The Black radical tradition manifests across cultural forms far beyond political organizing

Evidence

As a culture of liberation, the tradition crossed the familiar bounds of social and historical narrative. Just as in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, to take one instance, African marronage infected Native American and African settlements in Florida to produce the Black Seminoles who fought against the United States for three decades, the tradition has effused in myriad forms and locations. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 89

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the boundary-defying nature of the Black radical tradition as a ‘culture of liberation’ rather than a discrete political program.
• XREF: The Black Seminoles detail connects to broader marronage history and resistance to US expansion.
• SEED: The dizzying list — Stowe’s Dred, Civil War volunteers, outraged letters from the Philippines, Pentecostalism, the women-Smith blues, Oscar Micheaux — could seed an essay on the tradition’s unexpected carriers.