The Crisis of Black Leadership in America

What is the future of black leadership? In the wake of the Movement for Black Lives on the one hand and the “election” of Donald Trump (and the forthcoming presidential election) on the other, a range of intellectuals, pundits, activists, and organizers have begun to ask “what next”? Some suggest that black populations would be…

In late 1913, several well-heeled African Americans, mostly businessmen, in New York City founded the United Civic League (UCL) to promote the “interest and welfare of the Negro voter by organizing and solidifying said voters into a body without party designation.”[1] Civic leaders, like Adam Clayton Powell, Sr., pastor of Abyssinian Baptist Church, deemed it…