RESISTANCE
There is a saying among Black people: "We make a way out of no way". Confronting hundreds of years of erasure, disenfranchisement, and denial, Black people and their allies find ways to push back and claim a space for themselves, and to decry irrational, oppressive politics. Resistance takes many forms. It’s not just marching in streets and sitting at lunch counters. This list provides an introduction to that long history and its numerous methods.
Ambikaipaker, Mohan. Political Blackness in Multiracial Britain. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018.
Anderson, Carol. “Respectability Will Not Save Us: On the History of Respectability Politics and their Failure to Keep Black Americans Safe” Lit Hub (9 August 2017).
Andrews, Aaron. “Truth, Justice, and Expertise in 1980s Britain: the Cultural Politics of the New Cross Massacre”. History Workshop Journal, 91.1 (June 2021): 182-209.
Angelo, Anne-Marie. “The Black Panthers in London”. Radical History Review 103 (2009): 17-35.
Bhambra, Gurminder K., Gebrial, Dalia and Nişancıoğlu, Kerem (eds). Decolonizing the University. London: Pluto Press, 2018.
Bolton, Philanthia, Smith, Cassander L. and Bebout, Lee (eds). Teaching with Tension: Race, Resistance, and Reality in the Classroom. Cook County: Northwestern University Press, 2019.
Bonnett, Alastair. Anti-Racism. London and New York: Routledge, 2000.
Brown Douglas, Kelly. Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God. Orbis Books. 2015.
Carmo, Ana. “‘Racism requires ignorance’: How art and culture can help end racial discrimination”. UN News. 24 March 2025.
Cone, James H. A Black Theology of Liberation. New York: Orbis Books, 1986.
Cone, James, H. Black Theology and Black Power: 50th Anniversary Edition. New York: Orbis Books, 2019.
Cooper, Brittney. “In Defense of Black Rage: Michael Brown, police and the American dream”. Salon (12 August 2014).
Craton, Michael. Testing the Chains: Resistance to Slavery in the British West Indies. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982.
Dietrich, Dawn. “‘For America to Rise It’s a Matter of Black Lives / and We Gonna Free Them, so We Can Free Us.’” Pacific Coast Philology 54. 2 (2019): 220–51.
Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. London: Verso, 1993.
Harris, Fredrick C. “The Rise of Respectability Politics.” Dissent 61. 1 (2014): 33–37.
Johnson, Sara E. The Fear of French Negroes: Transcolonial Collaboration in the Revolutionary Americas. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2012.
Kelley, Robin D.G. and Tuck, Stephen. The Other Special Relationship: Race, Rights, and Riots in Britain and the United States. Luxembourg: Springer Link, 2015.
Kernahan, Cyndi. Teaching about Race and Racism in the College Classroom: Notes from a white professor. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2019.
Kite, Mary E., Case, Kim A. and Williams, Wendy R. (eds). Navigating Difficult Moments in Teaching Diversity and Social Justice. Washington: American Psychological Association, 2020.
Linebaugh, Peter, and Rediker, Marcus. The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic. London: Verso, 2000.
Lorde, Audre. “The Uses of Anger.” Keynote Address at the National Women’s Studies Association Convention, 1981.
Lorimer, Douglas A. Science, Race Relations and Resistance: Britain, 1870-1914. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015.
Luong, Michael. “This Is What Black Resistance Looks Like”. Yes! 23 February 2023.
Meister, Franziska. Racism and Resistance: How the Black Panthers Challenged White Supremacy. Bielfeld: transcript, 2017.
Olusoga David, Olusoga, Yinka and Olusoga, Kemi. Black History for Every Day of the Year. Pan Macmillan, 2024.
Quampah, Bernice, et al. “Cornrow: a medium for communicating escape strategies during the transatlantic slave trade era: evidences from Elmina Castle and Centre for National Culture in Kumasi.” International Journal of Social Sciences: Current and Future Research Trends, 18.1 (2023): 127-147.
Alternate at International Journal of Social Sciences.
Renton, David. Never Again: Rock Against Racism and the Anti-Nazi League 1976-1982. London and New York: Routledge, 2018.
Robinson, Cedric J. Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition, 3rd ed. Chapel Hill/London: University of North Carolina Press, 2021.
Schama, Simon. Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution. London: BBC Books, 2005.
Sharples, Jason T. The World That Fear Made: Slave Revolts and Conspiracy Scares in Early America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020.
Spence, Lester K. “Ella Baker and the challenge of black rule.” Contemporary Political Theory 19.4 (2020): 551–72.
Thomas, Tobi. “‘It was amazing to find sisters’: Brixton Black Women’s Group on their revolutionary newsletter”. The Guardian, 24 October 2023.
Ture, Kwame and Hamilton, Charles V. Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America. With New Afterwards by the Authors. New York: Vintage Books, 1992.
Waters, Rob. Thinking Black: Britain, 1964-1985. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2018.
West, E. James “Roil Britannia! Al Sharpton, the British Press, and the 1991 Murder of Rolan Adams”. Immigrants and Minorities, 37.3 (2019): 184-210.
Yancy, George. “Black History Testifies to the Impossible Creative Power of Black Resistance”. TruthOut 23 February 2025.