Creative Conflict in African American Thought

by Wilson Jeremiah Moses

• ISBN13: 9780521828260
• ISBN10: 0521828260
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-05-10
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Building upon his previous work and using Richard Hofstadter's The American Political Tradition as a model, Professor Moses has revised and brought together in this book essays that focus on the complexity of, and contradictions in, the thought of five major African-American intellectuals: Frederick Douglass, Alexander Crummell, Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. DuBois and Marcus M. Garvey. In doing so, he challenges both popular and scholarly conceptions of them as villains or heroes. In analyzing the intellectual struggles and contradictions of these five dominant personalities with regard to individual morality and collective reform, Professor Moses shows how they contributed to strategies for black improvement and puts them within the context of other currents of American thought, including Jeffersonian and Jacksonian democracy, Social Darwinism, and progressivism.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Preface: Struggle, Challenge, and History	xi
1 Introduction: Reality and Contradiction	1	(20)
FREDERICK DOUGLASS: THE INDIVIDUALIST AS RACE MAN
2 Frederick Douglass: Superstar and Public Intellectual	21	(25)
3 Where Honor Is Due: Frederick Douglass as Representative Black Man	46	(15)
4 Writing Freely? Frederick Douglass and the Constraints of Racialized Writing	61	(22)
ALEXANDER CRUMMELL: THE ANGLOPHILE AS AFROCENTRIST
5 Alexander Crummell and Stoic African Elitism	83	(20)
6 Alexander Crummell and Southern Reconstruction	103	(18)
7 Crummell, Hero Worship, Du Bois, and Presentism	121	(20)
BOOKER TALIAFERO WASHINGTON: THE IDEALIST AS MATERIALIST
8 Booker T. Washington and the Meanings of Progress	141	(25)
9 Protestant Ethic versus Conspicuous Consumption	166
W.E.B. DU BOIS: THE DEMOCRAT AS AUTHORITARIAN
10 W.E.B. Du Bois on Religion and Art: Dynamic Contradictions and Multiple Consciousness	185	(12)
11 Angel of Light and Darkness: Du Bois and the Meaning of Democracy	197	(13)
12 Du Bois and Progressivism: The Anticapitalist as Elitist	210	(21)
MARCUS MOZIAH GARVSY: THE REALIST AS ROMANTIC
13 The Birth of Tragedy: Garvey's Heroic Struggles	231	(25)
14 Becoming History: Garvey and the Genius of His Age	256	(31)
CONCLUSION: RESCUING HEROES FROM THEIR ADMIRERS
15 Rescuing Heroes from Their Admirers: Heroic Proportions Imply Brobdingnagian Blemishes	287	(8)
Index	295