CFP – AAIHS - Activists, scholars, and artists have vociferously declared across multiple media and social platforms that Black Lives Matter, making everyday racial violence against Black subjects more publicly visible in recent years. Yet far from being accepted as a rational response to the expendability of Black life, this prodigious demonstration of critical Black Thought is often met with hostility, censorship, and death threats or denigrated within current popular and political arenas. This year’s AAIHS conference asserts that Black Thought Matters. What, for example, are the tasks and challenges for critical Black Thought in times of heightened racial violence? How have Black performers, scholars, public figures, and subaltern subjects historically confronted efforts to curtail and contain the scope of Black critical analysis? How might we historicize and theorize the relationship between Black Lives, Black Thought, and Black Action across time and space?