Black political movements repeatedly redefined American democracy toward greater expansiveness

Evidence

With a revolution of value, the blank-out campaign of 2016, continued grassroots organizing, and ongoing direct action in the streets, we can set a new course for this nation. Black people have done it before. In our resistance against slavery, we offered a new path for the country. After the devastation of the Civil War, we put forward a more expansive idea of democracy as we legislated in statehouses throughout the reconstructed South. We changed the course of the nation by leaving the rural South and moving into cities in search of freedom. We connected our oppression at home with the effects of empire abroad and challenged directly U.S. foreign policy. This is the heart of democracy in black—efforts to imagine a democratic way of life without the burden of the value gap or the illusion that somehow this country is God’s gift to the world. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 641

Categorization

• DEFINE: Consolidates the book’s central definition: democracy in black means imagining a democratic life without the value gap and without American exceptionalism.