TheGrio’s 2011 African-American Leadership Survey Final Report

January 2011

TheGrio’s 2011 African-American Leadership Survey 1 Final Report

TheGrio’s 2011 African-American Leadership Survey Final Report

As a website devoted to the news, opinions, and contributions of black people in America and around the world, TheGrio.com is interested in understanding what the past teaches us about our current political moment and how it helps us prepare for the future. In this spirit, TheGrio assembled a group of contemporary academics, artists and activists to assess the most impactful African- American leaders in U.S. history. Each is uniquely suited through scholarship, experience, and commitment to black communities to assess the legacy of African-American leadership. The jury for “TheGrio’s 2011 African-American Leadership Survey” includes the following individuals. Brief bios appear at the end of this report.

Majora Carter Marc Morial Barbara Young Shirley Sherrod Mark Anthony Neal James Young Roy Innis George Curry Lonnie Isabel Bev Smith Nina Kennedy Clarence Lusane Darlene Clark Hine Obery Hendricks William Jelani Cobb Mary Wilson Paula Giddings Lonnie Bunch Bakari Kitwana Robin D.G. Kelley Joshua Guild Peniel Joseph Khalil Gibran Muhammad Consuella Askew Blair Kelley

Each member of the expert panel was asked to complete a survey, which asked them to assess 170 black leaders. These leaders are individuals who worked in times as distant as American and moments as recent as our own. The experts made independent rankings of each leader on the list. The expert jury also nominated leaders not included in the original list. An alphabetical list of all 170 leaders and all additional names is included at the end of this report.

TheGrio’s 2011 African-American Leadership Survey 2 Final Report

Categories of Leadership

African-American leadership has taken many forms over the decades. Our jury of experts considered contributions from political leaders in four broad areas.

1. Elected and Appointed Political Leaders 2. Lawyers, Legal Advocates and Business Executives 3. Civil Rights, Political Organizations and Religious Leadership 4. Politically Relevant Intellectuals, Writers, and Artists

They have chosen the top five most impactful persons in each area. From these responses we have also compiled a list of the top 25 African-Americans in our nation’s political history.

Selection Criteria

We asked experts to consider the following criteria when making their selections.

• Overall influence on creating substantive change in the area.

• The extent to which the leader introduced new and innovative strategies or ideas, or accomplished a unique achievement in the area.

• The historical legacy of the leader (both widely known and more hidden) in the area for which the leader is nominated.

• The continuing relevance or the leader’s work or the leader’s contribution to a watershed historical moment.

Rankings

Rankings are determined using a basic formula that accounts for the multiple assessments of each leader by each member of the jury. Each jury expert ranked each of the 170 leaders on a scale from 1-5 where 1 is least important and 5 is most important. They then ranked each candidate based on their relevance within their category, for example Civil Rights. Each expert then ranked each leader based on an their overall importance among all 170 leaders.

These rankings in the list of overall Top 25 and Top 10 are determined by a combination of all three scores: individual assessment, category rank, overall rank. The rankings in Top 5 for each category are computed using the individual assessment and the category score, but not the third “overall” score. Each score is computed as a percentage of 100. Document3 A score of 100% would indicate unanimous agreement among all jury experts in all three categories. All leaders in the Top 10 scored above the 50% threshold, indicating a majority agreement among jury experts across the three categories. Among the leaders tanked 11-25 scores range from 25%-50%, that jury experts had more mixed opinions about the other top leaders.

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Top Ten

Overall, our experts had widely divergent opinions about this extensive list of leaders, but they shared extraordinary agreement about the few individuals who have had the most impact in American history. According to our experts∗ these are the top 10 African- American political leaders in U.S. history in the order they were ranked:

1. Martin Luther King, Jr. 2. 3. W.E.B. Du Bois 4. 5. 6. 7. Harriet Tubman 8. 9. Ida B. Wells-Barnett 10.

At first glance this list may not seem surprising. These names are widely regarded as some of the greatest African-Americans to have ever lived. There are some findings here worth noting.

