Afrolantica Legacies

1998 Bell, Derrick [Albert], [Jr.] (1930-2011). Afrolantica Legacies. Chicago, IL: Third World Press, 1998. The author’s papers are held at New York University. PSt

The author introduced the idea of Afrolantica in his “The Afrolantica Awakening.” In his Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism (New York: Basic Books, 1992), 32-46, 203-04. In it, Afrolantica emerges 900 miles east of South Carolina as an area about the size of New England complete with flourishing flora and fauna and valuable mineral deposits but no humans. In fact, it appeared that humans could not survive there, but it becomes obvious that African Americans and only African Americans can survive there. What the first African American explorers felt “was an invigorating experience of heightened self-esteem, of liberation, of waking up. All four agreed that, while exploring what the media were now referring to as ‘Afrolantica,’ they felt free.” The essay/story then reprises some of the history of Black Nationalism and details the conflict among blacks over whether or not to settle Afrolantica. The piece then ends where the Afrolantica Legacies begins, and the rest of the volume has his fictional African American legal scholar Geneva Crenshaw time travel to points key points in U.S. history when decisions were made regarding racial justice where she argues for a different approach and then discusses the resulting situation with Bell. See also, 1987, 1991, and 1992 Bell. The author was the first African American Professor of Law at Harvard University, where he regularly protested the lack of faculty diversity; he then became a Visiting Professor of Law at New York University.