A History of African-American Leadership

John White, Bruce J. Dierenfield

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317866237
• Edition: 3
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

The story of black emancipation is one of the most dramatic themes of American history, covering racism, murder, poverty and extreme heroism. Figures such as Malcolm X and Martin Luther King are the demigods of the freedom movements, both film and household figures.

This major text explores the African-American experience of the twentieth century with particular reference to six outstanding race leaders. Their philosophies and strategies for racial advancement are compared and set against the historical framework and constraints within which they functioned.

The book also examines the 'grass roots' of black protest movements in America, paying particular attention to the major civil rights organizations as well as black separatist groups such as the Nation of Islam.

CHAPTER ONE
Introduction: African-American Leaders and Limited Options

American Negro history is basically a history of the conflict between integrationist and nationalist forces in politics, economics, and culture, no matter what leaders are involved and what slogans are used.¹

[Harold Cruse]

In the long struggle for racial equality and economic opportunity, African Americans have responded to the rhetoric and proposals of leaders drawn from their ranks. But until the last few decades, African Americans have had only limited opportunities to select their own leaders. Before the American Civil War of the 1860s, enslaved black leaders in the South, such as Gabriel Prosser and Nat Turner, planned conspiracies or led revolts aimed at some form of freedom that was not dependent on white sponsorship or support. Other leaders, such as Frederick Douglass, an exslave and the most famous black abolitionist, were initially thrust into the public gaze by their white northern supporters. Booker T. Washington, also a former slave, owed his elevation as much to influential white patrons such as his teacher, Samuel Chapman Armstrong, president Theodore Roosevelt, and the industrialist-turned-philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, as to his own remarkable abilities. Similarly, W.E.B. Du Bois, the towering African-American intellect of the 20th century, became a key figure in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People with the approval and financial support of white reformers of the Progressive era.

Of the male African-American leaders under consideration, Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Jesse Jackson, Sr., owed their rise to the reception accorded to them by African Americans. Yet they were perceived, if not sanctioned, by whites as leaders of their respective movements. Malcolm X gained his reputation as much from the distorted publicity he received from the white-controlled media, as from the endorsement of his black followers. Whatever their ideological or physiological complexion, then, African-American leaders have historically depended on white, as well as black, recognition of their claims to speak for their race. Like their supporters, black leaders have faced a caste system based on racial discrimination. For long periods, they were effectively denied the franchise, entry into the major political parties, or access to the centres of power. By definition, African-American leaders occupied tenuous and vulnerable positions in their own and surrounding white community. They were, initially at least, self-styled exemplars of their race.

In An American Dilemma (1944), a monumental and influential sociological study of race funded by the Carnegie Foundation, Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal concluded that the spectrum of positions taken by black leaders ranged from accommodation to protest. In the southern states, where the racial caste system was most rigid and strictly enforced, whites sought alliances and tacit agreements with those “accommodating” black leaders who could help them perpetuate the values and practices of white supremacy. For their part, black southern leaders needed to establish and maintain contact with influential whites, who, in turn, provided them with influence and prestige within the black community. As Myrdal noted, “The Negro leader in this setting serves a ‘function’ to both castes and his influence in both groups is cumulative—prestige in the Negro community being an effect as well as a cause of prestige among whites.” Similarly, in the northern states, government agencies, political parties, and philanthropic organizations made “contact” with the black community through white-appointed or white-approved black “leaders.”²

Much of the competitiveness, rivalry, and “opportunism” of black leadership in America has derived from this need to satisfy the demands of white supporters, while remaining responsive to the desires of African-American constituents. The black novelist James Baldwin, writing about Martin Luther King, Jr., observed tartly that “the problem of Negro leadership. . . has always been extremely delicate, dangerous, and complex. The term itself becomes remarkably difficult to define, the moment one realizes that the real role of the Negro leader, in the eyes of the American Republic, was not to make the Negro a first-class citizen but to keep him content as a second-class one.”³

The goals and agitation of black radicals have often served to legitimize the claims of more moderate black leaders, especially Martin Luther King, Jr., in the eyes of white Americans. Thus personal, as well as ideological, rivalries have had positive, as well as dysfunctional, effects in the struggle for black freedom and racial equality. But as Myrdal noted, “Since power and prestige are scarce commodities in the Negro community, the struggle for leadership often becomes ruthless.”⁴

Leadership among African Americans has not been confined or limited to a few individuals, however exceptional or charismatic. In the 20th century, the rise of national organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the National Urban League (NUL), the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and the Black Panthers, as well as the powerful influence of the black church and the activities of grassroots movements at the state and local levels, have constituted a collective form of civil rights protest. The concerns, demands, and initiatives of black men and women at particular junctures and in specific places have not always been those recognized by the established black leadership class. In some instances, these leaders have, in effect, been led by their followers. Whatever their awareness of grassroots problems and demands, black leaders have necessarily operated within the constraints of what has been termed “a politics of limited options.” Historically, these options often reflected significant differences between the limits of permissible activity in the states on either side of the Mason-Dixon line that separated North and South.⁵

The election of Barack Obama in 2008 as the nation’s first black president signaled the ultimate triumph of African Americans within the political arena. In some ways, his triumph indicates that skin color is no longer the ultimate barrier to participation in American society that it has been since Africans first arrived in Virginia in 1619. Obama’s victory was attributed to many factors, including his relative youth and handsome appearance, his Harvard pedigree and oratorical polish, his mastery of grassroots politics, his understanding of American democracy, and his ability to assuage white concerns about voting for a black man, while still appealing to African Americans who harbored doubts about his commitment to racial matters. Not least, the electorate as a whole was worried about the precipitous decline of the economy, disturbed by the continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and weary of the Republican administration of George W. Bush. For these reasons, the media—black and white—made Obama its darling newcomer, giving him a decided, perhaps decisive, boost. At the same time, the Obama administration chose to focus on problems facing American society as a whole, rather than address problems faced by poor African Americans.⁶

Perspectives: Black protest and accommodation, 1800-1877

The varied responses of African Americans to their inferior position date from the establishment of slavery in the colonial period. These responses multiplied during the American Revolution, which strengthened the institution of slavery and heightened black aspirations for freedom and equality. Enslaved and free blacks in the North and South resisted or made some kind of accommodation to enslavement and non-citizenship, supported or eschewed proposals for black repatriation or colonization overseas, adapted to or challenged emerging patterns of racial segregation, embraced or rejected notions of their African cultural heritage, favored or discounted alliances with whites, and, in the Negro Convention and abolitionist movements, attacked all forms of racial proscription. By the 1820s, northern and southern states were clearly distinguishable in their attitudes towards slavery, but not in their attitudes towards and treatment of blacks. Indeed, Alexis de Tocqueville, the perceptive French nobleman who visited America in the 1830s, believed that “race prejudice seems stronger in those states that have abolished slavery than in those where it still exists, and nowhere is it more intolerant than in those states where slavery was never known.”⁷

Historical investigation has confirmed the accuracy of Tocqueville’s impressions. Anti-black sentiment and legislation in the states of the Northeast and the territories of the West marked the period from the early 1800s to the Civil War. Believing that blacks were inferior in intellect and morality, nearly every northern state barred them from voting, serving in the militia, or receiving more than a rudimentary education. Racial segregation was evident in all forms of transportation and in hotels, restaurants, prisons, hospitals, and cemeteries. Several of the newly admitted states in the Midwest and West threatened to exterminate blacks who settled in them. Recalling what the Puritans did to the Wampanoag nation, one white man who lived in Indiana told a state constitutional convention, “It would be better to kill [blacks] off at once, if there is no other way to get rid of them.” Some states compelled African Americans to post a $500 bond guaranteeing their good behavior and to produce a court certificate proving their freedom. Minstrel shows—the most popular kind of entertainment in 19th century America—conveyed romanticized images of plantation slavery and crude caricatures of the alleged stupidity, fecklessness, and gullibility of northern free blacks. As they faced increasing competition from white immigrants streaming in from Germany, Ireland, and Britain, free blacks in the North became frozen on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder.⁸

