Post-Black History Month Reflections

I have sought to introduce to you the importance of the heritage and roots of civic republicanism, a tradition emphasizing liberty as non-domination, civic virtue, and resistance to arbitrary power, and by also providing ancient sources like Cicero extending through known historical revolutions. Within this framework, which I myself continue to educate myself about, Black Americans and the Black Diaspora have been integral, transformative forces in republicanism’s history and remain so for its future. So, it will not be a Black History Month for me, but a Black History Year. Rather than portraying ourselves as passive victims or outsiders as in Black right-wing grift propaganda, I encourage us to celebrate Black intellectual, revolutionary and philosophical contributions as evidence of inherent equality, ingenuity and leadership in combating racism, slavery, and oppression.

Black people must reclaim classical and even African heritages to foster a new renaissance, and challenge modern dilutions of republican ideals that White ethnocentrists and Conservatives have sought to portray as their possession alone. Rather than through popular simplified Marxist interpretations and strategy, I have worked from a different direction of strategy for self-emancipation and systemic change. This integrates Black experiences into the broader republican narrative without racial hierarchies and challenges ideas about how these classical sources viewed hierarchies and nature, which is used to negate interest in classicism as merely the history of “old White dudes.” I think it is imperative that if any of us have this kind of attitude to move beyond it to what lies ahead of it once we open ourselves to this history.

There was a need to learn about and introduce Black republicanism (or Classica Africana) as a tradition where Black intellectuals from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries mastered Greco-Roman classics and through their knowledge, were then able to see the flaws in the White racist interpretations of the classic sources to refute racist claims of Black inferiority, critique American hypocrisy on liberty and reconfigure republicanism as a radical tool against domination. I argue that there is far more to not only this reconfigured republicanism, but its classical roots itself that presents the most devastating challenge to modern Western civilization.

The five key figures shown in Introduction to Black Republicanism: Five Early Figures were Phillis Wheatley, Benjamin Banneker, Absalom Jones and Richard Allen, David Walker, and Frederick Douglass as an example of those who used classical rhetoric, history and philosophy (e.g., Cicero’s orations, Roman stoicism) in poetry, almanacs, petitions and appeals to demand emancipation and full citizenship.

For instance, Wheatley’s neoclassical poems invoked republican liberty giving America her first representation as Minerva, while subtly protesting her own enslavement. Douglass drew from Cato and Scipio to argue that republicanism cannot coexist with slavery, and this is non-negotiable. The citizens must rise above their racist conditioning to realize their true potential, or it will indeed fail, as time has not shown already. The view here is profoundly empowering. We cannot beg for inclusion but take the tradition, embodying it to spark organic transformation and collapse exclusionary systems from within. We can also do this by tying the Black Diaspora to global republican roots and continue to emphasize intercultural dialogue and the ancestral wisdom of all peoples over modern political excesses and limitations.

Black American classicists emerged from slavery’s shadow, mastered Greek and Latin to demonstrate equality and enrich republicanism with Black solidarity against tyranny.

Figures like William Sanders Scarborough (author of the first Greek textbook by an African American), Edward Wilmot Blyden (Pan-Africanist and Liberian diplomat), and others such as Wiley Lane and Frank M. Snowden Jr. used classics to counter pseudoscience and institutional barriers. Their work embodied Stoic endurance (e.g., Epictetus’s inner freedom despite chains) and civic virtue, holding America accountable to its ancient-inspired ideals. This strategy should be integral in our efforts, and the erasure and dilution of this tradition among us have been negatively consequential due to shifts toward vocational education. They are vital to Black intellectual history and the Diaspora as a pressure against exclusion and injustice.

The Haitian Revolution remains the most uncompromising and successful realization of civic republicanism against gradualism, proving its universality and incompatibility with slavery.

Led by Toussaint Louverture (the “Black Spartacus,” influenced by classical texts) and Jean-Jacques Dessalines, it established the first independent Black republic, abolishing domination through armed struggle and Vodou’s unifying role (e.g., the Bois Caïman Ceremony). This event terrified U.S. slaveholders but inspired Black Americans, shifting abolitionism toward militant action. Louverture’s 1801 Constitution and Dessalines’s 1805 ideal emphasized non-domination, with Haiti renamed to break colonial ties. American figures like John Brown patterned his Harpers Ferry raid after Louverture, making Haiti divine proof that enslaved people must seize freedom through defiance. For the Black Diaspora, Haiti stood as a beacon of freedom and model for self-emancipation, countering views of Black politics as merely modern or derivative.

African traditions are presented as foundational to the divine spark underlying the secularized concept of the source of human rights — the inner divine principle or fragment of the universal spirit. It affirms universal human dignity, spiritual equality and our capability for ingenuity, refuting racist denials of our souls.

Concepts like the Egyptian Ka and Ba (democratized immortality), Yoruba Ori and Aṣẹ (divine destiny and power), Akan Kra (soul from the Supreme Being), and Bantu Muntu (vital force) are rooted in indigenous tradition, without racial barriers, revealing the Black Diaspora’s resilience and philosophical depth. This urges us to reclaim spiritual liberation against colonial distortions.

This brings us to Martin Luther King Jr., a republican revolutionary who demanded that America uphold its constitutional promises of liberty and protest rights, embodying the tradition’s rebellious spirit against injustice.

He stated, that

“All we say to America is ‘Be true to what you said on paper.’”

However, as said, we must take it up as ours in a new way that captures the fullness of its philosophical depth; and from this point dominant powers could no longer refute or silence us as “Marxist” or derivative. Critiquing hypocrisy by invoking freedoms of assembly, speech, and press, contrasting U.S. ideals with totalitarian denials. Black Americans are seen as capable of revolutionary action, and opposition to propaganda that mislabels civil rights as subversive advances the Republic through ongoing resistance. Black Americans and the Black Diaspora remain today empowered agents of republican renewal and democratic processes, whose historical and philosophical legacies expose and dismantle domination. I advocate for our leadership, or our active participation in a revitalized tradition and long lineage, not in the limits of an ism of one or a few particular individuals; and this blends classical, African, and revolutionary elements to foster equality, virtue, human dignity and ingenuity.

Apart of this, is that I warn in my writings against: mistaken beliefs about republics being perfect, perfects systems as traps, and misunderstandings about republics and their vulnerabilities that are exploited by individuals the public get fooled by, whether for or opposed to such pretenders of democracy through mass populist appeal. The republican-minded citizen must become mentally armed in identifying the pretenders in the modern-day politician, so that it will arm your mind against political poisons and pretenders like Trump. These are the “pretenders.” They only use the language of democracy, of republicanism, speaking of “liberation” (e.g., Trump and Netanyahu), but look at their actions toward those who disagree with them, and their engagement in eco-terrorism. Through their legacy of colonial project and imperialism, they believe themselves to be the heirs of a heritage that in principle, refutes them.