In the Service of God and Humanity

Front matter

In the Service of God and Humanity:

Conscience, Reason, and the Mind of Martin R. Delany

Tunde Adeleke

CHAPTER 4 Politics: Citizenship, Accommodation, and Reconciliation 105 Conclusion Ahead of His Time 141

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Few nineteenth-century Black leaders traveled as extensively as Martin Robison Delany (1812-1885). From the time he left Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, at the invitation of Frederick Douglass to serve as coeditor and roving lecturer for the North Star in 1847, Delany’s life was one of constant motion. These travels initially took him to all corners of the Black communities in the North and Midwest. By the 1850s, with his turn to emigration and Black nationalism, his travels expanded globally (Canada, Africa, and Britain). Delany’s experiences and adventures while traveling nationally and internationally exposed him to the exigencies and complexities of the Black experience, which he meticulously documented, thereby creating a rich legacy for posterity. Needless to say, his travels were not for personal gain or pleasure but were undertaken primarily in furtherance of the Black struggle. This was a preoccupation Delany gladly and enthusiastically embraced with love but with little to no expectation of personal compensation. Most often, especially in the early phase, he relied on the kindness and charity of strangers and abolitionists—men and women alike who raised donations. Some offered him shelter and cared for his horse; others gave him rides in stagecoaches. Through it all, Delany was never on anyone’s permanent payroll. His work involved many sacrifices, as he underscored, in the service of God and humanity. Asa Martin Delany student and scholar, I can venture the contention that we are yet to fully explore and appreciate the wealth of Delany’s legacy.

The more we probe his writings, the more we are exposed to new insights, with rich and varied perspectives and viewpoints. Personally, studying and researching Martin Delany has been the most intellectually enriching and rewarding of endeavors. Through it all, I have been fortunate to benefit from the knowledge and expertise of other colleagues, friends and scholars many of whom I have acknowledged in several of my previous publications. For this study however, I will acknowledge two key individuals, both now deceased and in whose memories the work is dedicated: Ralph Archibald Legall (1925-2003) and Gerald A. Burks (1947-2009). I first met Ralph by chance encounter at a bus stop on the corner of Richmond and Dundas in downtown London, Ontario, in the fall of 1980, shortly after my arrival in Canada. We struck up a friendship, and I quickly discovered xi xii Acknowledgments his depth of knowledge of Black history. Ralph was very generous. He invited me to his apartment on countless occasions, and over sumptuous meals (Ralph was a chef), we would engage in spirited but friendly discourses on the state of the Black struggles in America and across the globe. He was particularly passionate about developments in the Caribbean. Ralph was born and raised in St. Michael, Barbados, and had partaken of the experiences and struggles that the late renowned West Indian writer Austin Clarke described in his memoir Growing Up Stupid Under the Union Jack. Austin Clarke also hailed from Barbados and was a schoolmate of Ralph’s at Harrison College. I soon discovered that Ralph had also written a master’s thesis on aspects of the Black struggles in the Caribbean for the University of Winsor. Ralph was instrumental in helping to shape and frame my early thoughts about Martin Delany. Ralph was not just a personal friend, he was a family friend. He was very kind and generous to my wife and our son, Tosin. I lost contact with Ralph after completion of my studies and returned to Nigeria in 1985. We reconnected briefly by phone when I moved to New Orleans in 1991. He was then working as a Tennis instructor for the Kinesiology Department of the University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada. I did not hear from Ralph again until I read his obituary in 2003. In all our meetings and socializing, Ralph never once mentioned his stellar athletic accomplishments prior to immigrating to Canada. Ralph had won the Trinidad and Tobago Table Tennis singles title in 1949; he played basketball and soccer for both Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados, West Indian Cricket for Trinidad in the 1940s and 1950s, Davis Cup tennis for the Caribbean team against the US and Canada in 1954 and 1956, First Division soccer for the British Army and police in 1947, and cricket for the Lancashire League (England) in 1960 before emigrating to Canada. I found out about all of these after his death. What an amazing feat, and what a humble and unassuming human being!

