Historian Manning Marable’s (May 1950 – April 2011) book analyzes different leadership models and uses case studies from 19th and 20th-century Black history to present arguments for and against each. Tackling accommodation (Booker T. Washington), political integration (Harold Washington), separatism (Louis Farrakhan), and democratic transformation (W.E.B. Du Bois), Marable takes a historical approach to these otherwise political endeavors to further racial progress in America. A fervent anti-racist, Marable’s work engages with historical events like the Second Reconstruction and global movements like the 1919 Pan African Congress. There are inaccuracies in the text that have since been reviewed and noted by contemporary scholars. The text is praised for its acknowledgment of Black women’s role in operationalizing these models – an anomaly among works published around the same period.