“WE NEED CHARACTER!”: Remembering Alexander Crummell’s Appeal to Postbellum African Americans

Abstract

The following article offers a study and reassessment of the controversial figure of Alexander Crummell, an African American leader whose influence has been neglected by most scholars. His postbellum ideas on the advancement of black people influenced some of his contemporaries like Booker T. Washington and even later leaders such as W. E. B. DuBois. The article also offers an interpretation of two of Crummell’s most famous speeches on the future of his race, which suggest possible solutions to the tensions and problems experienced by his people after the end of the Civil War.