Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination

Aimé Césaire (1913-2008) was a prominent Martinican writer and politician. In the English-speaking world, Césaire is best known for his texts Cahier d’un retour au pays natal or Notebook of a Return to My Native Land (1939), a book-length surrealist poem about the anticolonial struggle, and Discours sur le colonialisme or Discourse on Colonialism (1950, 1955), an essay that is considered a foundational text in the anticolonial movement.

Césaire was born to a lower-middle class family on the Caribbean island of Martinique, which was a French colony at the time (today, the island is a French department or district). As a high school student, Césaire won a scholarship to attend the prestigious Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris. He went on to earn a degree in literature from the École Normale Supérieure, one of the most competitive universities in France. While in Paris, he was active in the Black anticolonial movement, founding the journal L’étudiant noir or The Black Student. In 1936, he was a founder of the global Négritude movement, a term which translates roughly to “Blackness.” Négritude is an analytical framework that brings together elements of Black radicalism, Marxism, internationalism, and anticolonialism.

Césaire was active in the French Communist Party (PCF), and upon his return to Martinique he was elected mayor and representative of the island to the French National Assembly. Césaire advocated for France to change the designation of Martinique from a colony to a department of France, hoping that the change would allow the island greater autonomy. Césaire realized after the change that it did not bring the independence he hoped for, as France used the designation to exert even greater control over the island, as Kelley notes in his text. Césaire left the Communist party in 1956, disillusioned by Stalin’s violent repression of a revolution in Hungary. He then created his own party, the Progressive Martinican Party. Césaire was a representative of Martinique in the French National Assembly for 47 years. 

The Revolutionary Action Movement was a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Black nationalist organization active from 1962 to 1968. RAM was organized into cells or chapters that used pseudonyms to avoid suppression and infiltration. Their goal was to spark a mass uprising of Black workers in the North while connecting the Black struggle to those faced by colonized peoples around the world. One of the policies that differentiated them from other Black nationalist and/or Marxist-Leninist-Maoist organizations of the time was their advocacy for the creation of a Black nation in the American South. They were also dedicated proponents of Maoist philosophy, frequently citing The Little Red Book as a source of inspiration and guidance. In keeping with this principle, RAM promoted armed self-defense. As detailed by Kelley, they sought to recruit gang members to their self-defense network, on the theory that gang members would have the necessary skills in the event of armed conflict. The group also distributed Robert F. Williams’s newsletter, The Crusader.

Two of the leaders of RAM were Muhammad Ahmad (born Max Stanford), of Philadelphia, and Donald Freeman, then a student at Case Western University in Cleveland, Ohio. Malcolm X, the revolutionary civil rights leader, also joined the organization as an officer.

In 1967, RAM was targeted by the FBI’s COINTELPRO program and its officers were arrested on charges of conspiracy to commit murder, leading to the dissolution of the organization. 

Grace Lee Boggs (1915-2015) was a prominent civil rights activist, feminist, and author. Born in Providence, Rhode Island to Chinese immigrant parents, she was a key organizer in the Black civil rights and labor rights movements beginning in the 1940s. After being radicalized while working a low paying job at the University of Chicago, she joined the Workers Party and met prominent Black radical leaders including C.L.R. James and Richard Wright. In 1953, she met Black labor organizer and autoworker James Boggs, whom she later married. The couple worked together in their advocacy, both through formal political parties such as the Socialist Workers Party, and through other organizations.

Boggs was known for opening her home in Detroit to young Black activists, informally adopting many of them, including Muhammad Ahmad (Max Stanford), later founder of the Revolutionary Action Network. On her passing in 2015, President Barack Obama issued a statement praising her “passion for helping others, and her work to rejuvenate communities that had fallen on hard times” (“Statement by the President on the Passing of Grace Lee Boggs.” The White House Office of the Press Secretary, 5 Oct. 2015). 

André Breton (1896-1966) was a key figure in the surrealist movement. Breton, born to a working-class family in Normandy, France, briefly attended medical school but never completed his degree. After World War I, Breton moved to Paris and committed himself to a career as a writer. From an early age, Breton had been inspired by proto-surrealist writers such as Arthur Rimbaud and Alfred Jarry. Breton sought to expand on the spirit of play, the marvelous, and the strange articulated by these and other writers and artists. As the leader of the surrealist movement, Breton founded numerous journals and organizations, including the Bureau of Surrealist Research, and authored the Surrealist Manifesto. In 1927, he joined the French Communist Party (PCF). Although he left the party in 1935 over disagreements with Stalinism, Breton continued to hold Communist principles for most of his life. In 1952, he formally declared himself to be an anarchist.

During World War II and under the Nazi-allied French Vichy regime, Breton was forced to flee France, ultimately spending a number of years in New York City. This time was critical, as it brought more Americans—including Black American radicals—into contact with surrealism while exposing Breton to aspects of Black American culture that would later become important to the surrealist movement, as documented by Kelley. Breton collaborated with many of the radical figures discussed in Freedom Dreams, including Aimé Césaire, Wilfredo Lam, and Richard Wright. 

Richard Wright (1908-1960) was a prominent Black American writer. Wright was born to a poor but educated family in Natchez, Mississippi. From an early age, Wright was interested in being a writer, publishing one of his first short stories at 15. In 1927, his family moved to Chicago, where he first encountered Communism and labor organizing. In 1932, Wright joined the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA). In 1939, following the publication of his first short-story collection, Wright was awarded the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship. In 1940, Wright published his most highly acclaimed novel, Native Son, which traces the story of Bigger Thomas, a young Black man who accidentally murders a white woman. In 1944, Wright split with CPUSA over Stalinism.

In 1946, Wright moved to Paris, where he spent the rest of his life. While in France, Wright came into contact with French leftists and existentialists, including Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, and André Breton. While Richard Wright was frequently in conflict with Communist party members, he remained politically engaged in anticolonial and antiracist politics until his death from a heart attack in 1960. 

Robert F. Williams (1925-1996) was a Black civil rights leader. Born in Monroe, North Carolina, Williams served for many years as the head of the local chapter of the NAACP. As head of the chapter, Monroe advocated for integration of public facilities like the swimming pool and library. In the late 1950s, with the support of the National Rifle Association, Williams set up a rifle club and armed self-defense training for Black Americans. In 1961, Williams was charged with kidnapping a white couple and was forced to flee the United States (the charges were later dropped). He first went to Cuba and later to China. From his home in China, Williams published the Black revolutionary Maoist newsletter The Crusader. This newsletter was an inspiration for Black militant Communists in the United States and was distributed by the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM). He was also the author, along with his wife Mabel Williams, of the influential text Negroes with Guns (1962), which inspired leaders of the Black Panther Party among others.

In 1969, Williams returned to the United States. He died in Baldwin, Michigan, in 1996. Civil rights leader Rosa Parks gave the eulogy at his funeral.