What does liberation look like for Black America? More Than 100 leaders are mapping it out

The State of the People's "Black Papers" offer a comprehensive vision for building a more equitable future for Black communities.

In 1977, some of the most important Black writers of the century—Audre Lorde, June Jordan, Toni Morrison, among them—gathered in one another’s apartments to debate, swap drafts, and dream out loud. What came out of those living rooms still shapes how African American studies is taught today.

Nearly 50 years later, a new generation is doing it again; this time on paper, and with a plan.

“The Black Papers: A Policy Agenda for Black Liberation in the 21st Century” brings together more than 100 scholars, organizers and practitioners across 26 chapters, offering a roadmap on everything from health care and housing to AI and policing. And for editor-in-chief Dr. David Johns, it’s part of a long tradition.

“This project exists in that legacy, the Black Studies legacy that runs from Du Bois, one of the first sociologists, through the student strikes that won Black Studies departments at universities throughout this country, through the 1972 Gary National Black Political Convention,” Dr. Johns, executive director of the National Black Justice Coalition (NBJC), told theGrio. “We are proud keepers of a legacy that has existed long before us. My hope is that our folks are also aware of the legacy that has come before us in the vein of writing things down and making it plain.”

“[At] the National Black Political Convention in Gary in 1972, they came together and developed a Black political agenda. The agenda that they had is not that different from the sixty-one recommendations that the Congressional Black Caucus gave to Richard Nixon the year prior,” Angela Rye shared, reflecting on the previous projects that inspired “The State of the People’s” agenda. “It is not that different from what Tavis Smiley put in [his book] ‘The Covenant with Black America.’ It is not that different from what Marc Morial puts together in the State of Black America report with the support of the incredible team at the Urban League every year.”

The work behind the “Black Papers” began at the beginning of 2025, when Dr. Johns says Angela Rye voluntold (iykyk) him to join her efforts alongside thought leaders like Joy-Ann Reid to defend and expand democracy in a way that ensures all people, but specifically Black people reach freedom. This work gave rise to the “State of the People’s” 48-hour livestream and “Power Tour,” in which they previewed various iterations of their “Black Papers.” Created as a contradiction to “white papers,” a term used for an authoritative report or guide that often addresses issues and how to solve them, the “Black Papers” tracked data collected by NBJC and Terrance Woodbury’s HIT Strategies to create 30 papers penned by scholars and practitioners, including Brittany Packnett Cunningham.

“I got tired of people suggesting that Black queer transgender expansive people want anything different than what Black cisgender and heterosexual folks want. And the data affirmed that the suggestion that there’s a distinction is a lie from the pit of white mediocrity. So we use that data to identify the policy priorities in order,” Dr. Johns added.

From housing and healthcare to voting rights, education, and economic justice, to the advancement of technology, Packnett Cunningham emphasizes how these areas impact Black communities, and how injustices in these spaces disproportionately affect Black people. And as with any intellectual discussion, disagreements between practitioners and thought leaders live on the page while also offering data and receipts to support the various topics it addresses; Dr. Johns notes that this project is a reminder that it is important to go beyond just studying these issues.

“I’m reminded of Audrey Lorde telling us that there is no such thing as a single issue struggle because we do not live single issue lives,” Packnett Cunningham told theGrio. “The truth of the matter is, Black people live full lives, and we deserve to live full lives, and therefore every single issue matters to us.”

“So the expansiveness of the ‘Black Papers’ is really meant to help us create the blueprint for our own lives, to use the scholarship, the wisdom, the lived experience, the disciplined practice that so many leaders in our community have engaged in over the last several decades, put it all in one place so that no one can ever tell us we don’t have a blueprint or a way forward again,” she continued.

But a blueprint only matters if people can read it and understand it. That’s why, alongside the book, the team created a user guide meant to turn the “Black Papers” 26 chapters into tools people can use in their everyday lives.

“We have a user guide that … provides a one-page overview of each chapter,” Dr. Johns explained. “It starts with four bullet points … It says, ‘This chapter might be for you if,’ and fill in the blank. It includes a couple of key facts and figures, reflection prompts, and then it includes recommended actions — to share data, to organize, to take questions to school board meetings, or to a doctor.”

Each guide also includes a “words to know” section, a deliberate choice to strip out the jargon that tends to keep everyday people out of policy conversations.

“We know that the average American reads on an eighth or ninth grade reading level, and the jargon that academics or policymakers use to talk to themselves would not be useful to members of our community who are grappling with very real feelings because of problems caused by people, again, to no fault of their own,” he said.

Unlike traditional books where you have to start with page one, both Dr. Johns and Packnett Cunningham urge readers to start with a policy problem that concerns them.

“I want you to start where you feel it first, and then be moved from there,” he shared. “This is a tool that we want all people to be using.”

For Cunningham, the project is a work that they should carry with them to city council meetings, school board meetings, when traveling to vote early. “This is our agenda,” she explained. “Take it with you and decide what you’re going to do with it, because that ultimately is the point.”

In addition to a user guide, the team developed a toolkit for faith leaders to connect with the “Black Papers” and liberatory theological traditions when developing sermons, programming, and outreach initiatives. With hopes of this being the first of many volumes of the “Black Papers,” Dr. Johns encourages readers to reach out to [email protected] if they don’t see a topic addressed in the book.

“If people don’t hear any of what I’m saying because the weight of existing in this moment with the Black tax is too much, I hope they hear my heart when I say ‘you were right’ that everything we are dealing with is a lot, and being tired is not the same as not caring. The vast majority of us are beyond exhausted because we care, and none of us are intended to carry it alone, which is why we wrote this book,” the editor-in-chief concluded. “So my hope is that in the same way that we are encouraging people to pick a chapter and to start there, they are also doing this work in a community where they are organizing and growing and being fed and encouraged to rest. This is continual collective community work. “

“The Black Papers: A Policy Agenda for Black Liberation in the 21st Century” is available now from select retailers.

Full story sourced from TheGrio. Read the original article for the publisher's complete coverage.