Liberty is freedom from arbitrary power over one’s person, property, standing and judgment. The republic is the partnership of a people associated by agreement on justice and by common utility, not by descent, station, or faction. Our aim is to recover that standard against later habits that turn past injury into separation, partial loyalty into a rule for everyone, and the common good into internal ranking.

Journey through the legacy of early Black Republicanism, from Phillis Wheatley’s neoclassical verse and Benjamin Banneker’s scientific rebuttals to David Walker’s fiery classical oratory and Frederick Douglass’s radical reimagining of liberty as freedom from arbitrary domination — and discover its vital key to a New Black Renaissance

From Cicero’s republic through Charlemagne’s commonwealth and Petrarch’s revival of letters to the Republican Revolutions, one tradition alone has fought arbitrary power in every age, the civic republican tradition, and we fight for its living continuation. The republican tradition as a noble cause of Humanism is not yet spent. It was from antiquity to the early modern period, the deliberate result of eclecticism and synthesis. A reinvigoration of its ideal and civic philosophy within our thought, life, politics and culture is the best strategy to save, advance and fortify our democratic institutions, civic literacy and human ingenuity.