This article analyzes the trajectory and contributions to the black movements of the diaspora and Brazilian social thought made by the writer and pedagogue from Minas Gerais, Ironides Rodrigues. Particularly his incorporation of the francophone negritude and of a certain Pan-Africanist thought in his own social struggle and reflection on the ethnic-racial reality of the Brazilian black people. We will examine different writings (memoirs, essays, analytical texts) of Rodrigues, which were never before the subject of a rigorous academic research, especially because they have not been previously published. The hypothesis we aim to sustain on this article is that the core of his practical and theoretical contribution to the black struggle is his understanding of the black issue as a right of self-assertion, which was consolidated with his praxis in the Black Experimental Theater in the 1940 and 1950s.
Black Experimental Theater; Negritude; Black movement; Brazilian social thought; Pan-africanism; Sociology of race relations