An observation after reviewing a series of journal articles related in various ways to something called the “Black Radical tradition.” We need to get better at thinking about “radical” in temporal terms, as having distinct meanings relative to periods and grievances. The linking of “radical” with an end to “capitalism” in readings of 19th-century African-American thinkers often obscures and disfigures what they were up to. Rather than proceeding based on a unified description, there may be more use in marking internal differences, even as many in the tradition longed for liberation. This would also allow us to see that for many African American thinkers in the 19th century, liberation was rarely understood in class terms and that they imagined a form of capitalism that did not need to be domineering. This may open more fruitful intellectual space for genealogical development and critique as Black thinkers from the 18, 19, and 20th centuries struggled for freedom and equal regard in the "West."