Black Humanism: Anthony Pinn and SI Martin in conversation

In both the UK and the United States, the values which guided Black lives long pre-date any claiming of the humanist label. In an American context, Pinn has argued that 'Black humanism is as old as the Black population itself.' And certainly American history has been littered with humanist intellectuals to prove it, through figures like WEB Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, and Lorraine Hansberry. In the UK, Martin has catalogued the untold stories of Black freethinkers in the Georgian era (as well as before and since) which provide a rich account of Black humanism, including unsung heroes like the Scots-Jamaican reformer Robert Wedderburn.

If the UK was forged by history, as some have said, then America, with its deist philosophers and political revolutionaries for Founding Fathers, was surely forged by philosophy. How true is this statement? And what does the history and evolution of Black humanism tell us about attitudes to freedom and the pursuit of happiness on both sides of the Atlantic?

About the speakers

Anthony B Pinn is the Agnes Cullen Arnold Distinguished Professor of Humanities and Professor of Religion at Rice University in Houston, Texas, and Director of Research for the Institute for Humanist Studies Think Tank (Washington, DC). His books include Why, Lord? Suffering and Evil in Black Theology (1995), The End of God-Talk: An African American Humanist Theology (2012), and When Colorblindness Isn't the Answer: Humanism and the Challenge of Race (2017). His most recent, The Black Practice of Disbelief: An Introduction to the Principles, History, and Communities of Black Nonbelievers (2024), draws a line from early critiques of Christianity, through music, folk tales, and folk wisdom, to the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement, and beyond.

SI Martin is a historian, writer, and patron of Humanists UK. He was the founder of the 500 Years of Black London walks, and has published six books of historical fiction and non-fiction for adult and teenage readers.

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Category: Community | History