Corey L. Barnes

This project reconstructs early Black intellectuals’ contributions to the ontology and normativity of race, centering Martin R. Delany, Alexander Crummell, Anténor Firmin, Anna Julia Cooper, Pauline Hopkins, W.E.B. Du Bois, Druscilla Houston, and Alain Locke. It shows how they responded to White and Black race theorists, advancing diverse views on what race is, what we ought to do with the concept, and its political role. By treating their work as rigorous philosophy, the project corrects Eurocentric intellectual histories that marginalize Black thought. Further, it advances the view that race is historically contingent and shaped by political forces.