Published in 2018, Making All Black Lives Matter: Reimagining Freedom in the Twenty-First Century surveys the mass uprisings between the years of 2012 and 2016 and the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement and the Movement for Black Lives coalition. In the book, Barbara Ransby defines and traces the lineage of the movement and profiles some of the leading activists, all from the perspective of an experienced equal to the younger generation that took up this struggle.

In Eslanda: The Large and Unconventional Life of Mrs. Paul Robeson, Barbara Ransby examines the life of Eslanda “Essie” Cardozo Goode Robeson’s life and career. A heavy influence on the very public activism of her husband, American athlete, actor, and activist Paul Robeson, Eslanda eventually emerged as a key political figure of her own merit and gave a principled and inspiring testimony to the McCarthy-era House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC). Throughout her life, she was an anthropologist, a prolific journalist, a tireless advocate of women’s rights, and an outspoken anti-colonial and antiracist activist.

Ella Baker was one of the most influential leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. As one of the founders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and a key member and conspirator of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Ella Baker stood amongst male leaders like Martin Luther King Jr., W.E.B. Du Bois, and Thurgood Marshall. Barbara Ransby traces her momentous life and political development in Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision (2003).

Black Marxism: The Making of a Black Radical Tradition (1983) by Cedric J. Robinson was one of the most influential books in the modern development of Marxist theory. In this text, Robinson argues that Marx’s original works are too narrowly focused on Europe and critiques the idea that a pure Marxist analysis can be applied to other struggles outside the continent. In this text, Robinson begins to introduce the history of what he calls the ‘Black Radical Tradition,’ rewriting the history of class struggle to include Black rebellions from around the world. (Source)

Released in 2016 as the first organizational document that outlined collective demands of the Movement for Black Lives, “A Vision for Black Lives” laid out six major demands for Black liberation. Not just a list of policy demands but a broad vision for social transformation and the dismantling of structural racism. The document also includes a statement of solidarity with Palestine and characterizes Israeli occupation of the land as genocidal and a form of apartheid. (Source)

Gloria Jean Watkins (1952-2021), who adopted the pseudonym of bell hooks, is a writer of many and important influential texts, such as Killing Rage (1995), Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (1981), All About Love (2000), and others. bell hooks wrote about an expansive and intersectional feminism from a Black, working-class perspective in resistance to a mainstream focus on only the perspectives of white affluent women. (Source)

General Gordon Baker Jr. (1941-2014), whose father was an autoworker, grew up in a union household in Detroit, Michigan. As one of the founders of the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM) and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers (LRBW), General Baker championed an anti-capitalist and Marxist approach to Black self-determination and understood the importance of targeting large corporations at their source – the assembly line. His leadership and the movement he led inspired revolutionary union movements (RUMs) in different factories and towns. (Source)

Walter Riley (1944- ) was a Civil Rights lawyer from Durham, North Carolina, who later became active in Oakland, California, in the student movement for ethnic studies. He was a leader in Congress of Racial Equity (CORE), the group that organized the Freedom Rides, and Riley remained heavily involved in various actions and demonstrations against Jim Crow policies in the south. (Source)

James Boggs (1919–1993) was born and raised in rural Alabama and was a big part of the radical auto worker movement in Detroit, Michigan. From his experience organizing amongst workers and working people in Detroit, he authored Racism and the Class Struggle and Revolution and Evolution in the Twentieth Century, which he wrote with his comrade and lifetime partner, Grace Lee Boggs. Together they started the National Organization for an American Revolution (NOAR) and the James and Grace Lee Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership was founded in 1995 to carry on their legacy. (Source)

Grace Lee Boggs (1915-2015) was a writer, organizer, and longtime activist in the Detroit area. She worked closely with her life-time partner, James Boggs, on organizing for workers rights and anti-racism and created many neighborhood political education projects. She authored a number of hugely influential books, such as Revolution and Evolution in the Twentieth Century (1975), Living for Change (1998), The Next American Revolution (2011), and others, where she criticized capitalism and, specifically, the way it has mutilated the public education system in the United States. (Source)

