This book traces a provocative line from Emerson's work on race, reform, and identity to work by three influential African- American thinkers--W. E. B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King Jr., and Cornel West--each of whom offers subtle engagement with both the tradition of written protest and the critique of liberalism Emerson shaped. Emerson has been cast in recent debate as either an antinomian or an ideologue--as either subversive of institutional controls or indebted to capitalism. Here, Patterson contributes a more nuanced view, probing Emerson's record and its cultural and historical matrix to...