The Darkened Light of Faith : Race, Democracy, and Freedom in African American Political Thought - Melvin L. Rogers

The Darkened Light of Faith

Race, Democracy, and Freedom in African American Political Thought

By: Melvin L. Rogers

Paperback | 28 January 2025

At a Glance

Paperback


$45.95

or 4 interest-free payments of $11.49 with

 or 

Aims to ship in 15 to 25 business days

A powerful new account of what a group of nineteenth- and twentieth-century African American activists, intellectuals, and artists can teach us about democracy

Could the African American political tradition save American democracy? African Americans have had every reason to reject America's democratic experiment. Yet African American activists, intellectuals, and artists who have sought to transform the United States into a racially just society have put forward some of the most original and powerful ideas about how to make America live up to its democratic ideals. In The Darkened Light of Faith, Melvin Rogers provides a bold new account of African American political thought through the works and lives of individuals who built this vital tradition-a tradition that is urgently needed today.

The book reexamines how figures as diverse as David Walker, Frederick Douglass, Anna Julia Cooper, Ida B. Wells, W.E.B. Du Bois, Billie Holiday, and James Baldwin thought about the politics, people, character, and culture of a society that so often dominated them. Sharing a light of faith darkened but not extinguished by the tragic legacy of slavery, they resisted the conclusion that America would always be committed to white supremacy. They believed that democracy is always in the process of becoming and that they could use it to reimagine society. But they also saw that achieving racial justice wouldn't absolve us of the darkest features of our shared past, and that democracy must be measured by how skillfully we confront a history that will forever remain with us.

An ambitious account of the profound ways African Americans have reimagined democracy, The Darkened Light of Faith offers invaluable lessons about how to grapple with racial injustice and make democracy work.

More in Social & Political Philosophy

12 Rules for Life : Antidote to Chaos - Jordan B. Peterson

RRP $22.99

$12.95

44%
OFF
Animal Farm : Collins Classics - George Orwell

RRP $9.99

$9.90

Letters From A Stoic : Collins Classics - Lucius Seneca
The Republic : Penguin Classics - Plato
The Prince : Penguin Pocket Hardbacks - Niccolo Machiavelli
Communism After Deleuze : Deleuze and Guattari Encounters - Alex Taek-Gwang  Lee
Discipline and Punish : The Birth of the Prison - Michel Foucault

RRP $26.99

$20.25

25%
OFF
The 48 Laws of Power - Robert Greene

$41.25

Meditations : Timeless Classics - Marcus Aurelius

RRP $35.00

$33.25

Memories, Dreams, Reflections : An Autobiography - C G Jung
One Hundred Years of Dirt - Rick Morton

RRP $25.00

$23.75

Utopia for Realists : And How We Can Get There - Rutger Bregman
On the Shortness of Life : The Stoic Classic - Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Utopia : Penguin Classics - Thomas More

RRP $17.99

$14.25

21%
OFF
Who Rules the World? - Noam Chomsky

RRP $24.99

$23.75