Freedomways was the leading African-American theoretical, political and cultural journal of the 1960s-1980s. It began publishing in 1961 and ceased in 1985.

The journal's founders were Louis Burnham, Edward Strong, W.E.B. Du Bois

W.E.B. Du Bois

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was an American sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, author, and editor. Born in Massachusetts, Du Bois attended Harvard, where he was the first African American to earn a doctorate...

 and its first general editor Shirley Graham Du Bois

Shirley Graham Du Bois

Shirley Graham Du Bois was an American-born author, playwright, composer, and activist for African-American and other causes, as well as spouse of noted African-American thinker, writer, and activist W. E. B...

. It was later edited by Esther Cooper Jackson

Esther Cooper Jackson

Esther Cooper Jackson is an African American civil rights activist, former social worker and, along with Shirley Graham Du Bois, W. E. B. Du Bois, Edward Strong, and Louis E. Burnham, was one of the founding editors of the magazine Freedomways, a theoretical, political and literary journal...

. For a time, Alice Walker

Alice Walker

Alice Malsenior Walker is an American author, poet, and activist. She has written both fiction and essays about race and gender...

 was a contributing editor.

Freedomways reported on the progressive political movements of the time and especially the American civil rights movement, uniting the diverse perspectives of the North and the South, but was also notable for its international scope in the era of anti-colonial victories and Pan-Africanism

Pan-Africanism

Pan-Africanism is a movement that seeks to unify African people or people living in Africa, into a "one African community". Differing types of Pan-Africanism seek different levels of economic, racial, social, or political unity...

. In addition to noted African-American intellectuals and artists whose work appeared in Freedomways (among them writers James Baldwin

James Baldwin

James Baldwin was an American novelist, essayist and civil rights activist.James Baldwin may also refer to:-Writers:*James Baldwin , American educator, writer and administrator...

, Alice Walker

Alice Walker

Alice Malsenior Walker is an American author, poet, and activist. She has written both fiction and essays about race and gender...

, Paul Robeson

Paul Robeson

Paul Leroy Robeson was an American concert singer , recording artist, actor, athlete, scholar who was an advocate for the Civil Rights Movement in the first half of the twentieth century...

, Nikki Giovanni

Nikki Giovanni

Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni is an American poet, writer, commentator, activist, and educator. Her primary focus is on the individual and the power one has to make a difference in oneself and in the lives of others. Giovanni’s poetry expresses strong racial pride, respect for family, and her...

, Lorraine Hansberry

Lorraine Hansberry

Lorraine Hansberry was an African American playwright and author of political speeches, letters, and essays...

, and visual artists Jacob Lawrence

Jacob Lawrence

Jacob Lawrence was an American painter; he was married to fellow artist Gwendolyn Knight. Lawrence referred to his style as "dynamic cubism", though by his own account the primary influence was not so much French art as the shapes and colors of Harlem.Lawrence is among the best-known twentieth...

, Romare Bearden

Romare Bearden

Romare Bearden was an African American artist and writer. He worked in several media including cartoons, oils, and collage.-Education:...

, and Elizabeth Catlett

Elizabeth Catlett

Elizabeth Catlett Mora is an African-American sculptor and printmaker. Catlett is best known for the black, expressionistic sculptures and prints she produced during the 1960s and 1970s, which are seen as politically charged....

), the journal published the work of international literary authors (e.g. Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean poet, diplomat and politician Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. He chose his pen name after Czech poet Jan Neruda....

 and Derek Walcott

Derek Walcott

Derek Alton Walcott, OBE OCC is a Saint Lucian poet, playwright, writer and visual artist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992 and the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2011 for White Egrets. His works include the Homeric epic Omeros...

) and political leaders and intellectuals, (among them Kwame Nkrumah

Kwame Nkrumah

Kwame Nkrumah was the leader of Ghana and its predecessor state, the Gold Coast, from 1952 to 1966. Overseeing the nation's independence from British colonial rule in 1957, Nkrumah was the first President of Ghana and the first Prime Minister of Ghana...

, Julius K. Nyerere, Agostinho Neto

Agostinho Neto

António Agostinho Neto served as the first President of Angola , leading the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola in the war for independence and the civil war...

, Jomo Kenyatta

Jomo Kenyatta

Jomo Kenyattapron.] served as the first Prime Minister and President of Kenya. He is considered the founding father of the Kenyan nation....

, Claudia Jones

Claudia Jones

Claudia Cumberbatch Jones was a Trinidadian journalist, who applied her skills to becoming a political activist and black nationalist through Communisum....

 and C. L. R. James

C. L. R. James

Cyril Lionel Robert James , who sometimes wrote under the pen-name J.R. Johnson, was an Afro-Trinidadian historian, journalist, socialist theorist and essayist. His works are influential in various theoretical, social, and historiographical contexts...

).

Further reading

• Esther Cooper Jackson and Constance Pohl, Freedomways Reader: Prophets in Their Own Country. Interventions—theory and contemporary politics (Boulder: Westview Press, 2000)
• Ian Maxwell Rocksborough-Smith, "(PDF)Bearing the Seeds of Struggle: Freedomways Magazine, Black Leftists, and Continuities in the Freedom Movement." (PDF) MA Thesis, Simon Fraser University, 2006