Afro-American Jeremiad

"In these troubled times, this book is a reminder of the power that black Americans exercised in moving toward...the American Dream that each of these leaders so eloquently, if differently, expressed... I cannot recommend The Afro-American Jeremiad too highly. It should be required reading from the White House to the schools in the poorest backwaters of this country." --The Journal of Southern History "Howard-Pitney has identified the core beliefs and values that hold the nation together in her civil religion... By demonstrating how...Afro-Americans have drawn upon the jeremiad to make their case for justice and equality, the author has shown the enduring quality of this idea, which has been embraced and rejected by black leaders at various times." --Robert L. Harris, Jr., Cornell University "This very fine monograph is significant because it explores one of the few points of leverage that Afro-American spokesmen had in the nineteenth century in attempting to break out of the race's powerlessness. Very compelling and thought-provoking." --Walter Jackson, North Carolina State University

• Acknowledgments Introduction: Civil Religion and the Anglo-and Afro-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 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. King's Radical Jeremiad, 1965-1986: American as the "Sick Society" Conclusion: The Black Jeremiad and the Jackson Phenomenon Notes Index