Between Washington and Du Bois: The Racial Politics of James Edward Shepard

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Description

Southern Conference on African American Studies, Inc. C. Calvin Smith Book Award

Between Washington and Du Bois describes the life and work of James Edward Shepard, the founder and president of the first state-supported black liberal arts college in the South–what is today referred to as North Carolina Central University. Arguing that black college presidents of the early twentieth century were not only academic pioneers but also race leaders, Reginald Ellis shows how Shepard played a very important role in the creation of a black professional class right through the Jim Crow era.

Rather than specializing in vocational skills, like Booker T. Washington, or emphasizing the liberal arts exclusively, as did W. E. B. Du Bois, Shepard steered a course between these two perspectives by taking into consideration the most practical how one can make higher education to be had to African Americans. From time to time he accommodated his state’s segregationist regime in an effort to keep his school open and funded. Yet he never overpassed his goal of radical racial uplift. Shepard’s story illustrates the gradualist strategy used by many of his peers in academic leadership who successfully navigated the currents of southern white supremacy and northern black radicalism.

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