It is fascinating to note that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is clearly the consensus choice of this group. King never held elected office. He was harshly criticized in his own lifetime both by the American public and by some members of his own community. Although he was still a very young man at the time of his assassination, his contributions shine forth as a signal, extraordinary legacy of leadership and achievement.

President Barack Obama is the only living leader included among the Top 10. He is ranked a very close second to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This result is nothing short of extraordinary given that President Obama is a relatively young leader who only became known to a national American audience in the past four years. Many of the experts on this panel have written critically of various aspects of his presidency. All of the experts on this list are deeply knowledgeable of the long trajectory of black struggle in America and the many personalities who have been part of it. His presence among these giants of black political history is indicative of the symbolic and substantive importance of his presidency despite his often- embattled administration.

There are four women among the Top 10. While Harriet Tubman and Rosa Parks are women who are widely known and whose accomplishments are taught in American grade schools, both Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Ella Baker are less well-known figures for many black Americans. That these experts judged these women as significant contributors to black political efforts is an indication that they should be included in our broader curriculum of black history.

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The span of black political leaders included in this Top 10 list includes those who struggled against slavery (Tubman and Douglass); those who were active during the nadir of race relations at the turn of the (Wells-Barnett and Du Bois); those who led the struggle for Civil Rights (King, Marshall, Baker and Parks); those who insisted on self- determination (X); and a contemporary elected leader (Obama). Such a broad sweep indicates that our experts believed there were many points in American history when leadership was necessary and when black Americans stepped up to provide that leadership.

The chart below shows how closely the Top 10 leaders were ranked. Think of 100 as the total number of points possible. The vertical bars show the actual number of points out of 100 received by the leader as assessed by the expert panel.

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Top 25 Black Leaders

The list of the Top 25 leaders adds interesting diversity to the list of Top 10.

1. Martin Luther King, Jr. 2. Barack Obama 3. W.E.B. Du Bois 4. Thurgood Marshall 5. Malcolm X 6. Frederick Douglass 7. Harriet Tubman 8. Rosa Parks 9. Ida B. Wells-Barnett 10. Ella Baker 11. Booker T. Washington 12. Adam Clayton Powell 13. 14. Dred Scott 15. 16. A. Phillip Randolph 17. 18. 19. , Sr. 20. John Johnson 21. Mary McLeod Bethune 22. Carter G. Woodson 23. Nat Turner 24. 25. 26.

(There is a three-way tie for Belafonte, Houston and Hughes)

This list includes more living leaders: Reverend Jesse Jackson, Sr. and Harry Belafonte.

The list also includes educators Mary McLeod Bethune and Carter G. Woodson, underscoring the extent to which education has been an important site of political contributions for black Americans. The list also includes artists Robeson, Belafonte, and Hughes, which underscores the importance of artistic and literary expressions within black politics. The list includes two additional women, Hamer and Bethune, reminding us that women have made critical leadership contributions to African-American politics. This list also includes two more black Americans who lived as slaves: Scott and Turner. Their inclusion signals the continuing importance America’s slave legacy.

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Top Elected and Appointed Black Political Leaders

We asked our expert panel to choose the top leaders in each of four different categories of leadership. In the area of Elected and Appointed Political Leaders these individuals generated the most agreement.

Barack Obama Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Harold Washington

President Obama received nearly unanimous support as worthy of inclusion among the top leaders. No other candidate in this area generated as much agreement.

Shirley Chisholm and Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. are somewhat surprising inclusions. Undoubtedly the heavy representation of based jury experts is likely responsible, in part, for their inclusion. Something else is likely at work here too. In the context of an Obama presidency, Chisholm’s unlikely and inspiring candidacy for the American presidency has renewed resonance, as does the ground breaking first that is the Congressional career of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.

Colin Powell is one of the few conservatives to make the lists of top leadership. Our experts judge his historic leadership positions in the American military and national government as worthy of recognition.

