Aristocrats of Color: The Black Elite, 1880–1920

Black Community Studies

by Willard B. Gatewood Jr., John Coghlan (Designed by)

Every American city had a small, self-aware, and active black elite, who felt it was their duty to set the standard for the less fortunate members of their race and to lead their communities by example. Rank within this black upper class rested on such issues as the status of one’s forebears as either house servants or field hands, the darkness of one’s skin, and the level of one’s manners and education. Professor Gatewood’s study examines this class of African Americans by looking at the genealogies and occupations of specific families and individuals throughout the United States and their roles in their various communities. The resulting narrative is a full and illuminating account of a most influential segment of the African-American population. It explores fully the distinctive background, prestige, attitudes, behavior, power, and culture of this class. The Black Community Studies series from the University of Arkansas Press, edited by Professor Gatewood, continues to examine many of the same themes first explored in this important study.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Economics

464 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1990

Reviews

[Lois · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was really good.
Black Elites historically are overwhelmingly attached to and uphold white supremacy.
They do support and help regular Black folks but they hold many of the same prejudices that white supremacy holds towards all Black folks. They also seem to feel embarrassed and ashamed of everyday non-elite Black folks, who shame them by struggling in the cogs of white supremacy.
This book brought to mind John McWhorter and his bullshit 'Woke Racism' nonsense.
Or Jay Z saying calling Black Billionaires 'capitalists' is insulting, 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🙃

Rich Black folks rarely support Civil Rights Movements. Which can also be seem presently with how Jay Z undermined the football kneeling anthem protests and did not support Colin Kapernick but did support the football team owners. Jay Z sees himself as like those white folks, not like your or my Black ass. It's important.

Well done reading the Black Elite for filth while giving them credit for aspects of modern society like free education.

[Daniel Kleven · Rating 5 out of 5]

A big fat book (450+ pages) on a very specific subject, indicated in the title. This era covers so many important figures, a kind of a bridge era between the 19th and 20th centuries. For example, Frederick Douglass (who died in 1895) and W. E. B. Du Bois (who died in 1963) are both covered extensively here, as well as Francis Grimké (1850–1937) who bridged both figures both contemporaneously, but literally relationally, in his correspondence and relationship to both. Gatewood's book is a broad, sweeping, sometimes poorly organized, survey of these kinds of figures, and it covers SO MUCH ground. The bibliography alone is 25 pages long, and the index covers probably every significant Black figure, episode, controversy, and movement from the period: Du Bois vs. Washington; the NAACP; HBCUs; Black women's organization and advocacy; the great migration; World War I; reconstruction; lynching; Ida B. Wells; Anna Julia Cooper; Mary Mcleod Bethune; etc, etc, etc, etc.

Here's what some of the scholarly reviews said:

David Levering Lewis called it a “comprehensive” monograph (W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919, 644 n. 51)

“a major contribution,” and “may well be the most significant work published to date on elite blacks and the importance of class divisions within the black community”

“a masterful achievement”

“an exceptional sociopolitical history”

“exhaustive research and rich detail”

“an excellent study, with meticulous work in the primary and secondary sources.”

I bought and read this book specifically in order to better understand Francis Grimké, especially in light of Kerri Greenwood's charge that he engaged in "colorism" at his church in Washington. Interestingly, Gatewood gives a much more nuanced take on "colorism" amongst the Black elite, and in particular says of Grimké that he "forthrightly rejected the idea of color gradations among Blacks" (157) and that "few condemned colorphobia among Negroes more forcefully" than Francis Grimké (169). While Gatewood aknowledges that 15th Street Presbyterian Church was considered an “elite” congregation, and may have had its own problems, he is very clear that colorism, or “color-phobia,” was not one of those problems.

In fact, Gatewood explicitly cites two sermons by Grimké that show how opposed to colorism that Grimké was.

What is striking as a contrast between Gatewood (1990) and Greenidge (2022), is that while Greenidge cites Gatewood a couple of times, she does not interact with the main theses of his work, and most critically, she advances an argument about Francis Grimké that is the opposite of that stated by Gatewood, yet she doesn't acknowledge this at all, nor does she cite a single time the primary source material (Grimké's two sermons on colorphobia) that form the basis of Gatewood's position. This is a flimsy foundation upon which to build a revisionist history, especially one as explosive as Greenidge's purports to be.

Anyway, if you are interested in "The Black Elite, 1880–1920," you have to read this book. It remains, nearly four decades later, a monument of scholarship on the topic, and an inescapable one if you wish to do work in this field. I just came across this quote about another book, and it applies here:

"It will hard to take seriously future works on [Black figures from this time period] that have not interacted with [Gatewood]"

[Frederick Douglass · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good material on Frederick Douglass and celebration of DC Emancipation Day.