Historian Theodore Draper mischaracterized antebellum Black opinion through elite-only sampling

Evidence

In general, his analysis suffers from a disorganized emphasis on the opinions and actions of Black freemen and rather questionable “samples” of mass opinion: “The great mass of American Negroes preferred to wage an uphill battle to become part of the nationalism where they were born rather than to take the risk of losing what they had without gaining what they were promised” (p. 12). The “great mass” that Draper refers to was of course the almost half million Free Blacks of the antebellum period. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1696

Categorization

• QUESTION: Robinson’s methodological complaint—that historians sample only elite Black opinion—raises the question of how anyone reconstructs mass sentiment from a historical record that preserved elites.