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Rating: 
Summary: You Must Read This Book--Excellent
Review: A thorough, detailed account of how William Hannibal Thomas transformed from an activist and advocate into someone who projected his own feelings of insecurity and inferiority onto his fellow African-Americans. The author does an excellent job of giving Thomas's changing perceptions historical context. All in all, a compelling book.
Rating: 
Summary: A.D. Powell has issues
Review: As a biracial, i'm compelled to say: You are a bigoted woman. Most mulattoes do not think they are superiour over blacks, they are not hateful like you. W.E.B Dubois was proud to be a negro, he help found the NAACP.
Rating:
Summary: An outstanding contribution to Black biographical history.
Review: Black Judas provides the first biography of William Hannibal Thomas, who betrayed his race by writing The American Negro, an insulting attack on Afro-Americans. Black Judas examines the roots of Thomas' thinking and his transformation from an optimistic black nationalist to a man who attacked his race. The detail and in-depth coverage is invaluable.
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Summary: black critic savages own race
Review: In words that only a white bigot could appreciate, william hannibal thomas uses all manor of invective to decry the condition of his own black race. In his book 'the american negro', published in l901 by macmillan, thomas decries the condition of what he still called freedmen, 36 years after emancipation. Ironically, in the decades before publication of the book, thomas had been a most intelligent observer of conditions for blacks in the post-bellum south. he pointed out the degradation that had occurred as a result of the violence and intimidation by whites, angry at the privileges they lost from the civil war. attempts at race redemption were thwarted at every turn and there was no better example than the life of thomas himself. Thomas had some education as he grew up in ohio, partially as a result of brief schooling in his teen years and the rest from the efforts of his mother. he fought courageously alongside both free blacks and newly-freed slaves in the civil war, losing an arm in the final months of combat. The turning point in thomas's life as well as those of his darker skinned brethren was the election of l876 in which the election of rutherford b. hayes was traded for the end of reconstruction, removal of federal troops from the south, and the betrayal of the negro by resumption of white rule for the benefits of whites south of the mason-dixon line. in the process, thomas lost a seat in the south carolina legislature he gained by public vote and soon had to leave the state because improprieties and scandal of his own making made him a fugitive from the courts. the author of this biography, john david smith, pulls no punches in describing the wayward and sometimes corrupt behavior of thomas, but also presents evidence to redeem the character of the man who was to become a target of black leaders across the country. in many publications and speeches as a minister, thomas decried the conditions of former slaves in the south. neoslavery is the term used by thomas to describe the loss of the promise of the war and war amendments in the decades that followed. education, training and land were what was needed, but thomas also felt that moral transformation from the degradation and dependence fostered by slavery was of the utmost need. yet thomas deserted his wife and children, leaving them on public assistance in philadelphia, and eventually found a new wife and settled in in a suburb of boston. it was there that all the frustrations and failures to achieve national fame as a leader of his race came to a head. the constant pain from his wound also is said to play a major part in the transformation from an observer and critic of race relations to an unrepentent cynic and enemy of his own race. web dubois makes the obvious point that what is important in thomas's book is not the content, but what caused a black man to foresake his own race, perhaps to gain favor from those who had driven him to write it by their own degraded behavior with the blatantly stated purpose of maintaining political, social, and economic hegemony in the south. Despite all this, thomas has something to say to twenty-first century americans, black and white. redemption for the african-american, and just as much for the entire country, does not come from political action and social improvement. the moral content of each individual must be transformed or regenerated or the bonds of slavery will not be taken all the way off.
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Summary: In defense of William Hannibal Thomas
Review: It is extremely racist for the author and other "liberals" to denounce William Hannibal Thomas for "betraying" his "race." Isn't "race" a fiction? A mulatto is not a Negro. Thomas was really no different from the average mulatto in his views regarding mulatto superiority and Negro inferiority. He was just more public about it. Even your mulatto "black" hero W.E.B. DuBois believed in mulatto superiority. What do you think his "Talented Tenth" was? Do you recall how DuBois described Marcus Garvey in the most perjorative racial terms because the latter was black and not mulatto?If the liberal author condemns Thomas as a "race traitor," then he is indirectly endorsing the view of white supremacists who believe in white "race traitors." If "race" is not a biological fact, how can there be any "race traitors"? In defense of Thomas and other Anglo mulattoes and mixed-whites who proudly reject the black stigma, may I ask why Latinos (also a mixed race, partially black group), Indians, Asians, etc. have never been condemned for the same "sins" of looking down on blacks and identifying more with whites? Mexican elites, for example, were willing to condemn blacks as inferior as long as Mexicans as a group could have the honored label of "white." Why don't they receive the condemnation and sneering that Anglos of mixed-race receive even when they just live their lives and make no statements on "race"? Why? Why don't liberals rejoice at THEIR misfortunes and proclaim that the uppity in-betweens had it coming to them? Smith should condemn himself as a "racist" for promoting the "one drop" myth and forced hypodescent. As a liberal, he misleads people of good will into endorsing anti-mulatto racism as a defense of blacks. That is the source of the "race traitor" accusation against William Hannibal Thomas. He is being used as a scapegoat.
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Summary: Book review section used for Personal attacks
Review: The "review" of Damien Duh'e of New Orleans has nothing to do with the book and is merely a personal attack directed at me.
Rating:
Summary: Book review section used for Personal attacks
Review: The "review" of Damien Duh'e of New Orleans has nothing to do with the book and is merely a personal attack directed at me.
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