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 Bibliographic Essay Because the literature on the subject of African American leadership in American society is voluminous, I include here only some of the more significant works. Deliberately omitted are the many biographies and autobiographies of specific African American leaders, in order to keep this essay of manageable length. In addition, because black leadership is complex and multifaceted, the literature on the subject appears in many forms; I have chosen only the most obvious categories of black leadership literature to note here: scholarly books and articles and newspaper articles. These works were produced, for the most part, in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. However, some are included that were written at the dawn of the civil rights movement. many of the works on black leadership that came out during that volatile era focus on the obstacles and issues that confronted black leaders as they made the transition from accommodation to the new reality of protest and agitation. One of the best-known of the works from the early period is Harold Cruse, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual: A Historical Analysis of the Failure of Black Leadership (New York: New York Review Books, 1967), published during the height of the Black Power movement. In addition to Cruse’s seminal work, others, such as Julius Lester’s Look Out Whitey! Black Power’s Gon’ Get Your Mama! (New York: Dial Press, 1968) and Louis Lomax’s The Negro Revolt (New York: Signet Books, 1962), were widely read at the time. Other works from the civil rights era include H. m. Blalock, “Situational Factors and Negro Leadership Activity in a mediumSized Community,” Journal of Negro Education 29, no. 1 (1960); Allyn Boston, “Leadership in American Society; A Case Study of Black Leadership,” Sociological Resources for the Social Studies (1969); Howard Brotz, The Black Jews of Harlem: Negro Nationalism and the Dilemmas of Negro Leadership (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1964); Tilman Cothran and William Phillips, “Negro Leadership in a Crisis Situation,” Phylon 21, no. 2 (1960–1961); Hugh Hawkins, ed., Booker T. Washington and His Critics: Black Leadership in Crisis (Lexington, mass.: Heath, 1974); Lewis Killian and Charles Smith, “Negro Protest Leaders in a Southern Community,” Social Forces 38, no. 3 (1960); Thomas monahan and Elizabeth monahan, “Some Characteristics of American Negro Leaders,” American Sociological Review 21, no. 5 (1956); George Nesbitt, “The Negro Race Relations Expert and Negro Community Leadership,” Journal of Negro Education 21, no.  Bibliographic essay 2 (1952); Peter Paris, Black Leaders in Conflict: Joseph H. Jackson, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. (New York: Pilgrim Press, 1978); Wilson Record, “Negro Intellectual Leadership in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People: 1910–1940,” Phylon 17, no. 4 (1956); and Jack Walker, “The Functions of Disunity: Negro Leadership in a Southern City,” Journal of Negro Education 32, no. 3 (1963). In the aftermath of the civil rights movement, especially by the end of the 1970s, people were reassessing black leadership in light of significant developments . One of the most important of the developments was the election to the presidency of actor-turned-politician Ronald Reagan in 1980. many black people were sure that Reagan was sending them a clear message when he held a campaign rally in Philadelphia, mississippi; this was the town where civil rights workers Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and michael Schwerner had been murdered during mississippi Freedom Summer, in 1964. The nation’s sharp turn to the right prompted the release of a host of black leadership studies. This generation of black leaders was going to have to operate in a different political climate from their predecessors. The sympathy for the plight of African Americans that had seemed to be a prominent part of America’s popular consciousness in the 1960s, and even in the 1970s, was a thing of the past by the 1980s. During Reagan conservatism, numerous works were produced that evaluated the impact and effectiveness of black leadership in this new and, many insisted, hostile environment . Among them were milton Coleman, “Black Leaders Hear Plan for Key Role in Democratic Convention: Conference in Atlanta Provides First Analysis of 1984 Prospects,” Washington Post, march 13, 1983; King Davis, “The Status of Black Leadership: Implications for Black Followers in the 1980s,” Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 18, no. 3 (1982); Dorothy Gilliam, “Black Leadership Will Be Topic Here,” Washington Post, July 20, 1981; “Inventing Black Leaders,” Washington Post, December 21, 1983; Ivan Van Sertima, “Great Black...

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