Harold Washington, Barbara Jordan, and John Lewis are all leaders with robust reputations for independence and courageous, outspoken advocacy on behalf of black community interests. They are also recognized as coalition builders who earned broad cross-racial support and respect as a result of their accomplishments. By choosing these leaders our expert panel is signaling an assessment of their capacity to be both fiercely independent and widely respected as the kind of skills necessary to make an impact on black political life.

The chart below shows the top leaders in appointed and elected office. There are two ties in this category. Therefore, seven names are listed.

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Top Black Political Leaders in Law, Legal Advocacy and Business

We asked our expert panel to choose the top leaders in each of four different categories of leadership. In the area of Law, Legal Advocacy, and Business, these individuals generated the most agreement as worthy of consideration as most impactful.

Thurgood Marshall Charles Hamilton Houston Rosa Parks Dred Scott Madame CJ Walker John Johnson

Our experts ranked Thurgood Marshall, Charles Hamilton Houston, and Rosa Parks as the most impactful leaders in issues of law and legal advocacy. Each was critically important in the struggle for integration in America. This is indicative of the continuing assessment that despite the challenges of the past 50 years, the battle to integrate America’s schools, workplaces, public spaces and government remains the defining effort of black politics.

Our experts also include famously unsuccessful litigants Dred Scott and Homer Plessy as among the most impactful leaders. Our experts recognize that failures can be as important successes in setting the tone and direction of black politics.

Our experts chose Madame CJ Walker and John Johnson as the most impactful business executives. Both of these business leaders made extraordinary political contributions. Walker remains one of the most generous individual contributors in the history of the NAACP. In many ways the legal work of the Marshall, Hamilton and others on this list was made possible by Walker’s contributions. Johnson’s black publishing empire had a similarly powerful impact in the modern political era when he magazines offered a primary platform for black political leaders to engage with African-Americans in a national forum.

It is notable that current Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is not included in the list of most impactful leaders – despite being the only African-American other than Marshall (who received 92% of votes from experts) to serve on the Supreme Court, and despite being a decisive conservative vote on many issues of social and political significance affecting black Americans.

The chart below shows top leaders on the list. Seven names are reported to retain consistency with the chart above, which produced seven names as a result of ties.

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10 TheGrio’s 2011 African-American Leadership Survey Final Report

Top Black Leaders in Civil Rights, Political Organizations and Religion

We asked our expert panel to choose the top leaders in each of four different categories of leadership. In the area of Civil Rights, Political Organizations and Religious Leadership, these individuals generated the most agreement as worthy of consideration as most impactful:

Martin Luther King, Jr. Malcolm X Frederick Douglass Harriet Tubman Ida B. Wells-Barnett Ella Baker A. Phillip Randolph

The leaders on this list are most represented among the top 10 most impactful leaders overall. Six of the seven top leaders in this category were also chosen in the Top 10. Our experts believe that this is the area from which our most important leaders have emerged.

Both Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X are ranked at the top of this list. Despite the many differences in their approach, style, and philosophy, our experts judge them to have made tremendous contributions. It seems that our experts believe robust disagreement among leaders is a point of strength for black communities.

No living civil rights leader was included among the top choices. This might be read as an indication that our experts believe the era of impactful civil rights leadership has passed.

The chart below shows the question top leaders in order. Again, seven are listed just for consistency with the first list and because this list also produced a tie.

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Top Black Leaders: Politically Relevant Intellectuals, Writers, and Artists

We asked our expert panel to choose the top leaders in each of four different categories of leadership. In the area of Politically Relevant Intellectuals, Writers, and Artists these individuals generated the most agreement as worthy of consideration as most impactful:

W.E.B. Du Bois Booker T. Washington James Baldwin Paul Robeson Toni Morrison

As in the case of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X in the category above, our experts have chosen both W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington as the top leaders. Many observers of African-American history highlight the turn-of-the-20th century tensions between Du Bois and Washington as indicative of the diversity and contestation within black political thought. The experts have decided that both men and their ideas deserve recognition.

