Locating a Black Planning Tradition and Spatializing Black Nationalism

Abstract

This dissertation explores the Black planning tradition and how Muslims, particularly those in Black nationalist organizations, utilize newspapers and land to critique urban planning practice and offer alternative models of planned organization and development. The first essay in this three-essay series explores the use of political art in Muhammad Speaks in remapping Black life for Muslims and non-Muslims during the Great Migration. The second essay draws on economic theological doctrine and newspaper advertisements to map the economic footprint of the Nation of Islam. The third essay interrogates the history of a single parcel of land to understand the diversity of actors involved in simultaneously shaping the local built environment and global religious nationalist movements toward self-determination. This work expands scholarly understanding of alternative models for collective decision-making and resistance tactics and provides histories of Blackness, Muslimness, and planning practice as they intersect.