 The contemporary concern with aesthetics in and near Africana thought extends a long tradition. Frederick Douglass, for example, complemented his achievements as a writer and orator with vigorous efforts to construct his public image through photography, thereby making a germinal contribution to modern transatlantic visual culture (Gates 2016). The U.S. “New Negro” movement (usually associated with the Harlem Renaissance), the Negritude movement, and the various Black arts movements around the world were all animated by philosophical commitments, and in the first two cases prominently featured philosophers (Alain Locke and Leopold Senghor, to start). Moving closer to the present, the companion volumes that marked Africana philosophy’s establishment feature contributions on art and aesthetics by Nzegwu (2004) and others. Contemporary thinkers follow in their footsteps with special issues on race and aesthetics, symposia on Black aesthetics, and studies of the philosophical import of memorials and monuments in racialized  spaces.[16]