It was also by chance that I met Gerald Burks. Our paths first crossed in 2007 at the Annual Conference of the Association for African American Historical Research and Preservation in Seattle, Washington. I had the privilege of being recognized as “Honorary Conference Chair” and thus became the focus of attention. During a preconference reception, I shared a table with a group of attendees that included Gerald Burks. It was at this table that Burks shared a volume he had edited containing primary and genealogical sources he had collected in an effort to, in his words, “identify my maternal ancestry and to prove that Martin Robinson (Martin Robison Delany) is part of it.” The next day, to my surprise, he presented me with a copy of the book. This was an unexpected gesture of generosity for which I remain eternally grateful. Burks’s book

Acknowledgments xiii is among the truly treasured classics on Martin Delany. I place it alongside the pioneering works of Dorothy Sterling and Victor Ullman. As Burks claimed, “In familial vernacular without the ‘greats’, I am his [i.e., Delany’s] nephew.”? He referred to Delany as “Uncle Martin.” Burks was a consummate Delany buff who spent considerable time and resources in pursuit of validating his ancestry. He traced his “great, great grandfather, James Robinson and great grandfather Harrison Robinson to Shepherdstown, Jefferson County, West Virginia, a few miles north of Charlestown,” Martin Delany’s birthplace.’ Based on his finding, and their uncanny resemblance, Burks considered Martin Delany his great-great uncle. This rich volume contains documents from United States census and genealogical data and plantation records dating back to before Delany was born. Burks traveled extensively and spent considerable time in the counties of West Virginia; in the process, he amassed a truly impressive and meticulous record that strongly supported his case. I have no doubt that had Burks not died, the trajectory of his research would have resulted in some form of publication that would have benefitted generations of Delany students and scholars.

I would be remiss not to acknowledge the singular positive influence that has nurtured a most welcoming and endearing environment for me and my family in Ames, Iowa: the Owusu family (Francis, “my little brother,” as I fondly refer to him; his lovely wife, Teresa; and their beautiful children). We have been inseparable ever since I met them during my campus visit to lowa State University. Their home is my second home, and as madam Teresa always reassured me whenever I arrived at their doorstep uninvited and unexpected, “welcome home.” This welcome is not empty cliché or rhetoric. It is always accompanied by sumptuous meals rendered with love and affection. In over four decades in academia, during which I have taught in several institutions in the United States and abroad, my stay at Iowa State University is the longest. I attribute this, without equivocation, to the familial welcome and endearing influence of Francis and his family.

I want to acknowledge my immense gratitude to, and appreciation for, the two anonymous reviewers of the manuscript for the University of South Carolina Press. Working independently, they came up with similar suggestions for revision. I am truly grateful for their knowledge, insights, and constructive comments, which helped to enhance and enrich the book. Also, I would like to acknowledge, with gratitude, acquisitions editor, Ehren Foley, for his interest in Martin Delany and the professionalism and efficiency by which he handled the acquisition and review process.

Last, but certainly not the least, I owe immeasurable gratitude to my wife and friend, Gloria, and our children (Tosin, Toyin, and Chinyere). Their presence in xiv Acknowledgments my life, and their accomplishments and daily struggles, have sustained my desire to keep trudging on and remain intellectually curious and productive. They are indeed the reason I wake up every day with the deepest and profound gratitude for almighty God’s mercy and benevolence.

IN THE SERVICE OF GOD AND HUMANITY

Introduction

RITING FOR THE PITTSBURGH COURIER over eight decades ago,

historian W. E. B. Du Bois asked this poignant rhetorical ques-

tion: “[Martin Delany’s] was a magnificent life, and yet how many of us have heard of him?”! Du Bois was right. This remarkable person—the man who collaborated with Frederick Douglass to coedit nineteenth-century Black America’s leading newspaper, the North Star, and considered by some to be second only to Frederick Douglass as a leading Black abolitionist and activist; the man who crisscrossed the country for antislavery, and who in 1849, helped save several lives in the Cholera epidemic that hit Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and in consequence received commendations and certificates of appreciation from the city council and board of health;? the man who in 1850 became one of three Black students to enter Harvard Medical School, and after being forced out due to racism, led the emigration movement in the second half of the nineteenth century, earning a national and international reputation as a leading Black nationalist and Pan-Africanist;? the man who, on the outbreak of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln referred to as “this most extraordinary and intelligent Black man” and commissioned him the first Black combat major in the Union army, and who subsequently helped recruit several Colored regiments;* and the man who was appointed a sub-assistant commissioner of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands (Freedmen’s Bureau) after the war,’ became active in local South Carolina politics, and competed for nomination for the office of lieutenant governor, the second highest political office in the state’—had simply and mysteriously been erased from America’s collective historical memory. By the 1930s, Martin Robison Delany (1812-1885) and other leading Black citizens of his generation had been buried beneath the weight of the emergent and triumphant New South ideology and Jim Crow culture and historiography, which their accomplishments were sacrificed to consecrate. Fundamentally, this culture and historiography deliberately misrepresented and deemphasized the achievements and contributions of Black Americans, especially of their heroes and heroines whose careers seemed to challenge and contradict the dominant and entrenched tradition of White supremacy.’

