This is a course on the critical thought of Black intellectual-activists and others enmeshed in the struggles for the radical transformation of U.S. democracy. The course introduces the following three leaders and activists--Ella Baker, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X--whose work in the building of the Black freedom movement spanned the period from the 1930s to the late 1960s. The proposition of this course is that their life and times in the struggle for liberation offer important insights into the transformation of the U.S. political economy from the welfare/warfare state to the neoliberal state, especially how race, at each phase of this transformation, helped make anew the systems of inequality and exploitative structures. These intellectual-activists, as well as others who translate their radical traditions through Black-Brown and Afro-Asian solidarity projects (e.g. Grace Lee Boggs of Detroit) have responded to racial formation in the United States and presented not just visions of liberation but concrete alternatives at the grassroots to usher in a more just, egalitarian, and ethical society.