4 @ 100: Amilcar Cabral, Frantz Fanon, Patrice Lumumba, and Malcolm X
by Reiland Rabaka, Yousuf al-Bulushi, Kasareka Kavwahirehi, and Merle Collins
Edited by Grant Farred
ISBN 978-1-962365-18-5
Born between September, 1924, and July, 1925, we find ourselves in the centenary years of Amilcar Cabral, Frantz Fanon, Patrice Lumumba and Malcolm X. These four figures, all critical to the thinking of the Africana diaspora, were all born within ten months of each other. Cabral (September, 1924), is the oldest of these figures, followed by Malcolm X (May, 1925), Lumumba and Fanon (both July, 1925, just 18 days apart). “4 @ 100” celebrates the centenary of these historic African births by gathering four scholars, Yousuf al-Bulushi (Fanon), Merle Collins (Malcolm X), Kasareka Kavwahirehi (Lumumba) and Reiland Rabaka (Cabral) who each contribute a long essay. “4 at 100” renders each of these figures as philosophers of the Africana diaspora, demonstrating how their thinking has shaped, and continues to do so, the field of Africana Studies since its inception in the late-1960s. With a brief introduction by Grant Farred, each of the contributors takes up an aspect of Cabral, Fanon, Lumumba and Malcolm X’s thinking, offering through their essays an incisive account of why it is that these figures continue, a century after their birth in Africa, America, and the Caribbean, to enhance the critical project that is Africana Studies.​​
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Yousuf Al-Bulushi is an Associate Professor in the Department of Global & International Studies at the University of California, Irvine. He is the author of Ruptures in the Afterlife of the Apartheid City (2024), and a member of the editorial collective for Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography.
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Merle Collins is a writer of fiction, poetry and critical essays. Her most recent novel, inspired by the story of the Grenadian mother of Malcolm X, won the 2025 Caribbean Studies Association’s Barbara Christian Award for Fiction, was shortlisted for the 2024 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction (UK) and longlisted for the 2024 Bocas Prize for Literature (Caribbean). Her novels include Ocean Stirrings: A tribute to Louise Langdon Norton Little, Mother of Malcolm X and Seven Siblings (2023), and The Colour of Forgetting (2023, 1995).
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Kasereka Kavwahirehi is a professor of Francophone Literatures at the University of Ottawa. He is the author of Les leviers de l’émancipation. Education, culture et démocratie (Hermann, 2024), Politiques de la critique: Essai sur les limites et la réinvention de la critique francophone (Hermann, 2021), Y’en a marre! Philosophie et espoir social en Afrique (Karthala, 2018), Le prix de l’impasse. Christianisme africain et imaginaires politiques (Peter Lang, 2013), and V. Y. Mudimbe et la réinvention de l’Afrique : Poétique et politique de décolonisation des sciences humaines (Rodopi/Brill, 2006)
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Reiland Rabaka is Professor of African, African American, and Caribbean Studies in the Department of Ethnic Studies and the Founder and Director of the Center for African & African American Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. He has published 20 books and more than one hundred scholarly articles, book chapters, and essays, including Africana Critical Theory; The Negritude Movement; Against Epistemic Apartheid; Forms of Fanonism: Frantz Fanon’s Critical Theory and the Dialectics of Decolonization; Concepts of Cabralism: Amilcar Cabral and the Africana Tradition of Critical Theory; W.E.B. Du Bois: A Critical Introduction; Black Power Music!: Protest Songs, Message Music, and the Black Power Movement; Black Women’s Liberation Movement Music: Soul Sisters, Black Feminist Funksters, and Afro-Disco Divas; The Funk Movement: Music, Culture, and Politics; Black Feminist Funk: Funk Women and Black Musical Feminism; Hip Hop’s Inheritance; Hip Hop’s Amnesia; and The Hip Hop Movement. His cultural criticism, social commentary, and political analysis has been featured in print, radio, television, and online media venues such as NPR, PBS, BBC, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, MTV, BET, VH1, The New York Times, The Associated Press, and The Guardian, among others. He is also a poet and musician.
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Grant Farred is the author of, among other works, Ethical Solidarity (np:, 2025), The Perversity of Gratitude: An Apartheid Education (Temple University Press, 2024), and Martin Heidegger Saved My Life (University of Minnesota Press, 2015). His forthcoming books include Diaspora-in-Place (Temple University Press) and Unhappy Negro: The Philosophy of WEB Du Bois (Duke University Press).
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