In Alienation and Political Belonging in Rousseau, Hegel, Du Bois, and King, I argue that theorizations of political community ought to better account for the existential dimension of political life than they often have by attending to the significance for persons of political membership. I suggest that the themes of alienation and belonging are especially helpful for doing so. Parallel to yet meaningfully distinct from the sort offered by liberal political theories, I offer a deeply experiential approach to theorizing political community that is anchored in a recognitive account of the human self and that emphasizes the importance of political culture. I set out in this project to answer a basic pair of questions: what is political belonging and why is it good for persons? To do so, I trace the themes of alienation and political belonging through the works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, G. W. F. Hegel, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Martin Luther King Jr. I draw out from their writings a distinctive conception of the self for whom political membership is a key aspect of knowing oneself as, and genuinely being, a dignified and free person. Along the way, I show how each of these figures draws on religion in interesting ways in his account of collective life, and that they all argue a sense of political belonging has to do with being able to locate oneself in the context of a larger life within which a person can identify—and is identified—as a free and equal member. Through my engagements with Du Bois and King, and with reference to the Black Lives Matter movement, I consider anti-Black racism as a pernicious instance of imposed alienation and non-belonging. I conclude by building on what I identify as the deep democratic logic in King’s writings to offer an outline of a constructive democratic theory more attuned to alienation and belonging and more appropriate for the formation of a just and authentically pluralistic political community.