Land reform demands from Black laborers pushed Reconstruction leadership toward economic emancipation

Evidence

It was, however, a leadership which was not at all clear in its economic thought. On the whole, it believed in the accumulation of wealth and the exploitation of labor as the normal method of economic development. But it also believed in the right to vote as the basis and defense of economic life, and gradually but surely it was forced by the demand of the mass of Negro laborers to face the problem of land. Thus the Negro leaders gradually but certainly turned toward emphasis on economic emancipation, (pp. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 965

Categorization

• XREF: Grounds the reader’s question about what the Black radical tradition’s height looked like: economic emancipation and land emerged from mass pressure, not elite initiative.