My course, PHI 4220: African American Philosophy II, provides students with an in-depth survey of the major historical periods and schools of thought in twentieth-century African American philosophy from 1900 to 1975. The course covers a variety of topics, including philosophical methodology, educational philosophy, social reform, civil rights, Black Power, anticolonialism, and incarceration.
Divided into four units, the course first explores the philosophies of Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, and William H. Ferris within the context of turn-of-the-century Black intellectualism. Here, students are introduced to Washington’s call for vocational education, Du Bois’ social scientific innovations, and Ferris’ idealist nationalism as responses to Anglo-Saxonism, Social Darwinism, ethnological racism, and Jim Crow segregation. These explorations suggest deeper metaphysical and epistemological questions about philosophy of history and the place of Black Americans in the present and future of that history.
The second unit moves to the interwar period to survey they ways that Black thinkers responded to the ongoing debates about democracy in the United States. This unit begins with Alain Locke’s pragmatic value theory and advocacy of pluralism while considering critical responses from reformers and Black radicals like Nannie Helen Burroughs and John Edward Bruce. This unit also covers several literary-existential reflections on the contradiction between democracy and segregation by Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, and James Baldwin. The aim of these discussions is to contextualize Black thought as responses to the rise of white supremacy and the limits of the New Deal, continuing the philosophy of history themes of the first unit. This unit end with an examination of Du Bois’ later writings, which reflect his anticolonial Pan-Africanism and his rejection of integration and American Empire.
The third unit moves to the post-World War II (actually, post-Brown v. Board) period to examine the debates over integration between Civil Rights leaders and Black Power theorists. After we establish context by studying key writings by Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, we read several foundational Black Power texts. The works of Robert F. Williams and Harold Cruse provide the grounds for a philosophy of preemptive self-defense and the internal colonialism model, while Kwame Ture and Charles Hamilton’s Black Power—and MLK’s response to Black Power—provide students a chance to consider multiple perspectives on Black Power while rethinking mainstream images of King. The unit ends with a week on Black sociologies of knowledge by Du Bois, Cruse, and E. Franklin Frazier, all of which in their own ways question the axiological and epistemological assumptions of integrationism.
The fourth and final unit examines Black Panther Party philosophy as a case study in Black Power and anticolonial thought. First, we dedicate a week each to Eldridge Cleaver and Huey Newton, thereby rejecting the orthodoxy that assumes Newton was the lead theorist of the party and demonstrating the varieties of thought that emerged from the Panthers’ activities. Both Cleaver and Newton are read as philosophical anthropologists and political philosophers. After establishing the foundations of Panther philosophy, the final lessons of the course turn to Angela Y. Davis’ critique of prisons and George Jackson’s analysis of United States fascism. The critiques of Cleaver, Newton, Davis, and Jackson are ultimately situated as harbingers of the neocolonial period of American history and provide a basis for rethinking the problems of the present.
Throughout the course, students learn through a combination of reading, writing, discussion, and lectures that situate the texts within their historical contexts. Because this is a history of philosophy course, the learning aims are exegetical and contextual, and students are primarily expected to demonstrate an understanding of the texts within their contexts. Position Papers, which require students to write short, thesis-driven syntheses of the week’s texts, are the weekly writing assignments. At the end of the course, students are required to write a final paper examining a broad historical theme based on the texts covered in the course. Successful students will be able to interpret twentieth-century African American philosophical texts in relation to their intellectual and social contexts and develop original theses regarding these interpretations.
My decision to offer a course on twentieth-century African American philosophy is part of a broader curricular outline that emphasizes the history of Africana philosophy. Most philosophy programs have a history of philosophy sequence, including courses in Ancient, Medieval, Early Modern, Nineteeth-Century, and Twentieth-Century philosophy—all of which are wholly or mostly oriented around western philosophical traditions and timelines.
At Central State University (CSU)—Ohio’s only state HBCU—we have re-envisioned our history of philosophy curriculum to reflect the university’s historical and current mission to serve Black students and communities. Our history sequence surveys the history of Africana philosophy through five courses: African Philosophy, Afro-Caribbean Philosophy, African American Philosophy I, African American Philosophy II, and Contemporary Africana Philosophy. Rather than being presented in a topical manner with a focus on contemporary scholarship, these courses present genealogies of Africana thought across several major geographic regions. Students are not required to take our history of philosophy sequence in any particular order.
The syllabus for African American Philosophy II presented here ought to be understood as part of this broader curricular initiative, which is informed by what Tommy J. Curry calls “culturalogics,” a method of philosophical canonization that accounts for the empirical history of racial dehumanization faced by African-descended people and prioritizes the debates between Black thinkers in the development of our understand of their philosophies.
A culturalogical approach challenges traditional approaches to canonization in two ways. First, it accepts the need to find philosophical thought in places that western philosophy rarely seeks it out—pamphlets, journalism, oratory, prisons, and other places where figures who are philosophical but not necessarily formally trained in philosophy might publish or record their thinking. Second, culturalogical approach resists the tendency to find value in Black thinkers only insofar as they can be brought into conversation with already-canonized white/European thinkers. In this way, culturalogics seeks to protect Black thought from being reduced to mere addenda and correctives to areas of western thought in need of reinforcement or rehabilitation.
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Patrick Anderson
Patrick D. Anderson is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Central State University and editor of the WikiLeaks Bibliography. His research focuses on the history of Africana philosophy and applied ethics and technology. He is the author of Cypherpunk Ethics: A Radical Ethics for the Digital Age (2022) and Anticolonialism, Ontology, and Semiotics: A Cinematic Exploration (2026).
