Black Perspectives on the American Empire

This chapter highlights the story of African American experience and the history of slavery, racism, and white supremacy as well as the persistent black struggle for freedom and justice in the American Empire. It illuminates black perspectives on the American Empire from the standpoint of the black liberation theology of James Cone in dialogue with black religious and political thinkers such as W.E.B. DuBois, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, and other black contributors. It illuminates the direct relationship between US civil rights for black Americans in the American Empire and international human rights abroad for oppressed peoples of color, women, and children. The chapter sets the stage for a constructive movement forward toward a contemporary black theology in conversation with the theology of the American Empire through the lens of the African American experience.