Black Dreams: Dystopias in Afrofuturism (15 November 2024)

PART II: Sage Series I 2254.2

Octavia Butler and Samuel Delany opened the doors to literature that included the voices of Black people in the future. Notably, these stories did not focus on the specifics of culture and history across the African diaspora, but quietly humanized the existence of Africans and African Americans. These stories led to more visions in the tradition of Tananarive Due, Stephen Barnes, Christopher Priest, Reginald Hudlin, Dwayne McDuffie, Nalo Hopkinson, Sheree Renee Thomas, N.K. Jemisin, Tomi Adeyemi. These voices of Black Science Fiction laid the groundwork for the emergence of Afrofuturism and the Black Speculative Arts Movement in the twenty-first century. These treasures face erasure and removal in the decade ahead.

Where did the idea of Afrofuturism and the Black Speculative Arts begin? Lieutenant Uhura on Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek was one inflection point, but the representation of the Black fantastic in comics and literature stretches back decades into the early and middle of the nineteenth century. Dreams of freedom shaped the abolitionist literature that made Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, and Harriet Tubman into international celebrities. Martin Delany, Henry Highland Garnet, and Henry McNeal Turner built whole institutions that would shape the debates about Black freedom between 1850 and 1920. These steps forward created Historically Black Colleges and Universities, including schools like the Bordentown Manual Training and Industrial School. These schools trained scientists, inventors, and engineers who enlisted in the military during the Second World War. When they returned home, they built whole communities – Black Brain Belts, Black Brain Centers, and a legacy of Hidden Figures who gave birth to the digital information economy through the second half of the twentieth century. A century of Black technological and intellectual excellence reshaped the world with a vision of freedom and equality for all people.

Between 1996 and 2016, artists and technologists collaborated on platforms like H-Afro-Am, DeGriotSpace, the Warriors of Color AOL forum, and hundreds of other digital outlets that anticipated the success of BlackPlanet, MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter. One of the most powerful expressions of this work was the UJIMA Collective in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, led by Louis Manon and Oscar Gamble. Between 1997 and 2004, the collective supported hundreds of students, activists, and community leaders in bringing the politics of the Black Radical tradition into mainstream leadership. Their work expanded scholarship programs, artistic networks, and educational trainings that elected Black politicians across the nation and crafted an agenda to restore Black communities through public policy. The success of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act under President Barack Obama (2009-2011) and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act and Inflation Reduction Act under President Joseph Biden (2021-2025) are direct products of the Building One America agenda that the collective researched and wrote in 2007.

The most far reaching parts of this ongoing work emerged from the cultural phenomenon of Marvel Studios’ Black Panther film in 2018. The collective informed the work of Christopher Priest and Reginald Hudlin between 2001 and 2008 that transformed the world of Wakanda as it appeared on screen. The publication of the book, Cities Imagined, showcased a century of Black excellence in architecture and urban planning, specifically in the revision of Marvel’s Wakanda between 1966 and 2018. Featured in major art exhibits nationwide, including the Afrofuturism exhibit at the National Museum of African-American History and Culture within the Smithsonian Institution, the concept of advanced science in an Afrofuturist nation over centuries transformed the world’s idea of its possible futures. At the heart of this research is the careful study of maroon communities that resisted enslavement and segregation in the modern world – marronage. In the context of global climate change, maroon communities over vital strategies to resist and reverse the evolving policies of extraction and imperialism that have become the heart of a new world order in 2025. This approach is the way to avoid the most dystopic outcomes that Afrofuturism explores.

One fundamental contribution to this process comes from Tim Fielder. His Afrofuturist works — Matty’s Rocket, Infinitum, and the Graphic History of Hip Hop — offer a range of tools to carry the analysis of the Black Speculative Arts into the next decade. Matty’s Rocket offers a generational reflection on family, discipline, sacrifice, and empowerment that inspires young readers. Infinitum provides a deeper revision of the African continent’s central role in world history, while cautioning readers against sexism and arrogance. The Graphic History of Hip Hop reinvents the idea of the graphic novel by grounding a narrative in non-fiction, but uses scholarly historical resources in ways that are accessible to young adults. Focusing on Hip Hop as a methodology of resistance and revival, Fielder’s graphic history teaches readers new forms of resilience and creativity to foster new ideas about democracy and leadership. In a world defined by digital segregation, these tools provide strategies to overcome adversity in ways we cannot yet imagine.

Walter D. Greason is the Wallace Professor of History at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota.