It seems unthinkable that any African American could have sympathized with European fascism during the 1930s. The supposition that some African American intellectuals appropriated elements of fascist ideology in order to foster social change seems absurd. As Robin D.G. Kelley makes unequivocally clear, expressing such a thought among "a group of radical black intellectuals including W.E.B. Du Bois, Aime Cesaire, C.L.R. James, George Padmore, Ralph Bunche, [and] Oliver Cox" would have been thought tantamount to wishing for the return of slavery. Outside of this "group," however, some black intellectuals saw things differently. "Black Fascisms" illumines an otherwise dark corner of African American literary history; it shows that there were African American authors working during the 1930s who made positive evaluations of fascism. The paper then asks what the nature of State that produces black fascisms is. "Black Fascisms" ends with a provisional answer to this question, finding that the welfare State's internal development of fascisms, especially from within minoritized subject-positions, is essential to its survival.