James Baldwin (1924-1987) was one of the leading figures of the Harlem Renaissance and a monumentally influential fiction writer, poet, playwright, and essayist. He wrote about the love, struggle, spirituality, and all dimensions of the Black experience in famous novels like Giovanni’s Room (1956), Another Country (1962), If Beale Street Could Talk (1974), and others. (Source)

Toni Morrison (1931-2019) was a hugely influential writer and leader in centering the complexities of the Black experience in fiction writing. Some of her most noteworthy books are The Bluest Eye (1967), Song of Solomon (1977), Beloved (1988), and many others. In 1993, Toni Morrison was the first Black woman and the first US-born woman to win Nobel Peace Prize for Literature. (Source)

Karl Marx (1818-1883) was a German philosopher, who, starting as a student of Hegelian thought, developed the foremost and advanced criticism of capitalism of its time. In partnership with a longtime friend, Frederich Engels, Marx wrote The Communist Manifesto (1848), Capital: A Critique of Political Economy (1867), Critique of the Gotha Program (1891), and other critical texts that develop this school of thought. Since then, many other intellectuals and revolutionaries have continued to advance the tenets of Marxism in different contemporary contexts. (Source)

Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) was an Italian communist who was imprisoned by the fascist forces in the country. While he was in prison, he drafted what became known as his Prison Notebooks (1929-1935). In this text, he advanced Marxist ideology to address the questions of culture and consent of the masses. He defined the essential concepts of “hegemony,” “historical bloc,” “organic intellectual,” and others, through these writings. (Source)

Walter Rodney (1942-1980) was a Guyanese writer, professor, and activist who theorized and wrote about the Black diaspora and Guyanese national liberation. He authored a number of influential works on neo-colonialism and imperialism, such as The Groundings with My Brothers (1969) and How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972). After working at a number of academic institutions, Rodney made his way to Guyana where he established the political organization, Working People’s Alliance (WPA). In 1980, Rodney was assassinated by state-sponsored counterrevolutionary forces. (Source)

Claudia Jones (1915-1964) was a Trinidadian activist and writer who was heavily involved with the Communist Party USA and was a leader in some of their anti-racist organizing campaigns. She was heavily persecuted by the United States government and, in 1955, she was deported to England. While there, she was heavily involved in organizing Afro-Caribbean communities and played a leading role in establishing the Notting Hill Carnival. (Source)

In July 1998, Barbara Ransby, along with other activists like Manning Marable, Abdul Alkalimat, Bill Fletcher Jr., and Leith Mullings, met in Chicago to reignite Black radicalism. The Black Radical Congress, as it was called, produced a manifesto from the three days it was held, called “A Black Freedom Agenda for the Twenty-First Century.” Notable on their list of priorities was the demand for reparations, the end to LGBTQ discrimination, and an understanding that Black liberation will necessitate a structural and social transformation in the U.S. and in solidarity with revolutionary groups across the world. (Source)

Based out of Boston, the Combahee River Collective brought together a group of Black socialist, feminist leaders whose legacy of critically addressing patriarchy within the fight for Black liberation is still celebrated today. In their groundbreaking 1977 Combahee River Collective Statement, the collective put forward an analysis that identified the three pillars of capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy as interwoven forces of oppression. In this statement, they also developed the concept of ‘intersectionality’–the idea that multiple forces of oppression can interlock and combine to create unique experiences of suffering. (Source)

The League of Revolutionary Black Workers (LRBW) was established in 1969 as a Marxist-Leninist organization who saw frontline auto workers in Detroit, Michigan, as the lynchpin to disrupting production for the Big Three major automotive corporations. The LRBW organized for a militant Black working-class vision of liberation and incorporated concrete displays of international solidarity with revolutionary movements around the world. (Source)

Started out of a program of principled self-defense in Black communities in Oakland, California, chapters of the Black Panther Party formed all across the country and soon became one of the largest mass organizations of its time. The Panthers organized a number of different kinds of programs throughout their time, including breakfast programs for children in local communities, political education courses and schools, actions and rallies around local campaigns, and others. The organization came under severe persecution by the United States government through the FBI-created COINTELPRO surveillance and infiltration program, which led to the state-sponsored murder of Fred Hampton and arrest of many other Panther members. (Source)