Not even the Harlem Renaissance of the previous decade could rescue Delany from historical oblivion. The Delany “renaissance” would have to wait for another four decades, when the rise of instrumentalist historiography in the 1960s and the civil rights movement would inspire increased scholarly interests in researching and recovering Black history. This was the historical and cultural context that birthed the Delany rediscovery.’ Thanks to the efforts of Delany aficionados (Dorothy Sterling, Victor Ullman, Cyril Griffith, Theodore Draper, and Floyd J. Miller) we now know much more about Delany’s magnificent life? and can confidently answer Du Bois’s question. The pioneering works of these Delany scholars have, in the last five decades, been complemented by an outpouring of publications on Delany’s life, struggles, and accomplishments.’°

Martin Delany was born of a free mother in 1812 in Charlestown, Virginia (now in West Virginia), at a time in the nation’s history when, for African Americans (slave and free), being free meant nothing. In nineteenth-century America, free Blacks were, according to one historian, “Slaves without Masters.” Black Americans generally were considered and treated less than human. Delany grew up witnessing his grandparents and parents suffer the daily inhumanities and horrors of enslavement. This reality compelled young Delany at a very early age to “register his vows against the enemies of his race.”!* Determined to escape the fate of his parents and grandparents, Delany took the momentous decision in July of 1831 (at the age of 19) to relocate from Chambersburg, Pennsylvania (where they had sought refuge after escaping Virginia), to Pittsburgh.’ It was in Pittsburgh that Delany encountered a growing and thriving community of like-minded Black activists, many of whom had also migrated from other states, working together toward, and committed to, advancing the cause of Black freedom and equality. Here, he continued his education and met leaders who would help shape and guide his career. It was here also that his antislavery career began. He worked part time loading coal and pig iron into barges while pursuing his education at the African Methodist Episcopal Church Cellar School.” As secretary of the Philanthropic Society of Pittsburgh, an organization dedicated to aiding fugitives, Delany also began helping with Underground Railroad activities.”

Delany attended a convention in Pittsburgh in 1834 at which there was a split between advocates of moral suasion and those in favor of more militant approaches. Moral suasion was then being discussed by the leadership of the emerging National Negro Convention movement which opened in Philadelphia in August of 1831. He sided with the moral suasionists who also pushed for temperance and nonviolence. Shortly thereafter he was appointed secretary of the newly created Temperance Society of the People of Color of Pittsburgh. That same year, he helped found the Young Men’s Moral Reform Society of Pittsburgh.'¢ By 1837, he had become librarian of the Young Men’s Literary and Moral Reform Society of Pittsburgh. In 1839, with increased anti-Black violence in Pittsburgh, Delany became a central figure in organizing resistance efforts. He was appointed by the Mayor to form a biracial vigilante committee for law and order. Subsequently, he was elected to the Board of Managers of the Pittsburgh Anti-slavery Society.” Delany’s antislavery efforts no doubt endeared him to some of the leading and wealthiest Pittsburgh socialites. In 1843, he married Catherine Richards, daughter of Charles Richards, who was the son of “Daddy” Ben Richards, one of the wealthiest men in Pittsburgh. The union was blessed with eleven children, seven of whom survived (Toussaint L Ouverture, Charles Lenox Remond, Alexander Dumas, Saint Cyprian, Faustin Soulouque, Rameses Placido, and Ethiopia). The marriage also brought in much-needed income, for Catherine inherited property valued at $200,000.'8 Less than six months after his marriage, Delany began his newspaper the Pittsburgh Mystery. He published the Mystery until 1847 when he gave it up to join Frederick Douglass as coeditor and roving lecturer for the North Star—a move that launched his nationwide antislavery career.”

