African American LeadersEssay Preview: African American LeadersReport this essayAshley WhiteGeneral WritingMartha McCully3/28/02Jesse Jackson, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Booker T. Washington, and W.E.B DuBois are all African American leaders. All of these men were leaders in their own time and their own sense, living in different eras with different views, but they all shared common ground. All four were African Americans trying to overcome obstacles and become influential leaders in their society.
Jesse Jackson was an African American civil rights activist and political leader. He was born in Greenville, South Carolina in 1941. Jackson overcame numerous childhood insecurities. He was shunned and taunted my classmates and neighbors. However, instead of letting this adversity defeat him, Jackson developed his exceptional drive and understanding for the oppressed. He worked hard in school, finishing 10th in his class while actively involved in sports. His academic and athletic background earned Jackson a football scholarship at the University of Illinois in Chicago. It was here Jackson realized discrimination was inescapable. After 3 years he left the University and attended North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College in Greensboro, an institution for African-American students. He proved himself to be scholar athlete.
Soon after college Jesse Jackson began his civil rights quest. He founded two groups, the PUSH operation and the rainbow coalition, in order to promote racial and economic justice in the United States. Then, in 1984 and 1988 Jackson campaigned as a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. Even today, Jackson is renowned spokesman and continues to work for racial and economic justice.
Mumia Abu-Jamal was a radio journalist in Philadelphia, known as “the voice of the voiceless”. He was born in Philadelphia on April 24, 1954. Mumia Abu Jamal was the Minister of Information for the Philadelphia Black Panthers at a very early age. By the age of 15 he had attracted much attention through his protests and thus, the FBI began keeping a file on him. He worked as a print and radio journalist who had aired on National Public Radio and National Black Network. He had also served as president of the Philadelphia Society of Black Journalists. Jamals style of journalism allowed the voices of ordinary people to be broadcast.
He was an African American that was put on trial for a murder charge. However, Jamals case has been much publicized for reasons that have no direct bearing on his guilt or innocence: Jamal is a self -proclaimed black “revolutionary,” and an extraordinarily articulate and talented journalist. That is what drew attention to his trial. For the last 17 years Mumia has been locked up and denied any visits from family or press. Although imprisoned and “silenced” he is still considered an influential voice.
Booker T. Washington rose up from slavery and illiteracy to become the foremost educator and leader of black Americans at the turn of the century. He was born on April 5, 1856 in Franklin County, Virginia. As a child he worked in the salt mines but always found time for education. Washington constantly dreamed of college but as an African American this dream was nearly impossible. His scrupulous working habits from the mines set him out for college at the Hampton Institute. He graduated in 1876 and became a teacher at a rural school. After 2 years of teaching, he went back to the Hampton Institute and was a “professor” here for 2 more years. His next challenge would be at a new all black college, Tuskegee Institute where he would become president. Under Washingtons
, the young politician was brought into the nation’s capital to be a part of the civil war in the South and the civil rights movement ignited the South’s anti- slavery movement during the Southerners’ first Civil Rights Act in January, 1861
. He became a U.S. Senator in 1870 and, later, Governor of Washington’s second term in 1872. Washington spent his lifetime at Tuskegee Institute before being called up to become its first black President in 1879. He was appointed secretary of the Department of Treasury in 1899, then a Federal Reserve Board member at that time, and later Vice President, in 1901, under President George W. Bush. In his role as President in 1911, he worked with a variety of civil rights leaders with many who had represented their views in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and made many public appearances at the Capitol on race relations and social policy. The following year, as the Democratic President of the United States, he became the first African-American representative in the House of Representatives, when he was elected in 1885. When this was accomplished he was elected to Congress as a Federal Reserve Governor by 1887, from which he remained for another two years, at which time he served as a Federal Governor and Attorney Commissioner, in the Senate under Teddy Roosevelt. As Secretary of State in 1906, he became the first African American to be appointed to five U.S. Federal Courts, and made numerous public appearances during his tenure as Secretary of Health, Youth, and Welfare, and had the honor of testifying at an early trial for the Civil Rights Act in 1896. He also founded the NAACP, a union which was incorporated by his father in 1917. The following year the Congress passed the Second Civil Rights Act (the Act of February 1, 1892) and the Act of Separation of Church and State (the Act of May 7, 1892), which allowed the state to recognize marriages made outside the United States, and to implement it in any territory to which it was not available. Although he was very often overlooked in Washington discussions of the Civil Rights Act, he soon became a favorite of both Democratic and Republican presidents. For a time he served in the White House as a member of the first African Americans to be elected President. In the following year he became U.S. Senator and U.S. Representative to the United States for 19 months in 1876, and became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States in 1878. His views during that time ranged from the Civil Rights Act on emancipation to that of racial equality within the United States. In the following years he was in political office, serving as a member of the House of Representatives as Federal Minister and a federal clerk to some of the first President’s nominees, as Deputy Attorney General under the President of the United States, and Secretary of the Treasury under President Johnson. During his time at the federal level he took active part in several congressional races, most notably as a federal representative for the District of Columbia in 1908. He joined that district in 1903