Harvard Book Store's virtual event series welcomes MICHAEL E. SAWYER—Assistant Professor of Race, Ethnicity, and Migration Studies at Colorado College and author of the monograph An Africana Philosophy of Temporality: Homo Liminalis—for a discussion of his latest book, Black Minded: The Political Philosophy of Malcolm X. He will be joined in conversation by FLORES A. FORBES, associate professor of urban planning at Columbia's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation and author of Invisible Men: A Contemporary Slave Narrative in the Era of Mass Incarceration.

About Black Minded

Known as 'the angriest black man in America', Malcolm X was one of the most famous activists to ever live. Going beyond biography, Black Minded examines Malcolm X's philosophical system, restoring his thinking to the pantheon of Black Radical Thought. Michael Sawyer argues that the foundational concepts of Malcolm X's political philosophy—economic and social justice, strident opposition to white supremacy and Black internationalism—are often obscured by an emphasis on biography.

The text demonstrates the way in which Malcolm X's philosophy lies at the intersection of the thought of W.E.B. Du Bois and Frantz Fanon and is an integral part of the revolutionary politics formed to alleviate the plight of people of African descent globally. Exploring themes of ontology, the body, geographic space and revolution, Black Minded provides a much-needed appraisal of Malcolm X's political philosophy.