What the Negro Wants

Rayford W. Logan (1897–1982) was professor emeritus of history at Howard University. Logan was an African American historian and Pan-African activist who was best known for his study of post-Reconstruction America. In the late 1940s, he was a chief advisor to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) on international affairs. Kenneth Janken is a professor in the Department of African, African American and Diaspora Studies at the University of North Carolina. He is the author of Rayford W. Logan and the Dilemma of the African American Intellectual; White: The Biography of Walter White, Mr. NAACP; and The Wilmington Ten: Violence, Injustice, and the Rise of Black Politics in the 1970s.

"Rationalization and sublimation have been the means by which we have tried to solve the American race problem, and this ably written book is an outstanding example of the frontal approach." —The New York Times Book Review (praise for a previous edition)"This book provides a marvelous window into the contours of mid-twentieth century black political thought. . . . More than half a century after its publication, this book remains a valuable document for anyone interested in the origins of the modern civil rights movement. Its indictment of American racism remains powerful and relevant even today." —Chicago Tribune