Based on original archival research, this article discusses early transnational challenges to paternalistic views of ‘racial democracy’ that took place in Brazilian social sciences in the second half of the twentieth century. It analyses the little-known but incredibly relevant work carried out with São Paulo Afro-Brazilian communities by Florestan Fernandes and Roger Bastide, critical sociologists who collaborated with anti-racist activists such as the inspirer of Quilombismo Abdias Nascimento. It first argues for the need of decentring antiracist geographies, considering voices outside the Anglosphere and thinking of alliances that acknowledge scholars’ and activists’ complex positionalities, including matters such as social origin and voluntary activist commitment at the level of the individual. Second, it contends that the biographical contexts of Fernandes, a political persecuted who remained true to his proletarian origins even as an established academic, show the insufficiency of mere theoretical work and the need that critical scholars actively engage with societal change. Fernandes and friends strove for a ‘Second Abolition’ to resolve matters with intersecting colonial, racial and class oppression that Brazilian history had left open after the formal Abolition of slavery in 1888. Their ideas and practices provide insights that can nourish current defiant, abolitionist and anti-racist geographies.