Three living African-Americans are included in this list: Oprah Winfrey, Cornel West and Toni Morrison. This is the largest number of living persons included in any top list.

It is also important to note that more additional names were added by our experts in this category than were added in any other. The wide variety of cultural, literary, and artistic contributions by African-Americans thinkers and artists led to a robust list of potential leaders. These individuals are the ones who our jury saw as making the greatest political (not artistic) impact in black America.

The chart below shows the top leaders. For consistency this list includes seven leaders. However, the distance between the scores achieved by the Top 5 and the rest is much clearer in this case.

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Role of Black Leaders

We also asked our experts to assess the most important roles fulfilled by black political leaders in three different historical eras: (1) the decades before the 20th century, (2) the decades of the 20th century, (3) in our present moment

Our experts responded by rating the top three roles fulfilled in each epoch and their responses offer some important insights. In the years before the 20th century our experts believed that black leaders were primarily responsible for teaching and mobilizing black communities for action. This mobilization role was also considered primary during the 20th century, and was joined by role of affecting local and national politics as a critical responsibility.

In one of the most interesting findings in our survey, the experts suggest a new and critical role for black leaders in our contemporary moment. Mobilizing black people for action and affecting policy remain important, but our experts agree that building bridges to other racial communities is more important in contemporary America than it was in the past. Perhaps the perceived importance of this bridging role is part of the reason that President Obama is the sole living leader to make the Top 10.

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The Grio’s Jury of Experts

Consuella Askew, Associate Dean for Public Services at Florida International University Lonnie Bunch, Founding Director, National Museum of African-American History Majora Carter, Environmental Justice Advocate William Jelani Cobb, Associate Professor of History at Spelman College Paula Giddings, Afro-American Studies Professor at Smith College Joshua Guild, Assistant Professor of History at Princeton University Darlene Clark Hine, African-American Studies Chair at Northwestern University George Curry, Journalist Obery Hendricks, Professor of Biblical Interpretation at New York Theological Seminary Roy Innis, National Chairman of Congress of Racial Equality Lonnie Isabel, Professor of Journalism at CUNY Graduate School of Journalism Peniel Joseph, Professor of History at Tufts University Nina Kennedy, Filmmaker, “Matthew Kennedy: One Man’s Journey Blair Kelley, Assistant Professor of History at North Carolina State University Robin D.G. Kelley, Professor of American Studies & Ethnicity at University of Southern California Bakari Kitwana, Senior Editor of NewsOne.com Clarence Lusane, Associate Professor of Political Science at Marc Morial, CEO, Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Assistant Professor of History at Indiana University, Next Director of Schmomburg Center for Research in Black Culture Mark Anthony Neal, Professor of African & African-American Studies at Shirley Sherrod, former Georgia State Director of Rural Development for the Department of Agriculture Bev Smith, TV Host of “The Bev Smith Show” Mary Wilson, singer, former singer for The Supremes Barbara Young, Co-chair of Domestic Workers United James Young, former mayor

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List of Leaders

We provided our expert panel with an initial list of 170 leaders. The experts themselves then suggested additional names for the list. No additional name was added by more than one expert. This leads us to believe that it was unlikely that these additional names would have influenced the overall rankings of the top leaders. The list below includes all the names (nearly 250) that were initially provided in the survey and that were included as additional nominees by our experts.

LAST FIRST Abbott Robert Sengstacke Ailey Alvin Alexander Sadie TM Alexander Raymond Pace Ali Muhammad Allen Richard Allen Macon Anderson Violette Angelou Maya Armstrong Louis Baker Ella Baldwin James Barry Marion Bates Daisy Bearden Romare Belafonte Harry Bell Derrick Bennett Lerone Bethune Mary McLeod Bevel James Biggers John Bond Julian Booker Cory Bradley T - 17 -om Braun Carol Moseley Bridges Ruby Brooke Edward Brown Linda Brown Willie Bruce Blanche Bunche Ralph Burroughs Nannie Helen 17 TheGrio’s 2011 African-American Leadership Survey Final Report

