David A. Varel

In the age of American Apartheid, a forgotten group of Black scholars defied Jim Crow and laid the groundwork for the modern civil rights movement. Clustered around the University of Chicago at various points in their lives, these figures harnessed their graduate educations to challenge scientific racism, explore Blackness is its full complexity, build alternative institutions, and participate in the social movements of their time. Their collective story, never before told, is a meditation on the power of ideas and the capacity of the human spirit to triumph in the face of great odds. It is also an invitation into the often-fierce debates over race, class, colonialism, and culture that remain at the heart of American life today.