In the two years Delany worked with Douglass (1847-1849), he made numerous trips to Black communities in the North and Midwest to deliver antislavery lectures and propagate moral suasion; the reform strategy Black abolitionists had adopted. Delany, Douglass, and other leading Black abolitionists, believed that through the cultivation of the tenets of moral suasion (thrift, industry, economy, education, and character reform) Blacks would change their condition and thus appeal favorably to the moral conscience of the nation, and thereby, compel concessions of their rights and privileges.” The upsurge of anti-Black violence and race riots in several states including Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts eroded their faith in moral suasion. Free Blacks had thought they would find an atmosphere receptive of and sympathetic to their desires and efforts to change their condition.” Instead, they encountered resentments and violence. These race riots and violence targeted successful Black businesses, institutions, and symbols of Black cultural, economic, and social progress (such as churches and schools).”* The last straw for Delany was the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850 which convinced him that Blacks would never be given the opportunity to strive for progress in America.” The race riots and his experiences of racism during his journeys convinced Delany that however hard Blacks struggled to improve their condition, racism was so rooted and entrenched that their efforts would always be “rewarded” with hostility and violence.” He presented a dark and gloomy description of the prospects for Black elevation in America. According to Delany, “The most prominent feature of the American policy is to preserve inviolate the liberty of the WHITES in this country, and to attempt to deny or disguise this, is both unjust and dishonest [emphasis in original].”” He referred to the “expulsion” of the Indians from their lands, and “the continued wrongs perpetrated against” them to bolster the contention that Whites would go to any lengths, including nationalizing slavery, in order to preserve and defend their power and privileges.” Delany reflected and expressed a growing conviction among Blacks which the “Colored Citizens” of Pennsylvania articulated in their 1848 “Appeal” to the Commonwealth:

The barrier that deprives us of the rights which you enjoy finds no palliative in merit—no consolation in piety—no hope in intellectual and moral pursuits—no reward in industry and enterprise . . . we may exhaust our midnight lamps in the prosecution of study, and be denied the privileges of the forum—we may be embellishing the nation’s literature by our pursuits in science . . . yet with all these exalted virtues we could not possess the privileges you enjoy in Pennsylvania, because we are not “White.

Delany fully agreed and concluded that Blacks had no future in America. He distrusted White abolitionists and denounced their liberal ideas as limited in scope, paternalistic, racist, and phony. Almost a decade before it would become a slogan in the prelude to the Civil War, Delany described the “Cry of Fee Men” by Northern Whites and abolitionists as not for the extension of liberty to the black man, but for the protection of the liberty of the white. The liberty of the whites of the North was endangered by the encroachments of the slave power; hence, an alarm was necessary to arouse the North and alarm the South, who determined on the permanent establishment of slavery, as the North is well advised of, is ever ready to compromise, and always able to find one.”*

He urged Blacks to embrace emigration, and for the next few years (1852-1863) he embarked on a search for an independent Black nationality. This quest took him to Liberia and the Niger Valley of West Africa where, in southwestern Nigeria, he convinced the local chiefs to cede a portion of their lands for his Black nationality. However, this phase of Delany’s career ended abruptly with the outbreak of the Civil War.

Like Frederick Douglass and other leading Black Americans, and with renewed hope and optimism about the prospects for change in America, Delany reversed course and became actively involved in the pursuit of Black integration in America. His renewed integration zeal and dedication to the Union cause led to his appointment as the first combat Black major in the Union army; a rank he held until after the end of the war when he was transferred to the Freedmen’s Bureau as sub-assistant commissioner and field agent in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.” He was assigned to take charge of several government plantations in Hilton Head. Delany served the Bureau until its demise in 1868 when he thrust himself into the political arena of South Carolina. He would play a pivotal role in both Republican and Democratic Party politics, contesting for lieutenant governor as an “Independent” in 1874.°° Delany seemed to have won the confidence of both Republican and Democratic state governors, Daniel Chamberlain and Wade Hampton respectively, who appointed him trial justice for the city of Charleston.*!

Though Delany’s political career in South Carolina was marked by conflicts and hostilities provoked in part by the controversial decisions and choices he made, his overall accomplishments were quite remarkable. Against the political wishes and inclinations of fellow Blacks and the ruling Republican Party, Delany persistently pushed for reconciliation with, and compromise toward, the defeated Democrats (the party of slavery). By the late 1870s, his hopes and aspirations for racial reconciliation were dashed, paradoxically, by the ascendance of Democrats to political power (supporters of the ancien régime); the very group he had defended and whose support he courted. The “redeemers” as they proudly referred to themselves introduced anti-Black policies designed to undo and reverse the reforms and progress of the Civil War and Reconstruction. Delany, their one-time vocal defender, did not escape their anger and retribution.” Disappointed, frustrated, and alienated from the mainstream Black leadership, Delany left South Carolina. His integrationist aspirations shattered, Delany reverted to his old nationalist back-to-A frica scheme. He joined a resurgent Liberia Exodus Movement, and appealed to the American Colonization Society in Washington, DC, for financial assistance for the emigration cause. No help came from the Colonization Society. But time seemed to have taken its toll, and Delany had neither the physical ability nor pecuniary resources to relaunch a new initiative. In late 1884, he returned physically and psychologically a broken man to Xenia, Ohio, where his wife and children had relocated. He died shortly thereafter on January 24, 1885.

