Among the earliest uses of the idea of wokeness as a concept for Black political consciousness came from Jamaican philosopher and social activist Marcus Garvey, who wrote in 1923, "Wake up Ethiopia!

Woke, in its political and racial context, was invented by Black people. Before Muldrow and Badu, the late Harlem author William Melvin Kelley used the term in his 1962 New York Timesessay "If You're Woke You Dig It."