Martin Delany, Frederick Douglass, and the Politics of Representative Identity

by Robert S. Levine

The differences between Frederick Douglass and Martin Delany have historically been reduced to a simple binary assimilationist versus separatist. Now Robert S. Levine restores the relationship of these two important nineteenth-century African American writers to its original complexity. He explores their debates over issues like abolitionism, emigration, and nationalism, illuminating each man's influence on the other's political vision. He also examines Delany and Douglass's debates in relation to their own writings and to the work of Harriet Beecher Stowe. Though each saw himself as the single best representative of his race, Douglass has been accorded that role by history--while Delany, according to Levine, has suffered a fate typical of the black marginalization. In restoring Delany to his place in literary and cultural history, Levine makes possible a fuller understanding of the politics of antebellum African American leadership.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

328 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Robert S. Levine (Ph.D. Stanford University 1981) is Distinguished University Professor of English and Distinguished Scholar-Teacher at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Levine is the General Editor of The Norton Anthology of American Literature and is a member of the editorial boards of American Literary History, Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies, and J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists.

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a fascinating look at the intertwined lives of two of America's most important black abolitionists in the Civil War period.

One, Frederick Douglass, is widely remembered today, iconic with his shock of white hair and his autobiography (rewritten twice). The other, Martin Delany, is much less well known. The simple reason is that Douglass promoted assimilation of freed slaves, while Delany for much of his life championed emigration of blacks to either Central or South America, or to Africa. Historians told me that Americans, particularly white Americans, find it easier to embrace the first story than the second.

Their actual lives were much more complicated, particularly Delany's. Douglass at times could sound almost as embittered as Delany, and near the end of his life championed Haiti and its black-led government. Delany, on the other hand, never mounted a successful emigration mission, became the first black major in the Union Army and after the war ended up working on behalf of poor white farmers in South Carolina.

Delany's emigration message, perhaps compounded by his shifting priorities, made him harder to categorize and more of an enigma. But he was brilliant, articulate and single-minded in his ambitions. Trained in Pittsburgh as a doctor, he was admitted to Harvard Medical School and then expelled with two other black students because the white students protested their presence. He left America to live in Canada for several years, during which he undertook two missions to Africa, negotiating with tribal chiefs for land.

Known as the "Father of Black Nationalism," he enjoyed a brief resurgence in visibility in the late 1960s as students gravitated toward Malcolm X and the Black Power movement, but then his star again dimmed. He is worth being restored to historical prominence.

One caveat: While this book deals with the movement of the two men through history, it does it largely by analyzing their writing, and you have to bear with a fair amount of rhetoric jargon. Still, it is a nuanced look at two highly important abolitionist figures.