Black Intellectuals as Activists in the Age of Jim Crow

Dickson D. Bruce, Jr., and Jacqueline Goggin have written, respectively, excellent biographies of black lawyer and author Archibald H. Grimke (18491930) and historian Carter G. Woodson (1875-1950). Intellectuals and civil rights activists, Grimke and Woodson forcefully challenged segregation, disfranchisement, and proscription. In their writings they emphasized slavery's destructive legacy, race pride and solidarity, political activism, and the development of African American institutions. Grimke and Woodson fell in and out of the intellectual orbits of Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois and operated amidst the layers of conflict and contradictions within the black community. Bruce and Goggin have researched deeply and unearthed rich documentary material, especially in obscure archival collections. Their books link August Meier's monumental research in black thought during the age of segregation to the field of African American intellectual history that is burgeoning today.1 Born a slave in South Carolina, Grimke graduated from Lincoln University and Harvard Law School, practiced law, and edited a black Republican newspaper in Boston. Pragmatic and politically independent, he asked blacks in 1884: Shall we allow our racehood to limit our expanding powers and destiny? (p. 48). Two years later Grimke bolted the Republicans, urging blacks to look after their self-interests and to support Democrat Grover Cleveland. In 1894 Cleveland rewarded Grimke with an appointment as U.S. consul to the Dominican Republic. Grimke's diplomatic service, Bruce posits, showed him firsthand that alternatives existed to America's segregated society

Political science · History · Race, History, and American Society