African American Jeremiad: Appeals For Justice In America

Description

Begun by Puritans, the American jeremiad, a rhetoric that expresses indignation and urges social change, has produced passionate and persuasive essays and speeches throughout the nation's history. Showing that black leaders have employed this verbal tradition of protest and social prophecy in a way that is specifically African American, David Howard-Pitney examines the jeremiads of Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Ida B. Wells, W.E.B. DuBois, Mary McLeod Bethune, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X, as well as more contemporary figures such as Jesse Jackson and Alan Keyes. This revised and expanded edition demonstrates that the African American jeremiad is still vibrant, serving as a barometer of faith in America's perfectibility and hope for social justice.This new edition features: * A new chapter on Malcolm X * An updated discussion of Jesse Jackson * A new discussion of Alan Keyes Contents Preface and Acknowledgments Introduction: Civil Religion and the Anglo- and African American Jeremiads 1. Frederick Douglass’s Antebellum Jeremiad against Slavery and Racism 2. The Brief Life of Douglass’s “New Nation”: From Emancipation–Reconstruction to Returning Declension, 1861–1895 3. The Jeremiad in the Age of Booker T.Washington: Washington versus Ida B. Wells, 1895–1915 4. Great Expectations: W. E. B. Du Bois’s American Jeremiad in the Progressive Era 5. Mary McLeod Bethune and W. E. B. Du Bois: Rising and Waning Hopes for America at Midcentury 6. Martin Luther King, Jr., and America’s Promise in the Second Reconstruction, 1955–1965 7. Malcolm X: Jeremiah to Blacks, Damner of Whites—to the End? 8. King’s Radical Jeremiad, 1965–1968: America as the “Sick Society” Conclusion: The Enduring Black Jeremiad Notes Index