Abstract
My argument herein is that there is an important relationship between the religious thought of black men religious intellectuals, on the one hand, and the progressive development of black leadership, on the other. Historically, black religious thinkers have been the most influential black leaders. Examples abound, including Martin Luther King Jr., Howard Thurman, Jesse Jackson, Otis Moss Jr., Louis Farrakhan, Malcolm X, and countless others. My goal in this chapter is to develop a black men’s leadership framework by examining the life example and leadership philosophy of Dr. Benjamin E. Mays. While not providing an exhaustive survey of black men’s religious thought or the entire spectrum of black leadership typologies, this chapter is designed to provide an illustrative example of how other studies could be conducted. I conclude by offering a number of cultures/policy recommendations, demonstrating useful ways of applying this research to create a sustainable black male leadership paradigm. These cultures/policy recommendations reflect the areas of (1) Academia/Research; (2) Practitioners/Civil Society; and (3) Public Policy/Advocacy, taken from the 2008 Ford Foundation report, Why We Can’t Wait: A Case for Philanthropic Action: Opportunities for Improving Life Outcomes for African American Males.1
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Notes
Cornel West and Eddie Glaude, ed. African American Religious Thought: An Anthology (Louisville, KY: Westminister/John Know, 2003), xi–xxvi.
Peter J. Paris, Black Religious Leaders: Unity in Conflict (Louisville, KY: Westminister/John Know, 1991), 17–18.
Ibid., 22–28; James Cone, Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare. (New York: Orbis, 1992), 1–17.
Cheryl J. Sanders, Saints in Exile: The Holiness-Pentecostal Experience in African American Religion and Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 106–122.
Clarence Taylor, Black Religious Intellectuals: The Fight for Equality from Jim Crow to The 21st Century (New York: Routledge, 2002), 1–10.
Riggins R. Earl Jr., Dark Salutatons: Ritual, God, and Greetings in the African American Community (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity International, 2001), 114–116.
Gayraud Wilmore, African American Religious Studies: An Interdisciplinary Anthology (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1989)
Dwight N. Hopkins, Black Faith and Public Talk: Critical Essays on James H. Cone’s Black Theology and Black Power (New York: Orbis, 1999), 1–7
E. Franklin Frazier, The Negro Church in America (New York: Schocken, 1963)
C. Eric Lincoln, The Black Church since Frazier (New York: Schocken, 1974).
Louis DeCaro Jr.], On the Side of My People: A Religious Life of Malcolm X (New York: New York University Press), 199
Dwight N. Hopkins has authored a number of works that are indispensable to constructing a progressive black man’s religious history and theology. Among these works are Down, Up, and Over: Slave Religion and Black Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000)
Dwight N. Hopkins, Between Head and Heart: Black Theology, Past, Present, and Future (New York: Palgrave, 2003), 91.
Stephanie Mitchem, Introducing Womanist Theology (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2002)
Walter Earl Fluker and Catherine Tumber, eds., A Strange Freedom: The Best of Howard Thurman on Religious Experience and Public Life (Boston: Beacon, 1998).
C. Eric Lincoln, The Black Experience in Religion (Garden City, NY: Anchor, 1974).
Henry James Young, Major Black Religious Leaders since 1940 (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1979), 46–53.
Stephanie Mitchem, Name It and Claim It: Prosperity Preaching in the Black Church (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim, 2007).
Wilson Jeremiah Moses, Afrotopia: The Roots of African American Popular History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)
Alfred A. Moss, The American Negro Academy: Voice of the Talented Tenth (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981).
Benjamin E. Mays, Born to Rebel: An Autobiography, revised with foreword by Orville Vernon Burton (Athens: University of Georgia, 2003), 2.
Raymond Gavins, “Gordon Blaine Hancock: A Black Profile from the New South,” Journal of Negro History LIX (July 1974): 226.
Edward A. Jones, “Morehouse College in Business Ninety Years—Building Men,” Phylon Quarterly 18:3 (1957): 233.
I. A. Newby, Black Carolinians: A History of Blacks in South Carolina from 1895 to 1968, Tricentennial Studies, no. 6 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1973), 232–234.
Ralph E. Luker, The Social Gospel in Black and White: American Racial Reform, 1885–1912 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991).
Leonard Ray Teel, “Benjamin Mays: Teaching by Example: Leading through Will,” Change 14:7 (October 1982): 16.
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© 2009 Zachery Williams
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Williams, Z. (2009). Born to Rebel and Born to Excel: Black Religious Intellectuals, Benjamin E. Mays, and the Development of Black Male Leadership. In: Williams, Z. (eds) Africana Cultures and Policy Studies. Contemporary Black History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230622098_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230622098_8
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