from embracing Marxism to transcending

19:37

it. As you might remember, Wright

19:39

joined but then split from the communists. In

19:42

episode 94, we quoted him saying that they could not help

19:44

him realize the ambition of uniting scattered

19:47

but kindred peoples into a whole. Robinson

19:50

summarizes Wright's realization in the following terms,

19:53

Though immersed in the American radical movement

19:55

with its Eurocentric ideology, it

19:57

had not taken Wright very long to reach the conclusion

20:00

that the historical development of black people in

20:02

the United States constituted the most

20:04

total contradiction to Western capitalist

20:06

society. How

20:09

would Robinson have seen his own contribution within

20:11

the radical tradition of Du Bois, James and Wright?

20:14

Well, for one thing, he was no ivory power

20:16

academic.

20:17

As a theme, he was active in the NAACP

20:19

as a student, and at UCSB,

20:22

he supported such actions as a strike in 1998.

20:25

But in terms of his intellectual workfare, it

20:27

would be fair to stress above all his leadership of

20:29

the center of black studies. Nowadays,

20:32

when many universities have programs, degrees

20:34

and centers in black, African, African-American studies,

20:38

one can easily take such institutions

20:40

for granted.

20:41

But their establishment was hard won.

20:43

And in the early stages, their project needed to

20:45

be explained and theorized.

20:47

One of Robinson's UCSB colleagues, Brad

20:50

Moten, has done this in rather blunt terms

20:52

and in the process made it clear that the enterprise

20:54

was never a narrowly academic one. If

20:57

black studies is a critique of Western civilization,

21:00

you challenge the metaphysical foundations of

21:02

the goddamn civilization. And

21:04

that actually manifested itself at the level

21:06

of your own ethical compartment in the world. For

21:10

a take on this discipline that is more typical of Robinson

21:12

himself, we can turn to another of his essays,

21:15

David Walker and the Precepts of Black Studies.

21:18

It's one of a number of pieces, many of them previously

21:21

unpublished, collected in a volume entitled

21:23

Cedric J. Robinson on racial capitalism,

21:25

black internationalism, and cultures of resistance.

21:29

The essay on Walker, delivered in 1997

21:31

at a black studies conference at Ohio State University,

21:34

is typical, firstly, in that his discussion is

21:36

framed historically, and also because

21:38

Robinson was rarely happy to do just one

21:40

thing at a time. He wants simultaneously

21:43

to highlight the pioneering radicalism of Walker's

21:45

incendiary appeal, show that Walker,

21:48

in a sense, was already calling for something like black

21:50

studies and draw lessons for current

21:52

day practitioners. His historical

21:55

sensibility leads him to contest attempts to connect

21:57

Walker to black nationalism

21:59

as targets

21:59

appear include Wilson Moses, yet another

22:02

former podcast interview guest, and Sterling

22:04

Stuckey. Robinson's dispute

22:06

with Stuckey is particularly interesting because

22:09

Stuckey's 1987 book, Slave

22:11

Culture, Nationalist Theory and the Foundations

22:13

of Black America has striking thematic

22:15

and structural similarities with Black Marxism.

22:19

Against these interpreters, Robinson argues that Walker

22:21

cannot be easily appropriated because he is

22:24

non-modern. His ideas

22:26

were embedded in a religious worldview and ended up

22:28

with ideas of divine providence and retribution

22:31

in ways that few Black thinkers in the later 20th

22:33

century would recognize as live options.

22:36

Yet Walker still provides a model to imitate

22:39

because he glimpsed the idea of Black Studies.

22:41

That is, he envisioned an intellectual

22:43

project that was a massive victory

22:45

and populist, employing inquiry

22:47

for the purpose of mobilizing for deliberate

22:49

and informed social action. Walker's

22:52

appeal urged Black people to understand

22:54

their own history and the achievements of their

22:56

people, imploring his readers, go

22:59

to work and enlighten your brethren,

23:01

which is when you boil it down exactly

23:03

what Robinson did.

23:06

This very podcast can be considered as a contribution

23:08

to Black Studies, and so in our own way,

23:11

we are following in Walker's and Robinson's footsteps.

23:13

And of course, we're far from the only ones.

23:16

Next time, we'll look at another pioneering figure

23:18

of this academic field. As they say

23:20

on Game of Thrones, next time, winter

23:22

is coming. Sylvia Winter, that is, here

23:25

on The History of Africana.

23:27

Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh,

23:29

ooh, ooh, ooh.