#blackpublicsphere

[timeleeblog]

Black Americans arrived on New World shores precisely as 'property' belonging to the bourgeoisie. They were strategically and rigorously prevented from acquiring literacy. And they were defined by Thomas Jefferson and his compeers among America's Founding Fathers, as devoid of even a germ in their minds that might be mistaken for reason.

Houston A. Baker, Jr. “Critical Memory and the Black Public Sphere”

[fourcrazycatlady]

Such revisionism--one that reads King as aloof from or majestically out-of-touch with the majority at any time during his leadership--offers a false reading of the past. Moreover, at this complex moment of late-capitalism, such revisionism woefully limits majority interests in a black public sphere, an arena that requires perhaps more urgently than ever before, the good office of critical memory

Houston A. Baker, Jr. (1994), “Critical Memory and the Black Public Sphere,” Public Culture 7.