Creative conflict in African American thought : Frederick Douglass, Alexander Crummell, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Marcus Garvey / Wilson Jeremiah Moses.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Preface : struggle, challenge, and history -- Introduction : reality and contradiction -- Frederick Douglass : superstar and public intellectual -- Where honor is due : Frederick Douglass and representative Black man -- Writing freely? : Frederick Douglass and the constraints of racialized writing -- Alexander Crummell and stoic African elitism -- Alexander Crummell and Southern Reconstruction -- Crummell, hero worship, Du Bois, and presentism -- Booker T. Washington and the meanings of progress -- Protestant ethic versus conspicuous consumption -- W.E.B. Du Bois on religion and art : dynamic contradictions and multiple consciousness -- Angel of light and darkness : Du Bois and the meaning of democracy -- Du Bois and progressivism : the anticapitalist as elitist -- The birth of tragedy : Garvey's heroic struggles -- Becoming history : Garvey and the genius of his age -- Rescuing heroes from their admirers : heroic proportions imply brobdingnagian blemishes.

Print version record.

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.

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