From Emerson to King : Democracy, Race, and the Politics of Protest (The W.E.B. Du Bois Institute Series)

Patterson offers an exploration of Emerson's contribution to the national debate on democracy, race, and social reform. Emerson's writings, she contests, reveal a consistent pattern of contradiction between fundamental individual rights and race as a factor impossible to dismiss in a consideration of democratic values: ownership, nonconformity, freedom. She traces Emerson's legacy through the writing of African-American intellectuals of succeeding generations: Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, Martin Luther King, Jr.