ABSTRACT
There are two major research traditions in America. The first research tradition arises out of a contextual environment designed to foster intellectual advancement —a tradition that holds a hegemony over the knowledge base. Scholars belonging to this research tradition produce scholarship that is almost always defined, described, and decorated as individuals working at major research universities, rich in resources and designed to stimulate, encourage, and support the finest academic research efforts and endeavors. The second research tradition in America's intellectual life is the unheralded, unsung, unrecorded, but not unnoticed one. Scholars belonging to this tradition literally make something out of nothing and typically produce scholarship at the less recognized institutions of higher learning. Scholarly work in this second tradition centers on the African-American community and/or its component parts. African-American lawyers became for most African-American communities the engines of African-American politics.
