Building a Black Disabled Intellectual Tradition: It’s about creating a distinct Krip (Black
Disabled) Radical Intellectual Tradition, similar to Robinson’s broader tradition, but specifically focused on Black disability, drawing from Hip-Hop’s cultural expression as a tool for this.

Leroy says that the Black Disabled Intellectual Tradition is an emerging field recognizing
the rich history and contributions of Black disabled thinkers and activists who navigate both
racism and ableism, emphasizing decolonization, community care, and collective liberation to challenge systemic oppression, seen in figures like Fannie Lou Hamer, Elias Hill, Frantz Fanon and Audre Lorde, and movements like Krip-Hop and Disability Justice and today’s Black disabled intellectual thinkers like Lateef McLeod, Charlie R Braxton, Saleem Hue Penny, Tumelo Mashokwe, Tinotenda Mudarikwm and Dr. Evelyn Folake Kissi to name a few.

“Kripping” Robinson’s work, scholars challenge colonial disability models, re-centering
African/Black disability perspectives and practices (like Sankofa, Afro-Krip) to understand disability from within the diaspora.It builds upon the broader Black Intellectual Tradition by centering disability as a core aspect of Black experience, revealing how disability intersects with race, class, and gender to shape identity, resistance, and cultural production, influencing fields from history, politics, education to hip-hop.

Back on Th 9/3/21 on Krip-Hop Radio Show we aired a series named Disabled & Black/Brown With/Striving Ph.D. Doctor we had five Black/Brown disabled friends who two have their Ph.Ds and three were in the middle of getting theirs at that time. Two were women & three were men.

We had Dr. Michelle Hernandez, D’Arcee Charrington, Lateef McLeod, Wilfredo Gomez, D’Arcee Charrington and Dr. A. Miles. Now in 2025 I am going into my fifth year in my
UCLA Anthropology Ph.D. program. During this time unfortunately Dr. Michelle Hernandez passed away and on happier news, Lateef McLeod and D’Arcee Charrington have graduated. I bring this series back up to build and krip Manning Marable’s The Black Intellectual Tradition.

This series is only the jumping off point to expand Manning Marable’s The Black Intellectual Tradition to add what Leroy calls Black Krip Intellectual Tradition. Kripping means bringing our whole selves into spaces that have excluded our disability’s identity, history, politics, culture, arts and music….

This is my continuation of Black Kripping Black theorists like I have done in my
masters’ thesis with a letter at the end, Dear Cedric Robinson to my first comp exam answering this question:

Describe the black radical tradition as articulated by Cedric Robinson and later
developed by other scholars. In what ways has it incorporated and/or failed to fully
integrate the experiences of disabled Black radical agents and thinkers? What might a
more nuanced understanding of Black disability studies illuminate to our understanding
of the multivariate ways in which Black people have fought systemic oppression
throughout time? Note not only Black disabled organizers but how their methods of
resistance, activism, and understanding of liberation expand the corpus of the larger
Black radical tradition.

When I was doing my first comp exam, I picked up again the concepts of Guerrilla Intellectualism by Rodney Walter and Manning Marable’s The Black Intellectual Tradition now
with all three concepts, The Black Radical Tradition, Guerrilla Intellectualism and The Black
Intellectual Tradition I’ll continue to Black Kripping all three authors and their theories, like my elder now an ancestor, Piri Thomas told me, “always bring it back to the community!”

There is a deep Black disabled radical, intellectual tradition and some can come under Guerrilla Intellectualism aka outside of academia in all avenue scholarship, cultural expression, activism and writing….

This is a lifelong work going back into time to rediscover Black disabled radical people,
ancestors like for example Elisa Hill who was attacked by the KKK and helped to take the KKK to court in 18732. He was a journalist and a member of the Republican Party. After the court case, Hill led many Black people to Liberia, Africa! Building Black Krip Radical Tradition to be continued!