Abstract

Abstract William Monroe Trotter remains a fixture in historical memory because of his opposition to Booker T. Washington, principal of the Tuskegee normal school and the leading black figure of his generation. Trotter founded the Guardian in 1901 and served as editor of the newspaper for three decades. Numerous scholars and countless historians have detailed the confrontation between Washington and Trotter in the context of their disagreements over segregation, disfranchisement and racial violence. This essay examines the importance of religious ideas and Christian themes in the rhetoric of the Guardian and in the writings of Trotter. Trotter immersed himself in the literature of the antislavery movement and the history of abolitionism. Drawing on this tradition, Trotter employed the black millennial jeremiad discourse to deliver a message of racial reform to the American public. By explicating his pubic declarations, editorials, and orations, this paper analyzes Trotter’s usage of the black millennial jeremiad discourse to exhort the American public to oppose racial oppression.

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