Apocalyptic Rhetoric and the Black Protest Movement: William Monroe Trotter’s Civil Rights Activism in Early Twentieth Century Boston

Apocalyptic Rhetoric and the Black Protest Movement argues that African American Christianity produced a militant millennialist movement to oppose racial injustice in the early twentieth century. It challenges the traditional view of the Black civil rights movement and emphasizes the emancipatory capacity of religion as a cultural and intellectual force.

Format: Hardback
Length: 226 pages
Publication date: 15 December 2023
Publisher: Lexington Books

Apocalyptic Rhetoric and the Black Protest Movement presents a groundbreaking reimagining of African American religious culture by contending that African American Christianity gave rise to a militant millennialist movement that employed apocalyptic imagery, references to the kingdom of God, and predictions of the end of the world to urge Black people to challenge racial injustice in the early twentieth century. In this exploration of the Black civil rights movement in Boston during the early twentieth century, Aaron Pride makes the case that the apocalyptic rhetoric and millennial imagery disseminated by William Monroe Trotter through the Boston Guardian portrayed Booker T. Washington and other opponents of Black protest as false prophets, biblical villains, and harbingers of the end times. By centering Black Christianity as the driving force behind Black civil rights activism in the early twentieth century, this book offers a seminal interpretation of the emancipatory potential of religion as a cultural and intellectual force in social and political movements. This book will be of immense interest to scholars of cultural history, Black studies, and the history of religion.

Apocalyptic Rhetoric and the Black Protest Movement offers a challenging new formulation of African American religious culture by asserting that African American Christianity produced a militant millennialist movement that invoked the apocalypse, the kingdom of God, and the end of the world to compel Black people to oppose racial injustice in the early twentieth century.

This book will be of interest to scholars of cultural history, Black studies, and the history of religion.

Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781666943610