“They Rose and Fell Together”: African American Educators and Community Leadership, 1795-1954

Abstract

The prominence of politicians as the leading spokespersons for the African American community in the United States is a relatively recent historical occurrence. Before the civil rights campaigns of the 1950s and 1960s, which brought voting rights to previously disenfranchised Americans, the number of African Americans in elective office was negligible. Indeed, from the 18th century through the 1950s, other African American professionals, especially ministers, journalists, lawyers, and educators, served as the leading spokespersons for the social, political, and economic interests of African Americans in the United States. Together this group of educated professional elites served as an intelligentsia for the African American population. They provided cultural meanings, values, ideals, and objectives drawn both from their extensive training and from the social experiences of the masses and elites of African descent in this society (Cavanaugh, 1983; Franklin, 1984; Marable, 1985; Wilson, 1980). While average Blacks, north and south, were actively involved in the creation of cultural values, goals, and practices based on their African background and their experiences in American society, the educated professionals articulated these values and objectives in speeches, sermons, essays, editorials, magazines, and books that were distributed to the public at large. These cultural spokespersons or intellectuals not only presented their opinions about the most pressing issues facing the African American population, but they also debated these issues in public forums. Often they organized and led social and political movements to obtain specific cultural objectives. From abolitionism to the recent civil rights movement, African American ministers, journalists, lawyers, business owners, educators, and other professionals provided the leadership for African American communities at the local and national levels.1