But in one respect at least, black northerners utilized an advantage not shared by their southern counterparts. The expansion of the North’s white population through immigration and natural increase provided whites with a sense of security unknown to white southerners. Northern blacks were therefore allowed to retain certain basic liberties, including the right to petition for the redress of grievances, publish their own journals and newspapers, and engage in political protest and activities. In 1827, a group of New Yorkers founded Freedom’s Journal, the first black newspaper, which was edited by John Russwurm and Samuel Cornish. Their paper attacked the thinly-veiled racism of the American Colonization Society, and asserted that the society’s real aim was to strengthen slavery by removing free blacks from the United States and resettling them in West Africa.⁹

Similarly, Richard Allen, a Philadelphia-born slave who purchased his freedom in 1777—the year of his conversion to Methodism—experienced and rejected the church’s discriminatory treatment of its black members. In the face of white hostility, Allen concluded that only a separate church, served by black clergy, could meet the spiritual and temporal needs of free blacks. He implemented a black version of Wesleyanism, became the first bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, and encouraged Africans throughout the North to form their own congregations. While Allen preached a liberation theology that God sided with oppressed peoples, he also told African Americans to embrace Christian nonviolence as a powerful means to transform American society. “Love your enemies,” Allen urged, “do good and lend, hoping for nothing again, and your reward will be great.” Early in his career, Allen believed that American society could achieve racial reform because “we pray to the same God.” As slavery expanded and northern racism intensified, Allen encouraged black emigration to the republic of Haiti, which had become the Western Hemisphere’s first black-ruled nation. In 1830, he organized the initial meeting of the Negro Convention Movement, which sent aid to black expatriate communities in Canada. He also helped enslaved Africans in the United States by forming the Free African Society and operating a successful station on the Underground Railroad, both of which assisted freedom-seekers headed to the Promised Land. Allen’s remarkable efforts to merge religion, racial politics, and republican citizenship made him one of America’s “Black Founding Fathers.”¹⁰

Allen’s heroic and pioneering leadership inspired black clerics and other African Americans of the 19th century. In 1829, David Walker, the Boston agent for Freedom’s Journal, issued his incendiary Appeal, which was, in essence, a Black Power manifesto, urging enslaved blacks to strike for their freedom. “To prove. . . that we are MEN and not brutes,” Walker also called for educated black people to lift up the rest of the black community through literacy, religion, and political awareness. Smuggled copies of the Appeal surfaced in the South, leading to rumors of slave insurrection plots. Fearful white southerners enacted even more repressive racial controls, especially concerning “seditious” literature, manumission, and the movement of free blacks. A price tag was placed on Walker’s head, and he died under mysterious circumstances the next year.¹¹

Echoing Walker, Henry Highland Garnet, a Presbyterian minister of Mandingo descent, denounced human bondage as a system of “cold-blooded murder, blasphemy, and defiance of the laws of God.” Having once been a slave on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, Garnet’s message against the “peculiar institution” was personal and powerful. Garnet declared to the 1843 National Convention of Colored Citizens in Buffalo, New York, that enslaved African Americans would be fully justified in using violence to gain their freedom. Garnet exhorted slaves to “Strike for your lives and liberties. Now is the day and the hour. . . . You cannot suffer greater cruelties than you have already. Rather die freemen than live to be slaves. Remember that you are four millions! . . . Let your motto be resistance! resistance! resistance! ” Some in the audience wept, others clenched their fists, but after ex-slave Frederick Douglass refused to support Garnet’s call for a slave rebellion, the convention failed to endorse Garnet’s “war-like” proposal by a single vote. A disillusioned Garnet turned his attention to black emigration, urging African Americans to resettle in Mexico, Liberia, o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface to Third Edition
• Acknowledgements
• List of Plates
• 1 Introduction: African-American Leaders and Limited Options
• 2 Booker T. Washington: The Wizard of Tuskegee
• 3 W.E.B. Du Bois: Talented Propagandist
• 4 Marcus Garvey: Black Moses
• 5 Martin Luther King, Jr.: Apostle of Nonviolence
• 6 Malcolm X: "The Angriest Negro in America"
• 7 African-American Women: Heroines and Trailblazers
• 8 Jesse Jackson: The Rainbow Man
• 9 Barack Obama: America's First Black President
• Conclusion
• Selected Bibliography
• Index