A world-renowned scholar and statesman, Dr. Ralph J. Bunche (1903—1971) began his career as an educator and a political scientist, and later joined the United Nations, serving as Undersecretary General for seventeen of his twenty-five years with that body. This African American mediator was the first person of color anywhere in the world to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. In the mid-1930s, Bunche played a key role in organizing the National Negro Congress, a popular front-styled group dedicated to progressive politics and labor and civil rights reform. A Brief and Tentative Analysis of Negro Leadership provides key insight into black leadership at the dawn of the modern civil rights movement. Originally prepared for the Carnegie Foundation study, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, Bunche’s research on the topic was completed in 1940. This never-before-published work now includes an extended scholarly introduction as well as contextual comments throughout by Jonathan Scott Holloway. Despite the fact that Malcolm X called Bunche a “black man who didn't know his history,” Bunche never wavered from his faith that integrationist politics paved the way for racial progress. This new volume forces a reconsideration of Bunche's legacy as a reformer and the historical meaning of his early involvement in the civil rights movement.

In this landmark effort to understand African American people in the New World, Gunnar Myrdal provides deep insight into the contradictions of American democracy as well as a study of a people within a people. The title of the book, An American Dilemma, refers to the moral contradiction of a nation torn between allegiance to its highest ideals and awareness of the base realities of racial discrimination. The touchstone of this classic is the jarring discrepancy between the American creed of respect for the inalienable rights to freedom, justice, and opportunity for all and the pervasive violations of the dignity of blacks. The appendices are a gold mine of information, theory, and methodology. Indeed, two of the appendices were issued as a separate work given their importance for systematic theory in social research. The new introduction by Sissela Bok offers a remarkably intimate yet rigorously objective appraisal of Myrdal—a social scientist who wanted to see himself as an analytic intellectual, yet had an unbending desire to bring about change. An American Dilemma is testimonial to the man as well as the ideas he espoused. When it first appeared An American Dilemma was called "the most penetrating and important book on contemporary American civilization" by Robert S. Lynd; "One of the best political commentaries on American life that has ever been written" in The American Political Science Review; and a book with "a novelty and a courage seldom found in American discussions either of our total society or of the part which the Negro plays in it" in The American Sociological Review. It is a foundation work for all those concerned with the history and current status of race relations in the United States.

How a preoccupation with charismatic leadership in African American culture has influenced literature from World War I to the present

A theoretical examination of the concepts of the citizen, citizenship, and leadership, A Crisis of Leadership and the Role of Citizens in Black America: Leaders of the New School proposes to develop a prototype or model of effective Black leadership. Furthermore, it examines “citizenship habits” of the Black community based on their economic standing, educational attainment, participation in the criminal justice system, and health and family structure. It tracks data in these four categories from 1970 to today, measuring effective leadership by the improvement or decline in the majority of African Americans standing in these four categories. This book concludes that African Americans have negative perceptions of themselves as U.S. citizens, which thus produce “bad citizenship habits.” Additionally, ineffective Black leaders since the Civil Rights era have been unwilling to demonstrate the purpose and significance of service, particularly to the poor and disadvantaged members of the Black community. Contemporary Black leaders (post–Civil Rights Era) have focused primarily on self-promotion, careerism, and middle-class interests. A new type of leader is needed, one that stresses unity and reinforces commitment to the group as a whole by establishing new institutions that introduce community-building.

This volume establishes new perspectives on African American history. The author discusses a wide range of issues and themes for understanding and analyzing African American history, the 20th century African American historical enterprise, and the teaching of African American history for the 21st century.

This book examines a remarkable political phenomenon--the dramatic shift of black voters from the Republican to the Democratic party in the 1930s, a shift all the more striking in light of the Democrats' indifference to racial concerns. Nancy J. Weiss shows that blacks became Democrats in response to the economic benefits of the New Deal and that they voted for Franklin Roosevelt in spite of the New Deal's lack of a substantive record on race. By their support for FDR blacks forged a political commitment to the Democratic party that has lasted to our own time. The last group to join the New Deal coalition, they have been the group that remained the most loyal to the Democratic party. This book explains the sources of their commitment in the 1930s. It stresses the central role of economic concerns in shaping black political behavior and clarifies both the New Deal record on race and the extraordinary relationship between black voters and the Roosevelts.

20世纪初，布克·华盛顿与杜波依斯就非裔美国人问题展开了一场世纪大辩论。蒿琨著的这本《布克·华盛顿与杜波依斯的思想之争及其对非裔政治领袖的影响（英文版）》从华盛顿与杜波依斯的分歧出发阐述二者的思想之争，然后分析他们的思想遗产对美国非裔领袖的深刻影响。民权运动既继承了杜波依斯的政治抗争手段，又延伸了布克·华盛顿的经济赋权思想。随着美国社会新保守主义的复兴，布克·华盛顿强调非裔美国人自我奋斗和内化自我素质的思想被赋予了新的历史意义。2008年巴拉克·奥巴马成为美国首位非裔总统，这一历史事件让美国公众开始重新审视杜波依斯的精英思想。