Martin Delany, Frederick Douglass, and the Politics of Representative Identity

by Levine, Robert S.

• ISBN13: 9780807823231
• ISBN10: 0807823236
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1997-05-01
• Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Pr

Summary

"The fullest and richest direct comparison to date of the literary careers of Frederick Douglas and Martin Delany". David W. Blight, Amherst College

These long-ignored debates have much to offer contemporary students of African American Leadership

The differences between Frederick Douglas and Martin Delany have historically been reduced to a simple binary pronouncement: assimilationist versus separatist. Now Robert S. Levine restores the relationship of these two important nineteenth-century African American writers to its original complexity. He explores their debates over issues like abolitionism, emigration, and nationalism, illuminating each man's influence on the other's political vision. He also examines Delany and Douglas's debates in relation to their own writings and to the work of Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Though each saw himself as the single best representative of his race, Douglas has been accorded that role by history -- while Delany, according to Levine, has suffered a fate typical of the black separatist: marginalization. In restoring Delany

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction. Representative Men	1	(17)
1 Western Tour for the North Star: Debating Black Elevation	18	(40)
2 A Nation within a Nation: Debating Uncle Tom's Cabin and Black Emigration	58	(41)
3 Slaves of Appetite: Temperate Revolutionism in Douglass's My Bondage and My Freedom	99	(45)
4 Heap of Witness: The African American Presence in Stowe's Dred	144	(33)
5 The Redemption of His Race: Creating Pan-African Community in Delany's Blake	177	(47)
Epilogue. True Patriotism/True Stability	224	(15)
Notes	239	(66)
Index	305