This paper is an interpretive review of selected sources in black studies, historical and literary scholarship, and research in the social sciences and multicultural education. One purpose of the review is to clarify the nature and production of culture-centered knowledge in African American intellectual thought, educational research, and practice. A second purpose is to summarize and draw conclusions from this literature regarding the uses of cultural knowledge and culture-centered knowledge in curriculum transformation and social action. The examination suggests that marginalizing historical reality or making it invisible can alienate the identity and consciousness of subordinated groups, or it can create the conditions of intellectual autonomy that are a requisite of cultural and racial democracy and human freedom. The literature suggests that the experience of subordination and liminality can give groups a perspective of reality that can increase the possibilities of human autonomy. Curriculum transformation can be linked with social change to bring about a vision of black studies as a world for all people. (Contains 268 references.) (SLD)