Robin Anne Reid

In 2022, TOLKIEN SCHOLARS WORKING ON THE TOPICS of race, racisms, and Tolkien’s legendarium were amazed to discover Mills’s essay in The Southern Journal of Philosophy. An accompanying introductory essay by Chike Jeffers, Mills’s literary executor, and David Miguel Gray explains the significance of the posthumously-published essay for their discipline of philosophy. Mills was an Afro-Jamaican philosopher who was born in the United Kingdom, raised in Jamaica, and worked as a faculty member in the United States. Mills continually challenged liberalism as well as the extent to which the White-dominated academic field of philosophy “failed to directly confront the problem of racism inherent in modern liberalism,” and how White philosophers failed to “engage with their counterparts in African American studies” (Greene). In addition, Mills “greatly shaped multiple generations of philosophers interested in race and racism, Africana philosophy, social and political philosophy, and ethics” (Jeffers and Gray 1). The “Manifesto” was written in the late 1980s, before Mills even began his major works. However, Mills apparently never returned to publishing on Tolkien’s work.