Black Baptist church leaders were Gramscian organic intellectuals rooted among the masses

Evidence

In the 1880s and 1890s men and women in the black Baptist church discussed and debated strategies for racial advancement. They succeeded in establishing a denominational identity and voice separate from those of either white southern Baptists or white northern Baptists. The church’s leaders functioned in the conceptual sense of Antonio Gramsci’s “organic intellectuals,” since they identified with their group of origin (in this case, their racial group) and, more important, were rooted in a cultural heritage and in institutions and social relations that both defined and united them with the black masses. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 242

Categorization

• DEFINE: Applies Gramsci’s organic intellectual to the black Baptist leadership — a usable analytic frame connecting the Talented Tenth to broader theory.
• XREF: connects to: The black church is best modeled as dialogic heteroglossia, not dialectical polarity. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 101; Church leaders converted the masses’ race consciousness into an assertive collective will — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 243; Educated black leaders policed a cultural divide against folk religious practice — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 226 (+1 more)