This new four-volume collection from Routledge brings together critical assessments of some key African American political leaders. The collection focuses on figures including Frederick Douglass (1818–95); Booker T. Washington (1856–1915); Marcus Garvey (1887–1940); Dr Martin Luther King (1929–68); the Rev. Jesse Jackson (b. 1941); and Barack Obama (b. 1961), the 44th President of the United States, and the first African American to hold the office.

The canonical and cutting-edge research gathered here explores in particular the qualities such leaders possess, as well as the events that led them into public prominence. Another key theme of the collection is how African American leaders interact with majority power, not least to begin to redress the historic injustices done to—and the continuing inequalities suffered by—the African American community.

With a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editor, Ronald W. Walters, one of the field’s leading scholars, which frames the collected material in its historical and intellectual context, African American Leaders is an essential work of reference. It is destined to be valued by political scientists and historians—as well as by leadership specialists—as a vital one-stop research tool.