A Brief and Tentative Analysis of Negro Leadership.

A Brief and Tentative Analysis of Negro Leadership

by Ralph J. Bunche, edited with an introduction by Jonathan Scott Holloway New York University Press, February 2005 $30, ISBN 0-814-73665-4

Much mystery surrounds Ralph J. Bunche (1903-1971), the noted scholar and statesman, who served as Undersecretary General of the United Nations for 17 years. Before the world discovered him, he taught at Howard University in the 1930s and was a progressive and agitator for labor reform and civil rights. At the height of the Depression, he was instrumental in organizing the National Negro Congress, a well-known group stressing key populist solutions, much to the dismay of the established black and white power structure.

In this book, A Brief and Tentative Analysis of Negro Leadership, completed in 1940 by Bunche and submitted to Gunnar Myrdal of An American Dilemma fame, Bunche analyzes the principal black leaders at the dawn of the modern Civil Rights Movement, but, unfortunately, it was never published. With penetrating insight into the Negro personality and the relationship with white power and privilege, he dissects the differences between playing on the national and local political stage, the influences and challenges of leadership, the awesome obstacles presented by the entrenched dominant white structure, and the need to expand the leadership role of the black church.

"The media for reaching the Negro masses, other than through the church, which is rather rigidly controlled by mainly conservative and selfish ministers, are not well refined," Bunche wrote, laying a preliminary blueprint about modern day church activism. "There are certainly no effective leaders of the Negro masses other than Negro ministers in the Negro world of today."

Furthermore, Bunche addresses the issue of the "race man" and "the Uncle Tom," speaking of those "colored" people chosen by whites to act on the race's behalf. Although activist Malcolm X called Bunche "a black man who didn't know his history," he was nobody's fool, for he knew the advent of integrationist politics could be a double-edged sword. He foresaw that there would be a price for the progress of the race. He catalogues the six different types of black leaders, from the dynamic and aggressive to the cautious and timid, through the stooges and symbolically important, and the prestige-minded leader to the bought-and-sold puppet owned and operated by whites.

Bunche is a fortuneteller when he opines: "The Negro leader often quickly puffs up when given power. He 'struts' and puts up a front, or put on 'airs,' often indulges an exhibitionism" Think about how many black leaders could fit these labels.

It is through his illustrations and examples of black leaders on the local and national level that the book comes alive. He is a very capable writer, able to wrap his mind around a complex concept and simplify it for the reader. Another thing that makes the book valuable is his analysis of such leaders as Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Carter G. Woodson, Marcus Garvey, among others. Bunche, who won the 1950 Nobel Prize for Peace for his mediating an end of the first Arab-Israeli war in 1949, expanded his role of leadership on an international level while keeping an eye on the racial domestic issue and the race was well served by his choice. As a resource book on the issue of leadership, it is finely edited and introduced by Jonathan Scott Holloway, professor of African American studies, History, and American studies at Yale University. We need this book to remind us of the competent leadership that we enjoyed in the past.

Robert Fleming is a contributing editor to BIBR, and author of Havoc After Dark: Tales of Terror (Dafina Books, March 2004).