African Americans and Utopia: Visions of a Better Life

Abstract

While there have been studies of individual African American writers and, recently, work on African American authors of science fiction, some of whom wrote utopias and, more often, dystopias, there has been no attempt to examine the many ways that African Americans have contributed to utopianism. To fill that gap, this article gives an overview of African American contributions to utopianism in literature, intentional communities, and utopian social theory.