Martin Delany’s life and accomplishments therefore spanned about seven decades of the nation’s history (1812-1885). In 1895, just ten years after his death,

Booker T. Washington would address the Atlanta International Cotton Exposition and deliver a speech that would go down in history as the Atlanta compromise.** Anyone familiar with Delany’s ideas and arguments in furtherance of compromise and accommodation in Reconstruction South Carolina would find nothing new in Washington’s Atlanta Exposition speech. Much of his arguments derived almost verbatim from some of Delany’s writings and speeches in South Carolina.” Ironically, Washington earned the unenviable reputation as a compromiser, while Delany slipped into historical oblivion. Less than fifty years after his exit from the political scene, Delany’s accomplishments would almost be completely erased from peoples’ memories. Thanks to the works of the aficionados, and those of subsequent scholars for challenging and reversing this Jim Crow historiography. Delany would ultimately be resurrected and valorized as exemplar of uncompromising radicalism. Despite increased publications on, and hence increased knowledge about, Martin Delany, there is still much about him that remains unexplored and unappreciated.

Ironically, the more we know about Delany, the more we yearn for more knowledge. The versatility of his thought, and the fact that his antislavery and nationalist careers spanned five decades (1831-1885), which also coincided with major political developments in the nation’s history, underscore and help us better appreciate the complexity and ambivalence that several scholars characterize as possibly the single defining attribute of his life. As Victor Ullman noted, Delany “simply cannot be classified with either the ‘good guys’ or the ‘bad guys.’”°° His ideas and choices reflected and encompassed multiple and complex ideologies. His life touched on virtually every aspect of American history—slayery, racism, abolitionism, religion, colonization, emigration, Civil War, and Reconstruction. The fact that Delany embodied and experienced so much makes the task of studying him all the more challenging. In essence, what Ullman acknowledged was that you could not compartmentalize Delany or his life within narrow and simplistic ideological categories. The more you explore Delany, and are drawn deeper into his life, the more you are likely to realize how much more there is to learn about him, and the more you would want to probe even deeper the inner dynamics of his erudite and prolific mind. In other words, the more we know about Delany, the more we realize how little we actually know, and thus are motivated to explore him even further.

One area of Delany’s life that had escaped scholarly scrutiny, despite the outpourings of publications in the last several decades, relates to the particular dynamics of the ideas he propagated—the political choices he made and defended. While it was clear that Delany made certain controversial decisions and choices, with the exception of the emigration movement about which he wrote extensively, there remains a gap in our understanding of the ideological underpinnings of his controversial, ambivalent, and quite often provocative political decisions and choices. Overcoming this challenge would require slow and deliberate reexamination and analysis of his writings and speeches. For instance, we need to understand why he took so many seemingly anti-Black and unpopular choices and decisions in the closing years of Reconstruction in South Carolina. Furthermore, we know from the scholarship that he was not born a nationalist and that, like many of his peers, Delany spent his early life fighting for integration in America. How did he conceptualize and rationalize integration? Some of the strategies he adopted are well documented, but we still do not know much about their rationale. Delany not only actively participated in the Black struggles but also reflected and philosophized at length about the ideas he espoused and strategies he embraced. This book is about interrogating and analyzing Delany’s ideas in relation to some of the core themes that infused the nineteenth-century Black struggles in America. The objective is to gain informed understanding of the dynamics of his thought that compelled him to make controversial and seemingly contradictory decisions and choices. The central question this book seeks to answer is: what precisely can help us better understand, if not appreciate, Delany’s ambivalent, and at times, counterintuitive decisions and choices? Put differently, the book probes the rationale that motivated Delany to advocate political ideas and choices that at times sharply contradicted, and conflicted with, those of the mainstream leadership.

