Eloquent, if discursive ... Gayle’s narrative braids his vigorous research with the work of scholars ... Gayle tells an engrossing tale, revealing that the tensions remain the same.
Black Moses never exposes McCabe’s inner motivations, his actual personality, his fleshed-out ideology, his doubts and fears and hopes and satisfactions. He stays behind a mask.
But if the book cannot achieve all the aims of a traditional biography, it illuminates the world of Black politics in the age of westward migration, with all its aspirations, complications and frustrations ... Gayle situates McCabe’s ventures within a longer history of colonization schemes, regional crises and debates among Black leaders. His dreams emerged from 'a battle of ideas for how Black people might make their way in America.' Could they secure and practice democratic rights in an integrated society? Or was White supremacy so intense, so intractable, that it demanded Black people eventually separate themselves?
Timely ... Gayle writes with great empathy, and though Black Moses contains many tangents, he keeps bringing readers back to a main point ... Compelling ... Richly illustrated ... A useful reminder that for nearly a century after the Civil War, what was called democracy was indistinguishable from white power.
Gayle presents McCabe’s misguided dream as a cautionary tale of the dangers of one oppressed people attempting to colonize another rather than making common cause.
