William M. Banks
Black Intellectuals
Race and Responsibility in American Life
"An important book, significant because it highlights the diversity and richness of Afro-American intellectual life. . . . It will surely be a crucial reference work for years to come."—New York Times Book Review
In the volumes of literature on black history and thought, few have focused on the black thinkers who have shaped the course of American culture. This landmark work charts the contours of black intellectual life across American history and chronicles its fluctuating fortunes.
Black Intellectuals offers a centuries-deep analysis of black life, beginning with the arrival of Africans as slaves, when medicine men and conjurers held ancient, powerful wisdom. Author William Banks goes on to discuss prominent figures ranging from black pioneers like Alexander Crummell, Frederick Douglass, and Anna Cooper to intellectuals of the modern age such as W. E. B. Du Bois, Alain Locke, E. Franklin Frazier, Toni Morrison, and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. These and hundreds of other black scholars and artists—many of them interviewed for this volume—people an enlightened and
imaginative landscape, fascinating for both its range and its diversity.
"A major contribution to the public debate about what constitutes Black intellectual life in a time of racial crisis."—Ishmael Reed
William M. Banks is a professor of African American studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He lives in Oakland, California.
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