Reimagining Progressive History: Black Progressives Within and Beyond the "Progressive Movement"

• In Event: Framing the Past, Present, and Future: Historical Narratives and Language Ideologies

Abstract

The purpose of the paper is to reimagine the historical narrative about progressivism in a way that includes the story of Black progressivism. A more inclusive and accurate history of progressivism emerges by interrogating and dismantling racially constructed eras, movements, timelines, and thematic approaches that, as forms of “whiteness as property,” work to exclude Black voices and reforms from the historical narrative of progressivism (Harris, 1993). Critical examinations of “eras” and “movements” serve to reduce recurring distortions of the past undergirded by systemic structural omissions.

Author

• Robert Poch, University of Minnesota