John Edward Bruce: Politician, Journalist, and Self-Trained Historian of the African Diaspora

Crowder, Ralph L. John Edward Bruce: Politician, Journalist, and Self-Trained Historian of the African Diaspora. New York: New York University Press, 2004. 245 pp. $45.

Ralph L. Crowder's biography of John Edward Bruce (1856-1924) is an elucidating glimpse into a time when African American unity was not absolute, and when certain members of the black press fought a dual role against white tyranny and the rising of a bogus class of black leaders-mulattoes. As a "pure Negro," he and other darker-skinned, self-taught intellectuals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries railed against the mulatto elites, who identified more with whites than the masses of uneducated, poor, working-class African Americans. His black nationalistic diatribe also pitted him against W.E.B. Du Bois, George Washington Carver, Booker T. Washington, and other universitytrained black intellectuals. Those stances and a conscientious desire to fight injustice, no matter the skin color of its perpetrator, fueled much of Bruce's journalism.

Bruce, who at 18 began his journalistic career as a helper...