Creative Conflict in African American Thought

Essays that focus on the complexity of the thought of five major African-American intellectuals.

Wilson Jeremiah Moses (Author)

9780521535373, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 10 May 2004

328 pages
22.9 x 15.1 x 2 cm, 0.48 kg

'… intellectually rigorous and combative study …' Journal of American Studies

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.

Part I. Introduction: Consistency … the Hobgoblin of Little Minds: 1. The meaning of struggle
Part II. Frederick Douglass: The Individualist as Race Man: 2. Where honor is due: Frederick Douglass and representative man
3. Writing freely? Douglass's racialization, and desexualization
4. Frederick Douglass, superstar
Part III. Alexander Crummell: the Anglophile as Afrocentrist: 5. Africa, Christianity, and civilization
6. Crummell and the new south
7. Crummell, Du Bois, and presentism
Part IV. Booker Taliafero Washington: The Idealist as Materialist: 8. Booker T. Washington and the meaning of progress
9. Protestant ethic versus conspicuous consumption
Part V. Burghardt Du Bois: The Democrat as Authoritarian: 10. Du Bois on religion and art
11. Du Bois and democracy: a tragic realism
12. Du Bois protestant perfectionism and progressive pragmatism
Part VI. Marcus Moziah Garvey: The Realist as Romantic: 13. The birth of tragedy: Garvey's heroic struggles
14. Becoming history: Garvey and the genius of his age
Part VII. Conclusion: Saving Heroes from their Admirers: 15. Reality, contradiction and the meaning of progress.

Subject Areas: Ethnic studies [JFSL], History of ideas [JFCX], History of the Americas [HBJK]