APA Newsletters Volume 02, Number 2 Spring 2003 NEWSLETTER ON PHILOSOPHY AND THE BLACK EXPERIENCE FROM THE EDITORS, JOHN MCCLENDON & GEORGE YANCY ARTICLES JOHN H. MCCLENDON “Introduction to Drs. Anton Wilhelm Amo and Charles Leander Hill” CHARLES LEANDER HILL “William Ladd, the Black Philosopher from Guinea: A Critical Analysis of His Dissertation on Apathy” GEORGE YANCY “Gilbert Haven Jones as an Early Black Philosopher and Educator” JAMES G. SPADY AND GILES R. WRIGHT “Jean Harvey Slappy’s Philosophy and the Tradition of Marcus Garvey and Thomas W. Harvey” JOHN MCCLENDON “On Assessing the Ideological Impact of Garveyism on Nkrumaism: Political Symbolism Contra Theoretical Substance” STEPHEN C. FERGUSON II “C. L. R. James, Marxism, and Political Freedom” J. EVERET GREEN “Philosophy Born of Struggle Conference Series 1993-2003” BOOK REVIEWS Clarence Shole Johnson: Cornel West & Philosophy REVIEWED BY FLOYD W. H AYES III George Yancy, Ed.: The Philosophical i: Personal Reflections on Life in Philosophy REVIEWED BY DAN WARNER Rodney C. Roberts, Ed.: Injustice and Rectification REVIEWED BY NAOMI ZACK Smokey D. Fontaine and Earl Simmons: E.A.R.L.: The Autobiography of DMX REVIEWED BY JAMES G. SPADY © 2002 by The American Philosophical Association ISSN: 1067-9464 APA NEWSLETTER ON Philosophy and the Black Experience John McClendon & George Yancy, Co-Editors Spring 2003 Volume 02, Number 2 world, and the powerful influences of her great-grandmother ROM THE DITORS and her father, Thomas W. Harvey. John McClendon’s article, F E “On Assessing the Ideological Impact of Garveyism on Nkrumaism: Political Symbolism Contra Theoretical Substance” explores the philosophical divergences between Nkrumah and The editors would like to express their thanks for all of the Garvey’s respective philosophies of Pan-Africanism. Although positive feedback that they received on their first jointly edited Garvey’s influence on Nkrumah is quite apparent with respect volume of the Newsletter on Philosophy and the Black to political symbolism, McClendon argues that there is a vast Experience. We will continue to provide critical and diverse difference in their theories about African traditional culture, philosophical thought within the continuum of Africana the function of diasporan leadership within the Pan-African philosophical thought. In this issue we highlight the Pan-African movement and in their conceptions about the role of the scope of philosophy and the Black experience. This year (2003) political economy of imperialism in Africa. Next we have is a landmark year for several important developments in the Stephen C. Ferguson, II’s article “C.L.R. James, Marxism and history of Africana philosophy. First, it is the tri-centennial of Political Freedom,” which explores Pan-Africanist James’s the birth of William Anthony Amo who was the first person of magnum opus, Notes on Dialectics: Hegel-Marx-Lenin (1948). African descent to receive a doctorate in philosophy. Second, James’s contribution to Marxist philosophy is the focus of one hundred years ago W.E.B. Du Bois wrote his classic study, Ferguson’s critical investigation. James’s long neglected work The Souls of Black Folk and Thomas Nelson Baker became is one of the first Marxist philosophical texts written by a person the first African American to earn a Ph.D. in philosophy from of African descent. Ferguson employs an internal critique of an institution in the United States. For those interested in James and delineates what are the problems attached to knowing about Baker, you should consult George Yancy’s James’s conception of dialectics. Stephen C. Ferguson, II is pioneering article on Thomas Nelson Baker, which first now completing his doctoral dissertation in philosophy at the appeared in this Newsletter in 1992 (Vol. 95, no. 2). Third, Everett University of Kansas. Everett Green’s ‘Philosophy Born of Green a decade ago began his annual Philosophy Born of Struggle Conference Series’ is an overview of the conference Struggle conferences. In this issue of the Newsletter, he provides activities of the last decade and a call for the upcoming tenth us with a summary of its history and an announcement about conference, which will be held at Rutgers, Newark Campus, its forthcoming tenth anniversary meeting. Green’s significant NJ on October 24 & 25, 2003. Prof. Green, a former student of undertaking remains as the most consistent and sustained the late African-American philosopher Roy D. Morrison, III, effort to institutionalize, in a national conference format, the teaches philosophy at Rockland Community College and New ongoing discussion of Africana philosophy. We urge that you School University. who are engaged in Africana philosophy, as well as all students In our first book review, political theorist Floyd Hayes, and nonprofessional philosophers, participate in the upcoming North Carolina State University, provides an informed and critical conference. review of Clarence Shole Johnson’s groundbreaking work We begin this issue with John McClendon’s