Revolutionary University October 2016
Robin D. G. Kelley, is Distinguished Professor of History and Black Studies & Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in U.S. History at UCLA, and current Chair of the Department of African American Studies and a prolific author and editor
My talk reflects on the life and work of Cedric J. Robinson, who just passed this year, especially his magnum opus, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition (published 33 years ago) in the wake of what may be the most dynamic Black radical movement to emerge in decades – the Movement for Black Lives. I will suggest ways in which Robinson’s book anticipated M4BL and its recent policy platform, which in some ways offers a radical break from Marxism even as it builds from a critique of capitalism.