I have identified four crucial areas— emanating from, or associated with, his long engagement with American history—to which he made significant contributions and about which he was passionate. These four areas represent possibly the major dynamics, preoccupations, and strategies of the nineteenth-century Black struggles: religion, education, violence, and politics. Martin Delany had much to say about, and helped shape public opinion on, these subjects. Curiously, we know relatively little about his thought specific to each subject. This could be attributed to the fact that, with the exception of politics, in which he actively participated late in his life, Delany was never publicly associated with the other three factors. His participation in state politics in South Carolina was short-lived (1872-1876)—not long and impactful enough to distinguish his political career. It did not earn him recognition as a political theorist either. And yet Delany was no silent political witness. He offered constructive and insightful (if provocative) political ideas; and no discussion of the political participation and Black experience in Reconstruction South Carolina would be complete without engaging the ideas he espoused. Similarly, Delany was never a minister or religious prelate. He was not an educator either; and certainly, he did not openly advocate or lead violent insurrection. Nevertheless, he was very open and vocal in expressing his opinions and views on religion, education, and violence. Along with politics, Delany felt very strongly about these particular subjects that also engaged the attention of other Black leaders, and he left few in doubt about his views. He reflected deeply about them and, in scattered and piecemeal writings, in public speeches and addresses, offered insights into the rationale undergirding the choices and decisions they compelled. This book therefore is more of an intellectual history and seeks to probe deeper Delany’s thoughts on, and contributions to, four vital areas of the nineteenth-century Black struggles in America.

The Delany “renaissance,” restored him to the historical limelight. It also revealed his multifaceted and complex nature. Such knowledge has only bolstered interest in probing the dynamics of his thoughts and actions. What were his views on religion, and more specifically the place of the Black church in the promotion of the ideology of moral suasion that Black leaders and abolitionists had adopted as guiding philosophy? What did he think of violence as reform strategy? The subject of violence dominated discussions in some of the early Black conventions of the 1830s. Delany was certainly aware of the controversies that violence generated and possibly was present at some of the deliberations. Thus far, most scholars have analyzed Delany’s conception of violence within the discourse of the “hemispheric revolution” he mapped in his fictional novel Blake, Or, The Huts of America (1859). I hope to demonstrate the many other ways and circumstances Delany manifested his disposition toward violence as reform strategy. While officially Delany was no educator, he fully embraced and helped propagate moral suasion which had education as a key component. What were his views on education? How did Delany conceptualize education in relation to other Black liberation strategies? Though he ascended to a position of prominence in Charleston, as well as in statewide Republican and Democratic Party politics in Reconstruction South Carolina, we know relatively little about the political ideas and theories he espoused. What did Delany think of politics? What political strategies did he advocate and why?

Scholarship on African American thought and leadership consistently tends to situate Delany within the discourse of Black nationalism and Pan-A fricanism. His thought has consequently been confined to this theme. Not surprisingly, he has been, and continues to be, narrowly framed as a Black nationalist. A relatively recent publication on African American Political thought exemplifies this historiographical anomaly. In mapping the themes of African American political thought from David Walker in the late eighteenth century down to Barack Obama, The Modern African American Political Thought Reader (2013), edited by sociologist Angela Jones, identified six broad themes: the antebellum era, rise of abolitionism, Reconstruction and beyond, Black nationalism, Black radical feminism, modern Black conservatism, and the new Black moderate. Consistent with prevailing scholarship, Jones associated Martin Delany with Black nationalism.*’ In reality, as this study will demonstrate, Delany could rightly be identified with all six themes. His life span and antislavery activism coincided with every major episode in American history. He actively participated and voiced his opinions. In his writings, Delany touched upon a wide variety of subjects and themes, including Black nationalism, Pan-Africanism, abolitionism, religion, education, women, violence, astrology, freemasonry, ethnology, political economy, and politics. Unfortunately, because of the ideological slant of the era of Delany’s rediscovery, scholars have narrowly focused on his nationalist and supposedly antiestablishment ideas. Yet, the nationalist ideas were only a dimension; minute reflection and representation of the versatility and complexity of his thoughts. This book is an attempt to challenge the ideological and skewed representation of Delany and argue instead for engaging and acknowledging other aspects of his thoughts (religion, violence, education, and politics). Probing these other dimensions would, I hope, yield better understanding of the contexts and dynamics of why he made certain decisions and staked certain positions that at the time seemed counterintuitive. Exploring and tapping into the mind of so versatile a human helps us better understand him and gain greater appreciation of his place in, and contributions to, the Black struggles in America. It also demonstrates how his ideas and thoughts embodied and anticipated some of the broader challenges and problems of humanity with which the world is still grappling: liberation theology, women’s education, the ethics of nonviolence, and political bipartisanship.