Miron Clay-Gilmore is A Scholar Warrior-King.
Dr Miron Clay-Gilmore, the first African American to receive a Ph.d in Africana Philosophy from the University of Edinburgh, is continuing the legacy of scholar warriors before him.
The great African American educator and psychologist Dr. Asa Hilliard explained in his book, SBA: The Reawakening of the African Mind, that one way a group of people are targeted for destruction is through the walls of academia. As social media has become embedded in our lives, we see now more and more how ideas and the rhetoric that follow become people’s standard way of thinking about specialized groups of people such as black males.
For Miron, the first black person to receive his Ph.d in Africana Philosophy from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, his perspective on the prolific legacy of Huey P. Newton and Dr Tommy Curry is essential to our collective survival and success.
Aptly entitled Thinking For The Bound and Dead: Beyond Man (3) Towards A New (Truly) Universal Theory of Human Victory, Miron’s philosophical explanation of how black people are targeted on several societal levels is just one contribution in his intellectual fight.
Origin
Born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, Miron and his brother lived in various parts of the city from the North and Southside before settling in a smaller city, Black Jack, Missouri. Miron grew up in an extremely volatile and at times violent environment but credits the support of his mother with helping him be able to stay out of harm’s way.
Despite his intellectual prowess as an adult, Miron would not describe himself as a model student growing up. He had plans of dropping out school his senior year and his low test scores only added more fuel to his desire to leave it all behind.
“My grandmother was a high school dropout, my uncle was a high school dropout, and I didn’t have a father. If I was the prototype for anything it was the Missouri Department of Corrections. I joined the military to get out of an unstable situation. It was after the Marines that I came into academia.”
Spurred forward by his obligation to provide for a child mixed with the uncertainty all around him inspired him to join the Marine Corps after high school. Miron served a four year term for the Combat Support Services Unit at Camp Johnson, a satellite camp attached to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.
The environment helped fuel his desire for competition and comradery, which he was able to channel into academia afterward. After his first tour, Miron eventually moved back to St. Louis and used the GI Bill to pay for college, enrolling at the University of Missouri St. Louis.
“At the time I was in Pensacola, Florida and there was a philosophy program at the University of West Florida, but the way things were set up hampered me. I didn’t have family to help me and by this time I had two kids. So I coordinated with family to come home and they agreed to help me.”
Graduate School
Focused and free to pursue his studies, Miron began reading voraciously, devouring everything from Huey P Newton to noted Black Male Studies expert, Dr Tommy J Curry. Curry’s groundbreaking work, compiled in his book, The Man Not: Race, Class, Genre, and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood, provided Gilmore with the knowledge and philosophical base he needed to began seriously examining black culture and its connection to black men.
For Miron, philosophy allowed him the freedom to focus on several disciplines including anthropology and logic. His passion and competitiveness coupled with his experiences as a black man in the armed forces anchored him and inspired him to go full speed at his Masters then doctorate.
During the time of his studies, Miron struck up a friendship with Curry, who encouraged him to pursue graduate degrees in African Studies, noting the single digit percentage of black men in higher academia.
“He told me at the time you should get into a degree program and I got a full ride to Texas A&M before transferring to the University of Edinburgh.”
Basing his thesis on the philosophical works of Huey P Newton and his concept of intercommunalism, Miron wrote his dissertation, Thinking For The Bound and Dead: Beyond Man (3) Towards A New (Truly) Universal Theory of Human Victory, viewing it as his duty to examine and continue the intellectual tradition of his work. Pointing to academia’s infatuation with viewing the Panthers as violent misogynists, Miron argued for the need for his work to be examined and understood for its intellectual merit.
“The ability to conceptualize ideas was denied to him despite him publishing five books that articulated intercommunalism. This need to understand him and the Panthers is a part of how black men are constructed as the opposite of rational thinkers. They have to be criminals. Their ideas can’t be appreciated because of that.”
Philosophical Insights
Combining Huey’s ideological insights of intercommunalism with his lived experiences in the Marine Corps led to Miron creating his own philosophical framework, which he in turn titled Killology. Coined and created by Miron, the central tenets of the concept argue that the gendered violence against black people by different actors in society (police, prisons, and places of employment) all stem from a military approach.
“Killology argues that the primary managerial techniques used to govern black Americans (police terrorism, incarceration, and surveillance) are a result of the application of military doctrine to manage us since the 1960s.”
For Miron, who works in higher academia now, his work in educating students and community members on the threats we face all fit under his life mission and represent one of Huey P Newton’s most important concepts of counterinsurgency. Killology’s focus on the techniques not only provides context on the nature of the threat, but also offers insight on how to counteract the attacks we face.
Ideological insights aside, Miron’s life and legacy stems from not only his dedication to his work, but the support of his wife and children, all of whom he credits for his success.
“I’m not here without my wife and children. I’ve been married to my wife since I was seventeen or eighteen. I was convinced I would be dead by the time my daughter was ten. But after everything I can say I’m only here because of my family.”