 Like other areas of philosophical study, Africana philosophy emerged and matured as its practitioners identified and continued to explore a set of core elements. Of the texts, figures, debates, movements, schools, and themes that have come to organize conversations in and contributions to the field, many came into focus during the first stage of Africana philosophy’s history. Some had long careers outside the academy as resources for political mobilization, existential sustenance, aesthetic experience, and critical edification, while others were the product of explicitly scholarly reflection. (And some were both.) Whatever their origin, many of these early heterodox elements have made or are making their way into an academic world that long wanted little to do with them, and they continue to set the agenda for contemporary work.