Ethnic and Racial Studies
ISSN: 0141-9870 (Print) 1466-4356 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rers20
Black leadership in the United States: Douglass,
Garvey and King compared
Mark Ellis
To cite this article: Mark Ellis (1993) Black leadership in the United States:
Douglass, Garvey and King compared, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 16:4, 714-718, DOI:
10.1080/01419870.1993.9993805
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01419870.1993.9993805
Published online: 13 Sep 2010.
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Review articles
Black leadership in the United
States: Douglass, Garvey and King
compared
Mark Ellis
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Eric J. Sundquist (ed.), FREDERICK DOUGLASS: NEW LITERARY
AND HISTORICAL ESSAYS, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1990, 295 pp., £30.00.
Judith Stein THE WORLD OF MARCUS GARVEY: RACE AND
CLASS IN MODERN SOCIETY, Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State
University Press, 1986, 294 pp., £27.50.
Clayborne Carson, Ralph E. Luker, Penny A. Russell, (eds), THE
PAPERS OF MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., VOLUME I: CALLED
TO SERVE, JANUARY 1929-JUNE 1951, Berkeley, CA: University
of California Press, 1992, 484 pp., $35.00.
The lives of Frederick Douglass (1818-95), Marcus Garvey (1887-1940)
and Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-68), affirm the perpetual diversity
of black protest in the United States. Each man offered a distinctive
prescription for advancement, was propelled by a sense of mission,
acquired an international reputation, and, at times, attracted intense
criticism from other black activists. Although future historians are
unlikely to accord King the same significance as Douglass and Garvey,
each shaped African-American consciousness permanently, in ways
that reflected his peculiar circumstances and experiences. Douglass, an
escaped slave who became the most famous northern black man of
his century, advocated violent resistance to slavery, rejected black
nationalism and was lionized by many white abolitionists. Garvey, a
Jamaican Pan-Africanist who led the first black mass movement in
America, was the most ambitious and race-conscious of the three, but
his greatest impact was probably posthumous. The achievement of
King, a southern preacher who personified non-violent militancy, was
Ethnic and Racial Studies Volume 16 Number 4 October 1993
© Routledge 1993 0141-9870/93/1604-714 $3/1
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Douglass, Garvey and King compared 715
that of tying black rights firmly to much wider social and economic
reform.
The fourteen substantial essays in Frederick Douglass: New Literary
and Historical Essays distil recent scholarship on autobiography, black
literature, racial identity in mid-nineteenth-century America and
Douglass himself. Born on a Maryland plantation in 1818, Douglass
was an urban slave when he escaped twenty years later. Already
literate and familiar with American patriotic rhetoric, he swiftly
became a prominent spokesman of abolitionism, publishing his Narra-
tive in 1845 and a newspaper, the North Star, from 1847 to 1863. He
published two further versions of his life, in 1855 and 1881. Henry
Lewis Gates, Jr., argues that the antislavery movement found in
Douglass the necessary 'standard bearer of Negro creativity and culti-
vation' (p. 48).
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Eric J. Sundquist's introduction explores the dual consciousness
experienced by Douglass and others: being black and being American.
Just as Douglass revised his own story, so his life of liberation and
upward mobility has since been reinterpreted symbolically by all shades
of black activism, a theme that Waldo E. Martin considers in a fluent
final chapter. In between, literary studies essays slightly outnumber
the historical. The most successful contributions are Sterling Stuckey's
assertion of the Africanness of Douglass's early life and heritage;
Wilson J. Moses, on Douglass's 'literary confinement' (p. 67) as a
writer on race; Rafia "Zsisx, on parallels with the life of Benjamin
Franklin; Jenny Franchot, on female slave punishment in Douglass's
writings; Shelley Fisher Fishkin and Carla L. Peterson, on the rhetori-
cal origins of 'hypothetical dialogues' (p. 196) that Douglass created
between himself and his opponents; and Wayne Mixon, on Douglass's
continuing relevance after the Civil War. This is an exemplary 'Ameri-
can Studies' collection, but certain disciplinary boundaries survive.
Some of the historians stick to plain facts, while some of the literary
essays apply modern theoretical readings to Douglass's writings with
an indifference to nineteenth-century history. Some minor errors slip
by ('Cruise' for Cruse [p. 19], 'Bannecker' for Banneker [pp. 113-14])
and some text is jumbled (pp. 211-12), but the research behind most
of the essays is convincing and fresh.
At first glance, Judith Stein, in The World of Marcus Garvey,
appears to be ploughing the same furrow as Theodore Vincent {Black
Power and the Garvey Movement, Berkeley: Ramparts Press, n.d.)
and Tony Martin {Race First, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1976),
who between them revealed the wealth of scattered data on Garveyism.
In fact, Stein's is a less ardent and, in some respects, more complex and
informative book. After transferring the struggling Universal Negro
Improvement Association to the United States, Garvey transformed it
into an international movement between 1918 and 1925. This was a
716 Mark Ellis
period of intense debate among black Americans about political strat-
egy, but Stein argues that the structure and methods of the UNIA
sprang less from Garvey's racial outlook (little of which was new) than
from the elitist aspirations of those who led the organization. She
presents the UNIA and its projects, such as the Black Star Line, as
part of a black lower-middle-class attempt to prosper through business.
Black enterprise, however, depended on a degree of basic black pros-
perity, which World War I created only fleetingly, if at all. This analysis
of Garveyism is strengthened by a chapter on local UNIA divisions.