Butler Octavia Carmichael Stokely Chenault Kenneth Chishom Shirley Clark Septima Cleage Albert Cleaver Kathleen Clyburn James Cochran Johnnie Collins Marva Coltrane John Cooper Ana Julia Cosby Bill Crenshaw Kimberle Williams Cruse Harold Davis , Jr. Sammy De Priest Oscar Dee Ruby Delany Martin Dickerson Earl Dinkins David Douglas Aaron Douglass Frederick Drake St Clair Drew Charles Du Bois W.E.B Dunbar Paul Laurence Dyson Michael Eric Edelman Marian Wright Elders Jocelyn Ellington Duke Ellison Ralph Evers Medgar Farmer James Farrakhan Louis Fauntroy Rev. Walter Fauset Jessie Redman Fauset Crystal Bird Ford, Jr. Harold Fortune T. Thomas Franklin Shirley Frazier E Franklin Gaines Ernest

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Garnet Henry Highland Garvey Marcus Gates Henry Louis Giovanni Nikki Glover Danny Goode Wilson Graves Earl Hale Mother Haley Alex Hamer Fannie Lou Hampton Fred Hansberry Lorraine Harper Frances Ellen Watkins Harris Patricia Roberts Harrison Hubert Hastie William Henry Hatcher Richard Haynes George Edmund Haywood Harry Height Dorothy Hendrix Jimi Higginbotham A Leon Holder Eric Holiday Billie Hooks Bell Horne Lena Houston Charles Hamilton Huelett John Hughes Langston Hurston Zora Neale Innis Roy Jackson Maynard Jackson , Sr. Jesse Jameson Judith Jennings Elizabeth Johnson Charles Johnson Magic Johnson Bob Johnson Shelia Johnson John Johnson James Weldon Jones Absalom Jones Lois Mailou Jones James Earl Jordan Barbara Jordan Vernon

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Karenga Maulana Kelley Robin DG Kelly Sharon Pratt Dixon Kilens John Oliver King , Jr. Martin Luther Lawrene Jacob Lee Barbara Lewis John Lewis Reginald Lewis Edward Locke Alain Lorde Audre Loving Mildred Lowery Joseph E. Madhubuti Haki Marable Manning Marshall Thurgood McKay Claude McKissick Floyd McMillan Terry Meredith James Mfume Kweisi Micheaux Oscar Morris Robert Morrison Toni Moses Bob Motley Constance Baker Muhammad Elijah Murray Pauli Nash Diane Newton Huey Nixon E.D. Norman Jessye Norton Eleanor Holmes Obama Barack Parks Rosa Parks Rosa Parsons Richard Perry Tyler Plessy Homer Poitier Sidney Powell Adam Clayton Powell Colin Pratt Geronimo Price Leotyne

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Punchback PBS Rainey JH Ralph Sherlyl lee Randolph A. Phillip Rangel Charles Reagon Bernice Revels Hiriam Rice Condoleezza Richards Beah Roberts Sarah Robeson Paul Robinson Jackie Rodney Walter Roy Charlotte Rustin Bayard Sanchez Sonia Scott Dred Scott Emmet Seale Bobby Shakur Assata Sharpton Al Shaw Ted Shuttlesworth Fred Simone Nina Smith Clarence Smith Ruby Doris Steele Michael Stewart Maria Stokes Carl Supremes The Terrell Mary Church Thomas Clarence Till Mamie Trotter William Monroe Truth Sojourner Tubman Harriet Turner Nat Vessey Denmark Walker Madame CJ Walker Alice Walker Maggie Lena Walker David Walters Ronald Washington Booker T. Washington Harold Washington Denzel

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Waters Maxine Watts JC Weaver Robert Wells-Barnett Ida B West Cornel Wheatley Phillis White Walter Wilder Doug Williams Venus and Patricia Wilson August Wilson Phil Winfrey Oprah Wonder Stevie Woodson Carter G. Worrill Conrrad Wright Richard X Malcolm Young Andrew

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