This Black History Month, let’s move from information to transformation. This Black History Month, I invite you to try a simple but illuminating exercise.
Take 10 minutes. Write down — on paper or on your phone — the books, movies, TV shows, songs, speeches, teachers, or moments that have most shaped how you think about race, religion, Black history, politics, and identity. Don’t overthink it. Just write.
Then ask yourself a harder set of questions: What does this list say about me? What perspectives dominate? Where did my assumptions come from?
Most summaries of Black history follow a chronological arc —slavery, segregation, civil rights, with protest and oppression as the primary through-line. That story matters. But it is not the only way to understand the Black intellectual tradition, nor is it always the most revealing.
An alternative approach is thematic. It asks: what problems keep resurfacing across generations — and why do serious Black thinkers, across ideology, keep returning to them?
Black history is a long tradition of problem-solving. Education, faith, economic independence, justice, family, culture, political power, and institutional design appear again and again — debated fiercely, but rarely abandoned. Disagreement is not a weakness; it is evidence of sustained intellectual investment.
What binds the Black intellectual tradition is not agreement on solutions, but a shared refusal to abandon the problems themselves.
24 Shared Themes Across Black Conservative, Moderate, and Liberal Thought
(C = Conservative · M = Moderate · L = Liberal)
1. Slavery & the Foundations of Race in America
David Walker L (“Appeal”); John W. Blassingame M (“The Slave Community”); Ira Berlin M (“Many Thousands Gone”); Thomas Sowell C (“Black Rednecks and White Liberals”).
2. Education as the Foundation of Black Advancement
Booker T. Washington C (“Up from Slavery”); Carter G. Woodson L (“The Mis-Education of the Negro”); James D. Anderson M (“The Education of Blacks in the South”).
3. Education & Achievement Gaps
Paul E. Peterson M (“Choosing Schools”); Jonathan Kozol L (“Savage Inequalities”); Christopher Jencks M & Meredith Phillips M (“The Black–White Test Score Gap”).
4. Economic Empowerment & Self-Sufficiency
A. Philip Randolph L (“Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters”); Martin Luther King Jr. M (“Where Do We Go from Here”).
5. Economics, Labor & Class
William Julius Wilson M (“When Work Disappears”); Richard Rothstein L (“The Color of Law”); Manning Marable M/L (“Race, Class, and Power”).
6. Civil Rights & Equal Protection Under the Law
Frederick Douglass M (“Narrative”); Charles Hamilton Houston M (legal strategy dismantling “separate but equal”); E. Franklin Frazier M (“Black Bourgeoisie”).
7. Faith and Black Houses of Worship
Howard Thurman M (“Jesus and the Disinherited”); Henry Louis Gates Jr. M (“The Black Church”); James H. Cone L (“A Black Theology of Liberation”).
8. Psychological Impact of Racism
Booker T. Washington C (“Character Building”); Frantz Fanon L (“Black Skin, White Masks”).
9. Enduring Legacy of Slavery and Segregation
Solomon Northup M (“12 Years a Slave”); W.E.B. Du Bois L/M (“The Souls of Black Folk”); Thomas Sowell C (“Discrimination and Disparities”).
10. Strong Families and Community Support
Herbert Gutman M (“The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom”); Cornel West L (“Race Matters”).
11. Power of Black Cultural Expression
Nina Simone L; Spike Lee L; Cheikh Anta Diop M (“The Cultural Unity of Black Africa”).
12. Right to Protest and Political Engagement
Martin Luther King Jr. M (“Stride Toward Freedom”); Tupac Shakur L (“Changes”).
13. Crime, Violence, and Community Safety
Khalil Gibran Muhammad M/L (“The Condemnation of Blackness”); James Forman Jr. M (“Locking Up Our Own”); Bryan Stevenson L (“Just Mercy”).
14. Holding Political Parties Accountable
Carol M. Swain M/C (“Black Faces, Black Interests”); Jesse Jackson M/L (DNC speeches).
15. Role of HBCUs in Black Advancement
Historically Black Colleges and Universities C/M/L (institutions).
16. Financial Literacy and Wealth-Building
Thomas Sowell C (“Basic Economics”); Mehrsa Baradaran L (“The Color of Money”).
17. Challenging Exploitative Media and Stereotypes
John McWhorter M/C (“Losing the Race”); Michelle Alexander L (“The New Jim Crow”).
18. Hard Work, Perseverance, and Responsibility
Booker T. Washington C (“Character Building”); Marian Wright Edelman M/L (“The Measure of Our Success”).
19. Reforming the Criminal Justice System
Bryan Stevenson L (“Just Mercy”); contemporary reform debates C/M/L.
20. Central Role of Black Women in Leadership
Sojourner Truth M (“Ain’t I a Woman?”); Shirley Chisholm L; Ella Baker L.
21. Right to Self-Defense
Malcolm X L; constitutional self-defense traditions C.
22. Accurate and Honest Black History Education
Carter G. Woodson L; W.E.B. Du Bois L/M; Nikole Hannah-Jones L (“1619 Project”).
23. Hope and Resilience as Core Black Values
Barack Obama M (“A More Perfect Union”); Amanda Gorman L (“The Hill We Climb”).
24. Institutional Strategy and the Design of Justice
Charles Hamilton Houston M (law as social engineering); Pauli Murray M (constitutional imagination); A. Philip Randolph L (labor leverage); Ella Baker L (decentralized leadership); Mary McLeod Bethune M (institutional diplomacy).
The Black intellectual tradition is not monolithic — but it is deeply interconnected. That may be the most important lesson of all this Black History Month. What this framework reveals is the presence of shared moral concern across ideology. The arguments are about how, not what.
Ed Gaskin is Executive Director of Greater Grove Hall Main Streets and founder of Sunday Celebrations
