This edited volume presents an interdisciplinary account of Black intellectualism and life during the past century. In doing so, it offers a necessary corrective to previous “miscalculations” (p. 2) concerning Black culture, politics, religion, and thought. It also historicizes the ways Black people have utilized and “viewed education as a form of resistance and liberation” (p. 15) historically and up to the present day. Additionally, this volume does much to advance understanding of the role of Black women in studying and producing intellectual traditions. The editors of The Black Intellectual Tradition make it clear that their objectives in constructing this book are to delineate and protect Black humanity and simultaneously establish continuity with Black intellectuals who have historically demanded social justice and the dismantling of systemic racism throughout the United States and around the globe. The volume's essays, authored by distinguished scholars at myriad higher education institutions throughout the US, are divided into four parts: Scholarship and Education, Arts and Letters, Social Activism and Institutions, and Identity and Ideology. The editors’ goal, which they achieve effectively, is a far-reaching “presentation of the ideas that continue to animate Black people's strivings for full participation in American life” (p. 9).

As a White scholar of education history and policy, I found that diving into the Black intellectual aesthetics, history, letters, and politics presented here was at first intimidating, but ultimately rewarding beyond expectation. A thorough reading of this volume provided me with a firm grounding in the dynamic dialectic concerning Black thought and life that has been ongoing for centuries. It was a privilege to read this complex yet inspiring text that illuminates the historiographical roots of diverse branches within the Black intellectual tradition and their lasting influence on educational praxis, social activism, and community resiliency. Drawing from communal memory, experience, and both documentary and oral histories of African enslavement and the global diaspora, the essays explore the ways Black historians, artists, musicians, activists, and teachers—whose professional distinctions are not mutually exclusive—have participated in highlighting issues of race and contesting White supremacy. Moreover, they expand, rather than reduce, the range of experience, opinion, and thought associated with Black intellectualism as defined by its foremost scholars and students throughout the twentieth century.

Parts 1 and 4 form the volume's bookends, and, in many ways, connect the essays in the middle to the “foundational subspecialty” (p. 19) of Black history in the US that is Black intellectualism, as well as to the larger project of global engagement and internationalism. The essays of part 1 do their best to address what Aaron David Gresson III refers to as an “infinite multiplicity” (p. 55) of perspectives constituting the Black intellectual tradition that, as Pero Gaglo Dagbovie argues, has “few, if any, boundaries” (p. 29). If there is a theme that persists throughout part 1, it is that Black intellectualism has, through its dialectics, contributed much to the “emancipatory dialogic praxis” (p. 42) that is Black education in America. Perhaps the strongest contribution of the essays in part 4 is their emphasis on the ways Black intellectuals of the twentieth century adopted “strategies and tactics” (p. 237) for resisting class and racial oppression from and in collaboration with international partners in Africa and Asia. As Black people have challenged White supremacy and European hegemony in the US and globally, they have developed “diverse ideologies” (p. 208), rather than a singular “racial mind” (p. 21), as previous scholars of Black intellectualism have incorrectly asserted.

While the voices and intellectual work of Black women are featured throughout, parts 2 and 3 make good on the editors’ promise to “foreground the important contributions of Black women” (p. 9) to the Black intellectual tradition. The essays that form the center of the book extrapolate the “advocacy aesthetics” (p. 61) of Black art, music, and storytelling, as well as the ways Black thought has been “actualized” (p. 126)—at the kitchen table, in public spaces, and at public and private institutions of higher education—throughout the twentieth century. Venetria K. Patton's essay presents Black women's centrality to the development of Black protest music as exemplified by Billie Holiday, as well as to the promotion of “neo-slave narratives” (p. 80) and autobiographies as articulated by Toni Morrison, Jewelle Gomez, and Alice Dunbar-Nelson. Stephanie Y. Evans analyzes the important work of Black women like Anna Julia Cooper, Toni Cade Bambara, and Maya Angelou, and consider the role of memoir and epistolary—“vital part[s]” (p. 100) of Black intellectual history—in reminding twentieth and twenty-first century social justice activists that “struggle is necessary, but suffering is not” (p. 106). Additionally, the essays explore in depth the practice of womanism, particularly as it constitutes an “anti-oppressionist,” “nonideological,” “communitarian,” and “spiritualized” (p. 133) practice that contrasts strongly with Western-style feminism that is, as Layli Maparyan articulates, “liberal, secular, and colonizing in its orientation” (p. 131). I was particularly moved by womanism's emphasis on a “start where you are” praxis concerning itself with the transformation of “hearts and minds” (p. 136)—a praxis I think educational historians would benefit greatly from engaging with.

Each of the book's essays lends itself to both graduate and undergraduate study. This book has the potential to focus students’ attention on contextualizing Black intellectual traditions that distinguish carefully between “education” and “schooling” (p. 46) in the twentieth century, against and within the century's broader social, economic, and political forces. While the book's themes and content will readily resonate with scholars of Black intellectualism and history, perhaps the inclusion of discussion questions or prompts following each chapter or section would make this a more accessible pedagogical tool. This can easily be remedied, however, as instructors read the essays closely and draw their own conclusions about how best to utilize this material with diverse student groups across the US and around the world.

This book's contribution to Black history generally, and Black intellectual history specifically, cannot be understated. The editors and essayists articulate the vast range of intellectual expression that has persisted in Black spaces from Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) to the election of President Barack Obama (2008) and beyond. This volume challenges historians of Black history, intellectual history, and education history to expand the ways they “identify and interpret primary source material” (p. 101) on knowledge production and consider the ways theory and autobiography have grounded Black intellectualism throughout the twentieth century. Ultimately, the essays in this book urge readers to move beyond preconceived “definitions of leadership” (p. 8) and scholarship that have informed and guided scholastic specialists in the past. Historians of education who engage with The Black Intellectual Tradition will find themselves engrossed by the rich historical, methodological, and liberatory praxes that make up the heterogeneous Black intellectual tradition.