Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination

Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (2002) by Robin D. G. Kelley is a history of Black radical organizing and activism, primarily in the United States. Kelley is best-known for his award-winning history Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression (1990) about the Alabama Communist Party’s fight for racial justice in the 1930s and 1940s. In Freedom Dreams, Kelley casts his net wider to focus on how Communism, imagination, and love characterize the fight for Black liberation in the United States. The book traces the history of Black radical politics from the early days of colonial settlement in the Americas through the 1980s. Freedom Dreams combines several approaches to history: tracing the formation and political ideology of Black activist groups; analyses of music, poetry, and art and their role in the movement; and personal memoir. Considered one of the foundational texts in the study of Black political organizing, Freedom Dreams mobilizes these different strands to present a repository of methods, tools, and arguments to encourage and inspire the current generation of Black radical organizers and activists.

This book was originally published by Beacon Press; this guide uses the 2002 print edition. In 2022, a 20th-anniversary edition was published by Penguin Random House with a new foreword by Aja Monet.

Content Warning: This book deals with discussions of racism, slavery, colonialism, violence against Black people, and sexual assault. It also contains use of the n-word and other racial slurs.

Summary

Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination is a series of six interlinked essays written in an activist historiographical mode, examining the actions, art, and political theories that have animated Black American civil rights organizing throughout history. Kelley is primarily concerned with how even movements that seem to have been unsuccessful in their aims may nonetheless provide inspiration for contemporary Black radical activists. He identifies how Imagination in Activism, informed by the arts and international political theory, is used as a source of strength. He connects Black American radical politics to international Marxist and anticolonialist movements, demonstrating how they are one part of a global struggle for liberation. He uses his historical analysis to demonstrate the importance of Intersectionality in Resistance Movements, critiquing the Left’s failure to consider the particular experiences of Black Americans as formerly enslaved people. As a feminist, Kelley highlights the experiences and contributions of Black women to the movement throughout the essay collection.

In the Preface and Introduction, Kelley describes his own political formation and influences, beginning with his childhood in Harlem/Washington Heights, an epicenter of Black radicalism, and his mother’s utopian outlook. He describes how he was drawn to Marxism, Black nationalism, and finally surrealism as key aspects of his development. He also outlines his goal for the text: to provide an accounting of the history of Black radicalism as a source of possible inspiration and tools for contemporary activists. He seeks to expand the terrain of political organizing to encompass not just material, concrete gains but to push people to articulate a vision for the kind of world they hope to create through their activism.

In the first essay, “Dreams of the New Land,” Kelley describes how the idea of Africa, both as a literal geography and an idealized realm, animated early Black radical movements. He shows how Black Americans following the Emancipation Proclamation sought to return to Africa, as seen in the establishment of Black American colonizers in Liberia. He also details how later iterations of this idea moved away from a return to Africa as a literal place to conceptualize Africa as a figurative, mythopoetic land that served as a theoretical ground where Black Americans could imagine what kind of world they hoped to create in the future.

The second essay, “‘The Negro Question,’” provides a history of the intersections between Black American radical politics and international Marxism. Kelley demonstrates how Black civil rights leaders in the United States were informed by and in turn influenced Marxism and communism more generally. He shows how Black American radicals forced white Marxists to reckon with their naive belief that racial oppression would disappear after the overthrow of capitalism.

In the third essay, “‘Roaring from the East,’” Kelley continues to explore the intersections between Black American radicalism and international Marxism, here shifting his focus to China. Kelley shows how Black radical groups like the Black Panther Party and the Revolutionary Action Movement were influenced by Maoism and even traveled to Maoist China for support and inspiration for their movements.

The fourth essay, “‘A Day of Reckoning,’” describes the nearly two-century struggle for reparations for the Black American community to compensate for slavery, segregation, and discrimination. Although this campaign has been largely unsuccessful in material terms, Kelley sees it as an organizing principle that allows Black American radicals to envision the kind of world they hope to create.

In the fifth essay, “‘This Battlefield Called Life,’” Kelley describes the struggles and contributions of Black women to the movement. He demonstrates how, despite being marginalized in many Black radical organizations and in society as a whole, Black women worked collectively to advance the cause in important ways.

The sixth and final essay in the collection, “Keeping It (Sur)real,” demonstrates how the artistic movement of surrealism informs and was informed by Black radicalism. Kelley gives a history of surrealism, examines the case of Aimé Césaire, a Martinican writer and activist, and describes how surrealism influenced various Black radical artists such as Richard Wright. In this essay, Kelley brings together these strands to show how surrealism enables the kind of poetic thought necessary to imagine a new world.

In the conclusion of the text, Kelley employs the principles he has detailed throughout the essay collection to imagine the site of the World Trade Towers, which were destroyed on 9/11, as an international memorial park dedicated to peace and liberation.