Abstract
From the end of Reconstruction in the 1880s to the 1940s, the African American population confronted the complex issue of how to lead African Americans in an emergent industrial American nation-state system that applied rigid white supremacist practices in its interface with African Americans. One can hypothesize two generic types of modern ethnic group leadership: (1) the social organization type which focuses on the nuts and bolts of outfitting a group with agencies, mechanisms, networks, and institutions related to modern social development; and (2) the guidance type or mobilization type which focuses on the character of an ethnic group's status, citizenship rights, human rights, and honor in a modern nation-state society. This article revisits the classic leadership contest from the 1890s to the 1940s between the leadership paradigms of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois in terms of the two generic types of modern ethnic group leadership. It concludes with a critique of efforts by neoconservatives today to revive the Washington leadership paradigm, which historically has been a distorted variant of the generic social organization type leadership.
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