Our discussion of nineteenth-century Africana philosophy has been, in effect, a discussion of the foundations of African-American philosophy. African-American philosophy is an area of Africana philosophy that focuses on philosophical problems posed by the African diaspora in the New World. Although there is some controversy over the term “African American” to refer specifically to the convergence of black people in the New World continents and regions of the modern world, let us use that term since it is the one most used by philosophers in the field. Thus by African-American philosophy let us then mean the modern philosophical discourse that emerges from that diasporic African community, including its francophone, hispanophone, and lusophone forms. To articulate the central features and themes of the thought from that intellectual heritage, I would like to begin by outlining some of the thought of the three greatest influences on many (if not most) in the field – namely, Anna Julia Cooper, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Frantz Fanon.

Anna Julia Cooper and the problem of value

The life of Anna Julia Cooper (1858–1964) defies belief. She was born a slave, from her father and master George Washington Hayward and his slave, her mother, Hannah Stanley Hayward, in Raleigh, North Carolina and went to school shortly after the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, which outlawed slavery except for inmates. She was still a child during these events, but took so well to her studies at St.