ABSTRACT
Negroes were deemed to have emotions and even opinions, but it would have been laughable to suggest that they could produce a coherent social philosophy. In 1898, one formidable Afro-American intellect, Alexander Crummell, delivered a lecture before the American Negro Academy titled “The Attitude of the American Mind Toward the Negro Intellect.” Intriguingly, Afro-Americans may experience greater cultural acceptance within the political sphere than within the realm of publicly acknowledged intellects. The pathological white, antiblack racism that was hegemonic at that time precluded, for most white Americans, the possible existence of a serious black thinker and, even more so, a black American who claimed to be a “man-of-culture.” The ability of Afro-American intellectuals to appropriate the mantle of spokespersons for black America at-large is sometimes enhanced by the willingness of these intellectual spokespeople to cleverly appropriate black popular-culture styles of speaking.