The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement catalyzed around the 2014 murder of Mike Brown by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, and continued to draw support and attention after a series of highly publicized police killings. What started as a viral hashtag evolved into a nationwide and global movement to call attention to the ways institutional and structural racism has inflicted violence on Black communities in the United States. Out of this movement grew the Black Lives Matter Global Network with BLM chapters emerging in major cities across the country. (Source)

The Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) is a national coalition of a number of different groups, which includes some Black Lives Matter chapters. M4BL leads a number of campaigns, such as Defund the Police and passing the Breath Act, both which are focused on diverting public funds from being funneled into policing systems that only perpetuate violence against the people. M4BL also releases a yearly statement that includes policy demands for the achievement of Black liberation. (Source)

The Landless Workers Movement of Brazil, or Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST), was first established in 1984 but was ignited by the mass occupations of large swaths of land by rural workers and farmers. In their communities, the MST has organized schools, on-the-ground and online political education content and pushed for agricultural reform and access to health care. (Source)

The #FeesMustFall uprisings started after the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, announced a 10.5% tuition increase for the 2016 school year. Students forced a 3-day lockdown of the university, which eventually led to protests and shutdowns in other universities across South Africa. The #FeesMustFall campaign eventually expanded to call out against continuing inequalities in South Africa where education remains only a privilege to those who can afford it. (Source)

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is a political organization of mostly young people who all primarily adhere to values of democratic socialism. While local chapters organize campaigns according to local conditions, a significant aspect to their work is to get radical progressive candidates elected to positions of political power. One of the most influential DSA-sponsored candidates was Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who defeated a 10-term incumbent for the position of U.S. representative for New York's 14th congressional district. (Source)

In August 1969, the Black Panther Party organized a conference titled the United Front Against Fascism (UFAF), drawing on the legacy of the Popular Front, an earlier era in which (mainly) the Communist Party of USA attempted to unite progressive and leftist groups. The Panthers believed that defense against the forces of oppression and surveillance they were struggling against at the time could only be confronted by a cross-class, cross-race alliance. The conference consisted of a schedule of speeches on topics such as: “Students and Education vs. Fascism,” “Workers vs. Fascism,” “Doctors vs. Fascism,” and “Religion vs. Fascism.” (Source)

The phrase and school of thought known as the Black Radical Tradition is usually attributed to the work of Cedric Robinson in his book, Black Marxism: The Making of a Black Radical Tradition (1983) where he adapts the Marxist understanding of history as class struggle to include the centuries of Black uprisings and rebellions across the globe. Like Barbara Ransby says, however, the Black Radical Tradition was built upon by a number of individuals and struggles that have pushed for Black liberation and radical transformation of our current society.

A living and ever-changing ideology, Black feminism has typically differentiated itself from traditional understandings of feminism by asserting that racism and patriarchy are interlocking systems of oppression. Black feminism is also about centering the histories and legacies of revolutionary women who have lead and contributed to the important organizations and movements that young activists, knowingly or unknowingly, draw from today. (Source, source)

Critical Race Theory, a term broadly popularized by right-wing and conservative forces in the U.S., typically refers to a method of teaching that analyzes the role of American racism in its history and institutions. Conservative parents, community members, and even politicians criticize and campaign against CRT in public schools because they deny the impact of American slavery on our contemporary context and believe it teaches children to hate America. (Source)

McCarthyism characterizes the entire state-led apparatus of the anti-communist persecution campaign of the early-1950s in the United States. Termed after Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy, who held trials and hearings in the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), McCarthyist sentiment became so powerful and widespread that it became a deterrent for even the most moderately progressive figures to voice their ideas or beliefs publicly. In addition, the Smith Act of 1940, which made it a crime to advocate the overthrow of the U.S. government, led to the imprisonment of many radical and Communist organizers of the era. (Source)

In contemporary usage, democratic socialism refers to those who believe that socialism will be achieved through strategic reforms that allow for more public ownership of major services and resources, like healthcare, housing, land, etc.