Introduction Cornel West & Philosophy: The Quest for Social Justice. In the to Drs. Anton Wilhelm Amo and Charles Leander Hill with second review, Dan Warner, who wrote his Honors Thesis at select bibliographies, which are followed by Charles Leander the University of Virginia on W.E.B. Du Bois and Arendt, and is Hill’s 1955 article on Amo, “William Ladd, The Black currently a graduate student at Duquesne University, explores Philosopher from Guinea: A Critical Analysis of His Dissertation the “tapestry of multiple philosophical voices” contained in on Apathy” in The A.M.E. Review 72 (186). Hill’s article is the George Yancy’s most recent edited book The Philosophical i: first English translation of Amo’s work. George Yancy offers Personal Reflections on Life in Philosophy. Next, philosopher another groundbreaking article on an early Black philosopher Naomi Zack, University of Oregon, provides an insightful with an essay on Gilbert Haven Jones. Jones received his overview of Rodney C. Roberts’s edited book Injustice and doctorate in philosophy in 1909. Yancy traces Jones’s life and Rectification, which attempts to come to terms with such provides a brief, though engaging, account of his life and questions as “What is injustice, and what does justice require philosophy, particularly his educational philosophy. Historians when injustice occurs?” Lastly, cultural theorist and historian and cultural theorists James G. Spady and Giles R. Wright in James Spady, author of Street Conscious Rap and editor of 360 “Jean Harvey Slappy’s Philosophy and The Tradition of Marcus Degreez of Sonia Sanchez: Hip Hop, Narrativity, Iqhawe and Garvey and Thomas W. Harvey” present an engaging tribute to Public Spaces of Being, philosophically explores issues of the fortitude and historical and cultural agency of Jean M. identity formation, consciousness, being and agency that Harvey Slappy. In contextualizing her identity formation, Spady emerge in the life of rapper DMX. Spady’s review of E.A.R.L.: and Wright insightfully reveal Slappy’s Black internationalist The Autobiography of DMX rejects the “from ghetto to riches” consciousness, womanist sensibilities, Garveyite being-in-the- scenario and provides us with DMX’s struggle to find meaning in human existence. — APA Newsletter, Spring 2003, Volume 02, Number 2 — Please take note of the following erratum: In the trade and slavery were now at an end, the ravages of capitalism previous issue of the Newsletter in George Yancy’s article on and racism assumed the forms of colonialism and segregation Jacquelyn Grant, on page 56, column 2, 3rd line from the bottom, at the turn from nineteenth to the twentieth century. In as the sentence should have read: “This does not mean that Grant much as colonialism and segregation were most alive and well is a prisoner of deep pessimism, and committed to a worldview in Africa and its diaspora, Amo’s example, throughout the where God is dead.” African world, was a critical resource for the needed moral We are requesting that all articles and reviews for the Fall and intellectual fiber in the ongoing confrontation with 2003 issue of the Newsletter on Philosophy and the Black imperialist assaults and brutality. Experience be submitted by August 15, 2003. Articles should Later, we discover that in 1939 Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois be sent to John H. McClendon, African American Studies/ summoned Amo’s exemplary scholarly contributions as a American Cultural Studies, Bates College, 223 Pettengill Hall, source of inspiration (Du Bois 1939) and Beatrice Fleming and Lewiston, ME 04240 or by electronic submission to Marion Pryde in 1946, under the auspices of Dr. Carter G. [email protected], and book reviews to George Yancy, 6324 Woodson’s Associated Publishers, would also inform a new Crombie Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15217 or by electronic generation of post-World War II youth about the Amo legacy submission to [email protected]. Electronic (Fleming and Pryde 1946). Cultural imperialism with its submissions are strongly encouraged. tentacles in Africa and its diaspora had its countervailing force in the cultural resistance of African peoples worldwide. During this period (from the mid 1930s to the mid 1940s), Kwame Nkrumah, as a young philosophy student and later instructor, found in Amo not only a fellow Nzima, of the former ARTICLES Gold Coast, but also a symbol of how the African philosopher must be engaged in practical struggle for liberation. Amo’s “De Jure Maurorum in Europa” in 1729 was one of the first works to defend the Rights of Moors (Black People) in Europe. Nkrumah Introduction to Drs. Anton Wilhelm Amo and had hopes of translating and publishing Amo’s compilation of Charles Leander Hill lectures, which he entitled Tractatus De arte sobrie accurate philosophandi (1738). Nkrumah was told that unfortunately, John H. McClendon the work was destroyed in the Nazi bombing of the British Assoc. Prof. of African American and American Cultural Museum (Nkrumah 1971: 185).