For essentially the past three years, I have been studying the lives and work of various Black activists of the 19th century. While this began as research for an exhibit put together by the Onondaga Historical Association in the fall and winter of 2024 in commemoration of the 160th anniversary of the National Convention of Colored Men, which met in Syracuse, New York, in October 1864, I found the information so fascinating that I essentially continued my own research as a hobby. In viewing the world of 19th-century Black activism, and the lives and work of figures like Frederick Douglass, Charles Lewis Reason, Mary Ann Shadd Cary, Edmonia Highgate, Paschal Beverly Randolph, and countless others, I began to at least scratch the surface of a better understanding of not just the varied efforts to end slavery, but also how said efforts connected to a plethora of arguments for how best to “uplift” the Black community, with education, of course, being a central component basically at all times.
In studying the 19th century, I learned that there were multiple examples of Black activists trying, and largely failing, to effectively block or curtail school segregation in their respective cities and states or to improve the conditions of the schools that were designated for Blacks, if there were any prior to their efforts, as well as attempts to essentially pool resources and influence they did not have then and still do not really have now to try and ensure the creation or expansion of a class of Black tradespeople, either through opening a school or by other means, with the hope that this could lead to the betterment and elevation of the Black community and improve their prospects as laborers and even businesspeople, which, again, never worked out as a successful plan, certainly not for the masses of the Black community.
I mention these examples about some of the aims and goals Black activists had regarding education in the 19th century because, as a researcher and writer who has done work to commemorate these activists, as I mentioned earlier, it has become very important for me to understand why exactly these figures and this era need to be remembered.
While I do love history simply for the fun of it, I would say, I have also begun to recognize that writing and being educated about Black activism, and about how Black people have viewed their relationship to and ability to survive within the white supremacist and imperially operating capitalist domain of the United States, requires more purpose than simply wanting to celebrate figures such as Peter Humphries Clark or Sarah Mapps Douglass just because you want people to know they existed.
For the better part of a year now, as I have continued my research, I have also become a regular watcher of YouTube channels such as Black Liberation Media and the affiliated channel iMiXWHATiLiKE!, which is operated and hosted by Dr. Jared Ball, professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies at Morgan State University and author of The Myth and Propaganda of Black Buying Power (2020) and I Mix What I Like! A Mixtape Manifesto (2011).
The work I have seen and been exposed to through these channels, as well as through some others, such as African World Order; the podcast Millennials Are Killing Capitalism, which is produced by its co-host Jared Ware; and the Psychic Militancy podcast, run and hosted by Dr. Lara Sheehi, author of From the Clinic to the Streets: Psychoanalysis for Revolutionary Futures (2025) and co-author with Stephen Sheehi of Psychoanalysis Under Occupation: Practicing Resistance in Palestine (2021), has very much inspired me and shown me that, as a writer, and to some extent as an educator for those who do read my work on this subject, my understanding and presentation of 19th-century Black activism must not only be more closely tied to the various notions of Black liberation and liberatory power in that time period, but also to how those struggles have evolved and continue now.
Essentially, as a Black person who exists in the 21st century, my job cannot simply be to memorialize Frederick Douglass and celebrate him for a valiant effort in a faraway past.
It is much more important and useful to understand Douglass and his work, not only his iconic beliefs around Blacks taking action to liberate themselves, but also the nature and evolution of his career and political views, which connects to larger topics about Black celebrity and the role of white philanthropy in marketing certain Black voices over others; the creation, function, and evolution of a Black bourgeoisie that operates at the expense and to the detriment of the Black masses and, in some cases, such as Douglass’, works directly with the federal government as it pursues its imperialist objectives; and also how leaders such as Douglass were utilized to advertise the major political parties to Black communities.
In my opinion, Frederick Douglass’ legacy is connected to all of these topics, which means understanding him in this way will help to illuminate how and why many of these things, such as Black celebrity, the Black bourgeoisie, etc., operate today, and how they are positioned to undermine efforts working toward Black liberation and against imperialism. This is a very important purpose that I believe should fuel Black education as much as possible.
Basically, my belief regarding writing and learning about 19th-century Black activism is that it should not and cannot be for the purpose of just celebrating it, especially not just one particular version of activism, as all this will do is section it off and depower its meaning and what I think it should mean to us.
For example, if you focus only on the work of Black activists who utilized nativist rhetoric and espoused that the settler-colonial United States was the true home of Black people and ignore some of the early formulations around Black nationalism within the context of Black emigration, or if you study only the work of free Blacks and ignore the vital history of slave revolts and other forms of rebellion and organizing amongst the enslaved, such as the history of maroons and maroon communities, your understanding of this time period will lack important grounding and exigency to show how it connects to today.
In a similar way temporally, if you disconnect 19th-century Black activism from both the past before it and all of the work done afterward up to today, moving through various figures such as Hubert Harrison, Marcus Garvey, Claudia Jones, Queen Mother Moore, Frantz Fanon, Jack O’Dell, Martin Luther King Jr., Kwame Ture, George Jackson, Assata Shakur, James Yaki Sayles, Shaka A. Shakur, Mumia Abu-Jamal, and many, many other activists and organizations, I do not think there is any reason to study any of it, as we would essentially be teaching with no direction, and certainly not a direction that leads people to anti-imperialism, internationalism, communism, etc., or even just to understand one’s existence as a colonized one.
Unless our understanding of education is to use it to advance efforts for Black liberation and oppose imperialism and the mass subjugation and murder of various peoples and ecosystems here and abroad, I do not believe there is a good reason to teach future generations about the work of any Black activists.
Our purpose for educating and being educated about Malcolm X cannot simply be that he was a fiery Black man who existed, but that he was an anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, Pan-Africanist, whose revolutionary cause existed then and still exists today, and if I am mistaken and it does not exist today, our being educated about him should make it clear that said cause must be reignited and expanded even further than what was achieved in his short life.
If anyone from the Southampton Insurrection or the German Coast Uprising were able to see us now, I am certain they would be confused as to why any one of us has stopped fighting. In short, our learning of their rebellion must guarantee its continuation and its success.
