Uplifting the Race: Black Leadership, Politics, and Culture in the Twentieth CenturyAmidst the violent racism prevalent at the turn of the twentieth century, African American cultural elites, struggling to articulate a positive black identity, developed a middle class ideology of racial uplift. Insisting that they were truly representative of the race's potential, black elites espoused an ethos of self help and service to the black masses and distinguished themselves from the black majority as agents of civilization; hence the phrase