To engage Martin Robison Delany (1812–1885) is to confront the complexities and paradoxes of nineteenth-century black American leadership. He embodied the utilitarianism and pragmatism that the late August Meier described as the defining attributes of nineteenth-century black leadership.1 He refused to confine his life and struggles within the Manichaean good-versus-evil framework. There was no absolute good or absolute evil in Delany’s worldview. On the contrary, in crucial historical moments and contexts, Delany acknowledged only complex contending forces and interests, each with discernible merits and demerits. By characterizing Delany as someone who could not be classified “with either the good guys or the bad guys,” Delany aficionado Victor Ullman captured his ambiguity, or what many of Delany’s contemporaries perceived as his behavioral eccentricity....
