By Musa T. Bey

The Black Radical Tradition is not dead. It breathes in the whispers of maroon ancestors who outran the slave catcher’s whip. It shouts in the streets of Ferguson, in the chants of Palestine solidarity protests, in the clenched fists of striking workers. It dreams in the minds of abolitionists building worlds beyond cages, beyond borders, beyond capitalism. It is the thunder under our feet, shaking the foundations of empire. It is the fire that has always refused to be extinguished.

To speak of the Black Radical Tradition is to speak of rebellion, of uncompromising clarity, of revolutionary love. It is not merely a historical archive or academic curiosity. It is a living, breathing force — forged in the heat of struggle and sharpened by centuries of resistance. It is Harriet Tubman’s rifle. It is Malcolm’s rifle. It is Claudia Jones’s pen. It is Fred Hampton’s breakfast program. It is the scream of Assata Shakur, still echoing from Cuban soil: “It is our duty to fight for our freedom!”

I. The Roots: A History of Fire and Flight

The Black Radical Tradition was born in chains — but it has always been about breaking them.

It begins not in the academy but in the hold of slave ships, in whispered revolts aboard floating dungeons. It begins with rebellion: the Haitian Revolution, the only successful slave revolt in modern history, shattered the myth of white supremacy and launched a Black-led challenge to empire that reverberated across the globe. Toussaint Louverture , Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Dutty Boukman and the people of Haiti taught the world that the enslaved could become the architects of their own liberation.

Throughout the Americas, maroons — escaped Africans — built fugitive communities in forests, swamps, and mountains, developing independent political systems, economies, and spiritual life. These were not just acts of survival. They were acts of world-making.

In the U.S., the resistance carried forward through Nat Turner’s rebellion, through the Underground Railroad, and through the abolitionist fire of people like Sojourner Truth, David Walker, and Frederick Douglass. Black resistance was never only moral — it was tactical, strategic, and revolutionary.

After emancipation, the struggle transformed but did not end. During Reconstruction, Black people built schools, co-ops, and political institutions, only to see them destroyed by white terror and capitalist violence. Out of that devastation rose new formations — from the self-defense units of Ida B. Wells to the radical socialism of Hubert Harrison to Marcus Garvey’s internationalist pan-Africanism, which mobilized millions across the diaspora.

The 20th century brought sharper tools. Black Communists like Claudia Jones and Paul Robeson fused anti-imperialism with class struggle. The Civil Rights Movement — often sanitized — was anchored by radical grassroots leaders like Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer, and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), who emphasized bottom-up organizing and community power.

Then came the revolutionary tide: the Black Panther Party, the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, the Republic of New Afrika, the Black Liberation Army. They called for socialism, self-determination, international solidarity, and armed resistance. They fed children, studied Marx, resisted the police, and fought COINTELPRO’s deadly war on Black radicals.

Globally, the Black Radical Tradition moved with Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana, Amílcar Cabral in Guinea-Bissau, Walter Rodney in Guyana, and Steve Biko in South Africa — a network of militant Black consciousness and revolutionary praxis.

Even in exile and prison, the tradition deepened. George Jackson, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Assata Shakur, and countless others continued the struggle behind bars — transforming the prison into a battlefield of political education.

In the 21st century, the Black Radical Tradition carries forward through abolitionist movements, labor organizing, Pan-African environmental struggle, and revolutionary digital resistance. It pulses in the Movement for Black Lives, in prison divestment campaigns, in the cries of #EndSARS in Nigeria and #FreePalestine around the world.

It is not a relic. It is an inheritance. And it is ours to carry.

II. The Ten Tenets of the Black Radical Tradition

These tenets are not commandments — they are living principles, emerging from centuries of struggle and evolving with the needs of today’s freedom fighters:

1. Revolutionary Humanism

The Black Radical Tradition affirms the full dignity, beauty, and humanity of all oppressed people — not in abstract terms, but through material struggle against the systems that deny it.

2. Collective Self-Determination

Black people have the right and responsibility to govern our own communities, define our futures, and create institutions independent of the state, capital, and white supremacy.

3. Anti-Capitalism & Anti-Colonialism

Racial capitalism and colonial domination are central to Black oppression. The tradition is rooted in their total dismantling — not reform, not representation, but abolition and reconstruction.

4. Internationalism & Pan-African Solidarity

Our freedom is tied to the liberation of oppressed peoples globally — from Haiti to Harlem, from Soweto to Gaza. The tradition transcends borders because oppression does too.

5. Revolutionary Black Feminism

Black women, femmes, and queer people are not marginal to this tradition — they are central to it. Black feminism clarifies that the fight against patriarchy and capitalism must be one and the same.

6. Abolitionist Politics

The prison-industrial complex, the police state, and the logic of punishment must be abolished. The tradition builds new systems of care, accountability, and transformative justice.

7. Culture as Weapon

Art, music, language, and spirituality are not decorations to the movement — they are weapons. From spirituals to hip-hop, Black culture has always been a tool of resistance and political education.

8. Mass Political Education

Revolution is not spontaneous — it must be studied, debated, taught, and practiced. From slave insurrections to freedom schools to radical study groups, the tradition emphasizes learning to fight and fighting to learn.

9. Militancy & Self-Defense

The tradition does not romanticize violence, but neither does it surrender. It affirms the right of oppressed people to defend themselves and build power by any means necessary.

10. Love as Praxis

Revolution is an act of deep love — for ourselves, for our people, for the earth, for generations unborn. Love is not sentimental here. It is radical, dangerous, and rooted in action.

III. We Are the Continuation

What makes the Black Radical Tradition exhilarating is not just its audacity but its discipline. This is not a tradition of hashtags and hot takes. It is a tradition of political education circles in basements, of food programs, of organizing tenants, of facing state violence with dignity and steel in the spine.

It teaches us that revolution is not a metaphor. It is not inevitable. It must be built.

We do not inherit a tradition of despair. We inherit a tradition that taught the enslaved how to break chains, not polish them. We inherit a tradition that knew the state would never be neutral, that courts would never be fair, that elections were not liberation. We inherit a tradition that believed in the power of the people — organized, armed with theory, grounded in love.

In this age of ecological collapse, digital fascism, and neoliberal decay, the ruling class has no future to offer us — only extinction. But the Black Radical Tradition insists that we are not destined to die in empire’s ruins. We can build something else. We must.

So let the tradition live in you. Study it. Fight with it. Extend it. Be it.

Because revolution is not coming. It is already here — in the lungs of every Black child who breathes, despite it all.

Let the fire rise.