Their Faces Were Black, but the Elites Were Untrue

Knowing the best interest of "the race," some black leaders believed that civil rights, schooling, and upholding provisions of the 15th Amendment, guaranteeing the right to vote to black males, were more important than petitioning the federal government for pensions for those who had been enslaved in the United States. In an era in which black elites were divided over whether white philanthropists should fund liberal or industrial education, whether the loss of black civil rights should be attacked frontally or through mis-direction, whether African Americans should support or oppose unionization-they virtually all agreed that political organization around reparations was not worthy of consideration.