We the People

What the Black Intellectual Tradition Can Teach Us About American Democracy

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New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie and political scientist Melvin Rogers, author of The Darkened Light of Faith: Race, Democracy, and Freedom in African American Political Thought, explore the ways key African American intellectuals and artists—from David Walker, Frederick Douglass, and W.E.B. Du Bois to Billie Holiday and James Baldwin—reimagined U.S. democracy. Thomas Donnelly, chief scholar at the National Constitution Center, moderates. This conversation was originally streamed live as part of the NCC’s America’s Town Hall program series on Nov. 14, 2023. 


Resources 
  • Melvin Rogers, The Darkened Light of Faith: Race, Democracy, and Freedom in African American Political Thought (2023) 
  • Melvin Rogers, The Undiscovered Dewey: Religion, Morality, and the Ethos of Democracy (2008) 
  • Kate Masur, Until Justice Be Done: America's First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction (2021) 
  • Jamelle Bouie, “How Black Political Thought Shapes My Work”, The New York Times (Feb. 11, 2023) 
  • David Walker 
  • David Walker, Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World (1829) 
  • Jamelle Bouie, “Why I Keep Coming Back to Reconstruction”, The New York Times (Oct. 25, 2022) 
  • Martin Delany 
  • Jamelle Bouie, “What Frederick Douglass Knew that Trump and DeSantis Don’t”, The New York Times (June 30, 2023) 
  • Jamelle Bouie, “The Deadly History of ‘They’re Raping Our Women’”, Slate (June 18, 2015) 
  • W.E.B. Dubois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903) 


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