Before Marcus Garvey and W. E. B. Du Bois lifted the banner for
black liberation and independence, Martin Robison Delany
(1812-1885) was at the forefront. He was the first black appointed
as a combat major in the Union army during the Civil War. He was a
pan-Africanist and a crusader for black freedom and equality in the
nineteenth century. For the past three decades, however, this
precursor has been regarded only as a militant black nationalist
and "racial essentialist." To his discredit, his ideas, programs,
and accomplishments have been maintained as models of
uncompromising militancy. Classifying Delany solely for his
militant nationalist rhetoric crystalizes him into a
one-dimensional figure.
This study of his life and thought, the first critical biography
of the pivotal African American thinker written by a historian,
challenges the distorting portrait and, arguing that Delany
reflects the spectrum of the nineteenth-century black independence
movement, makes a strong case for bringing him closer to the center
position of the liberal mainstream.
He displayed a far greater degree of optimism about the future
of blacks in America than has been acknowledged, and he faced
pragmatic socio-economic realities that made it possible for him to
be flexible for compromise. Focusing on neglected phases in his
intellectual life, this book reveals Delany as a personality who
was neither uncompromisingly militant nor dogmatically
conservative. It argues that his complex strategies for racial
integration were much more focused on America than on separateness
and nationalism.
The extreme characterization of him that has been prominent in
the contemporary mind reflects ideologies of scholars who came of
age during the civil rights era, the period that initially inspired
great interest in his life.
This new look at him paints a portrait of the "other Delany," a
thinker able to reach across racial boundaries to offer compromise
and dialogue.
Tunde Adeleke, director of African American studies at the
University of Montana, Missoula, is the author of "UnAfrican
Americans: Nineteenth-Century Black Nationalists and the Civilizing
Mission" and editor of "Booker T. Washington: Interpretive
Essays."
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