Other useful chapters discuss Garveyites in relation to other black
leaders and writers, Garvey's flirtation with the Ku Klux Klan and the
failed attempts to establish the UNIA in Liberia.
Amid problems of underfunding, Garvey was convicted of mail fraud
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in 1923 and imprisoned from 1925 to 1927. After being deported, he
worked in Jamaica until 1935 and then London, where he died in
isolation in 1940. Stein argues that Garvey was hounded out of the
United States by the persistence of the Red Scare mentality in the
Justice Department - 'sheer antiradicalism' (p. 208). This oversimpli-
fies the drive to prosecute and expel Garvey, which stemmed mostly
from the racism of J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover regarded black chauvin-
ism as unforgivable insolence, rather than a danger. During the
depression, many UNIA members left for sects such as those of Father
Divine, Elijah Poole's Nation of Islam and the Rastafarians in Jamaica.
This has contributed to a tendency to see Garvey as the father of more
recent black nationalism, which Stein rejects. She insists that the UNIA
was a temporary product of interwar economic history and class struc-
tures of black communities in the United States. In the longer term,
she argues, leaders more firmly on the left, like A. Philip Randolph,
understood the needs of black workers better than Garvey.
Publication of Douglass's papers began in 1979 (The Frederick
Douglass Papers, John Blassingame et al. (eds), Yale University Press,
4 vols, to date, 1979-91), and of Garvey's in 1983 (The Marcus Garvey
and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, Robert A. Hill
(ed.), University of California Press, 7 vols., 1983-90). The first
volume of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s papers has now emerged from an
equally scrupulous editorial project, which began in 1984. Over 150
archive and private collections have been combed for the series, which
will include King's published works, interviews, sermons, significant
correspondence and other writings. Contextual paragraphs and further
annotation accompany each item and readers are given a detailed
chronology of events. Two dozen photographs are reproduced and
several documents appear in facsimile. Specialist researchers will
especially appreciate the final calendar, giving descriptions and
locations of documents not included in this volume. The 57-page intro-
duction gives the fullest account yet of King's ancestry and a vivid
Douglass, Garvey and King compared 111
picture of his religious upbringing and education in Atlanta, Georgia.
These details and his childhood letters and other statements show how
powerfully family history shaped King's life. The grandson of slaves,
and the great-grandson, grandson and son of preachers and equal
rights activists, his sense of belonging to a new generation of southern
black leaders seems to have been irresistible. In his first address to
white southerners, a letter to the Atlanta Constitution in 1946, he
demanded 'the basic rights and opportunities of American citizens' (p.
121). He grew up in a community that expected him to give it guidance,
even if only locally.
Most of the documents are educational material, particularly class
papers written by King at Morehouse College in Atlanta (1944-48)
and Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania (1948-51).
These essays are both intriguing and disheartening. They show some-
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thing of King's anti-fundamentalism and his stress on personal religious
experience, and they are the result of many hours in the library.
They also abound with what the editors call 'unacknowledged textual
appropriations' (pp. 49-50). The editors do not duck the issue; in
detailed footnotes, they show plagiarism so extensive that some essays
are little more than scissors-and-paste jobs. (In all but one case (pp.
437-39), all the sources used appear in King's bibliographies.) It
reflects poorly on the colleges where he acquired his study habits. At
Crozer, his tutors consistently awarded him high grades and corrected
only his spelling; they described him as 'exceptional', 'brilliant' and
'outstanding' (pp. 334, 406, 441). The volume closes with King about
to enter Boston University for doctoral work which was to depend on
an unamended approach to scholarship.
Does it matter? Prior to the publication of this volume, American
historians engaged in a major debate on whether the discovery of
plagiarism diminishes King. (See 'Becoming Martin Luther King, Jr.
- Plagiarism and Originality: A Round Table', Journal of American
History, 78, pp. 11-123.) In the eyes of most, it is insignificant beside
his later work, even though his status rested partly on supposed aca-
demic excellence. In any case, he gained something more important
at Crozer than straight 'A's. Elected student president by his over-
whelmingly white, mostly southern, peers, King plainly derived
immense confidence from his first extended experience of integration.
King's leadership was to be in the tradition of Frederick Douglass.
Both were convinced that, despite past crimes and prejudice, white
Americans could change and that it was worthwhile trying to enlighten
them. It was a hope that Marcus Garvey thought futile, and he said
so, which is why he was persecuted.
J
718 Mark Ellis
MARK ELLIS is Lecturer in American History, University of Strath-
clyde.
ADDRESS: Department of History, University of Strathclyde,
McCance Building, 16 Richmond Street, Glasgow G1 1XQ, UK.
Call For Papers
Gendered Narratives: Aspects of Cultural
Identity in Ireland
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Friday 19th, Saturday 20th and Sunday 21st November
1993
Conference aims:
It is the aim of the conference to gather together feminist practitioners
and theorists from different disciplines (arts, social sciences, his-
torians, etc) to facilitate a cross-disciplinary discussion on gender,
cultural identity and women's lived experience in Ireland both North
and South.
It will explore the political and discursive implications of the formation
of gendered identities and will present discursive and social analyses
of cultural representations of gender.
For more information contact: G Honor Fagan, Sociology Department,
University of Ulster at Magee, Londonderry, Northern Ireland.
