Background

Adolph L. Reed Jr. was born on January 14, 1947 in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States.

Education

Adolph L. Reed, Jr. received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1970. He also got a Master of Arts and a Doctor of Philosophy from Clark Atlanta University.

Career

Adolph L. Reed, Jr. worked at Howard University, Clark College, Emory University, Yale University, Northwestern University, University of Illinois, and Amherst College. Nowadays he is Professor Emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania.

Adolph is also editor of Race, Politics, and Culture and Without Justice for All and the author of several books.

In 1984 Reverend Jesse Jackson made a bid for the U.S. presidency that captured the attention of the nation. In his 1986 book, The Jesse Jackson Phenomenon, Reed examines and refutes the several claims made by the Jackson campaign regarding its accomplishments. Reed denies that Jackson’s base of support lay primarily among poor Southern blacks, or that his campaign caused an upsurge in black voter turnout; he further refutes the claim that Jackson's campaign generated positive effects for other black politicians or that it would form the basis for a multi-racial alliance within the progressive wing of the Democratic party.

In W. E. B. Du Bois and American Political Thought: Fabianism and the Color Line, Reed took on one of the most venerated figures in African American history, a man whose life spanned the civil rights movement from the 1860s to the 1960s and who at one time or another espoused nearly every political position on the spectrum.

Reed’s chief target for attack in W. E. B. Du Bois and American Political Thought is less the man himself, than those who have read and taught him over the decades. Specifically it is their focus on Du Bois’s early pronouncements about the "talented tenth" elite of African Americans meant to lift up the other ninety percent, and his poetic vision of black Americans as essentially divided within themselves. Reed blames these educators for casting Du Bois as a literary or cultural figure rather than as a political figure.

Reed is also the author of Stirrings in the Jug: Black Politics in the Post-Segregation Era, a collection of essays in which he critiques contemporary African American political leadership, often for espousing a disguised form of conservatism that has yielded surprising alliances with arch-conservative right-wing groups.

Achievements

• Reed's works on racial and economic inequality are known all over the world. He is also a recipient of American Political Science Association for Graduate Study fellowship, Ford Foundation Departmental fellowship, National Endowment for Humanities grant, Senior Faculty fellowship and Outstanding Book Award.

Works

More photos

• book

  • W.E.B. Du Bois and American Political Thought: Fabianism and the Color Line

    (In this explosive book, Adolph Reed covers for the first ...)

    1997
  • The Jesse Jackson Phenomenon 1986

Politics

Reed criticizes identity politics and antiracism. He had been a critic of the policies and ideology of Black Democratic politicians and has often criticized the politics of Barack Obama, before and during his presidency.

Adolph L. Reed, Jr. is also a founding member of the U.S. Labor Party.

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• Rogers Smith: "Adolph has always been against all forms of elitist leadership, which he felt served elite interests and not mass interests."