Digital Commons Network^™

Martin Robison Delany And The Black Struggle For Freedom, Raimi Olatunji Adeleke

Digitized Theses

Perhaps in no other area is the search for a positive black past more pronounced than in the field of black biography. The need for a better understanding of the black past is closely tied to the reconstruction of the lives of black leaders in the nineteenth century. These leaders, many of whom remain relatively unknown, struggled for black freedom and rights. Unfortunately, the rise of the aristocratic tradition in American historiography in the second half of that century seriously undermined their historical significance. The task of reconstructing their careers, therefore, involved a confrontation with the values of aristocratic history. …