Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speaking. (Photo by Julian Wasser/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images)

Matthew Vienck 

Professor Miller 

African American History 

May 12, 2023 

Following Black History’s Ghost and the Unmatched Legacy

The concept of hauntology, in relation to black history, reveals the persistent and ghostly presence of black icons. America’s cultural memory has overlooked and ignored their legacies, which has resulted in a lack of understanding and acknowledgment of their contributions to society. The constant fixation on, and the creation of the myth of Martin Luther King Jr. has left a hole and unrealistic expectations of the next religious black leader to fill King’s shoes.

In Kyle E. Brook’s Ghostly Ideals: The Hauntology of Religious Leadership, Brook connects points from multiple sources ranging from Hamlet to Jacques Derrida’s Specters of Marx. Brook’s own words on his overarching theme is, “the genealogy of black religious leadership in sociopolitical life has been haunted, so to speak, by a nostalgic mythology of black male clerical authority.” Brook is stating that the past is never dead and that there are ghostly icons in black American history, which American culture has yet to grapple with.

Brook begins his blog with a quote from William Faulkner, “The past is never dead, It’s not even past.” This perfectly sets the stage for the overarching theme of Brook’s argument: black religious leadership has been haunted. He gave multiple examples from outside texts that relate to his thesis, one from Hamlet Act I, scene V, “The time is out of joint. O Cursed spite, that I was ever born to set it right!” This is Hamlet’s response to a ghost, who reveals to Hamlet the circumstance he finds himself in, the murder of his father by his uncle Claudius. 

The ghost in Hamlet influences the present and future, haunting them with the past. Brook’s major component to his argument is Derrida’s Specters of Marx, a book based on talks where Derrida explores the legacy of Karl Marx and Marxism. Derrida addresses the fall of communism in Europe. Derrida relates this to a ghost story, Derrida says “What does it mean to follow a ghost? What if this came down to being followed by it, always persecuted perhaps by the very chase we are leading?”

The thematic shape of Marx’s thinking and the way this history has become itself a ghost story itself. According to Brook, Derrida’s point is that in asking where Marx and Marxism have gone and are going, he is questioning what it means to live and exist in a world that will always be haunted by their impact. Brook connects Derrida’s concept of being haunted by the presence of an influential thinker or body of work to the hauntology of black history.

Brook’s definition of hauntology is the “return, persistence of elements from the past, as in a ghost.” The word gives a framework for describing the persistence of a ghost in black religious leadership. Brook’s analysis draws on the loss of a charismatic leader, particularly the succession after Martin Luther King Jr., which poses a challenge for black religious leadership. Brook refers to King as a ghostly ideal, someone who cannot be replaced. Moreover, the essay examines how the excellence of King haunts his legacy, leading to a nostalgic view of him as an even greater triumph. Furthermore, the essay suggests that King may not have been a great successor to himself, precisely because of that triumph. 

In Freedom on My Mind, the black male leaders organizing the March on Washington had their fair share of tension growing within the movement itself. “Each civil rights organization had its own perspective on the march, and each wanted the march organized in its own way. But it was A. Philip Randolph who conceived of the march and Bayard Rustin, a longtime adviser of Martin Luther King Jr., who organized it. As a union organizer, Randolph had always believed that political advancement was useless without economic gains, but to get King’s participation, the march had to emphasize civil rights”(867). This is an example of the myth of King, in which we believe that he did it all, and the legacy of these other black leaders are forgotten because of Kings lasting legacy. 

King’s status as a towering figure in American history has resulted in a sanitized and idealized myth that has been passed down to us. King is a symbol for progress and hope and the idealized version. We remember him as the civil rights activist who spoke eloquently about civil rights. We start to lose the humanity behind him and the human he was. Resistance and criticism often met his activism. Mainstream audiences have largely ignored King’s critiques of capitalism, militarism, and systemic racism in favor of a sanitized version of his activism.

This has led to a whitewashing of King’s legacy and an erasure of the more challenging and confrontational aspects of his work. King’s own excellence has led to the idea that there can’t be another. But the level King is at as an icon and a figure is almost too far that no one can ever come close. In James Baldwin’s From The American Scene: The Harlem Ghetto, he states, “Concerning Negro leaders, the best that one can say is that they are in an impossible position and that the handful motivated by genuine concern maintain this position with heartbreaking dignity.”

Brook says King is the most visible example of Benjamin E. Mays model, where he doubles down on the popular cultural idea of black clergymen. They portrayed King as a “respected, valid, and authoritative representative of black social and political interests. But the problem lies in the perfection of this model, and King is the closest to that model. Brook says the crisis of black religious leadership remains as an ongoing struggle to answer the question Derrida posed. “What does it mean to follow a ghost?” King is a ghostly icon, one that is almost a myth. 

Baldwin states, “the terrible thing about being a Negro leader lies in the term itself. I did not merely mean to somewhat condescending differentiation the term implies, but the nicely refined torture a man can experience from having been created and defeated by the same circumstances. That negro leaders have been created by the American scene, which there are after works against them at every point … In the end the multiplicity of black life is the ghost which this nation has yet to properly grapple with.” 

This quote from Baldwin’s essay highlights the challenges faced by African American leaders who are expected to represent an entire community. The very term is problematic as it implies that African American leaders are somehow separate from the rest of society. Racism, discrimination, and oppression have given rise to black religious leaders, who are responsible for addressing the injustices imposed upon them. 

Moreover, the phrase “nicely refined torture” emphasizes the insidious nature of the oppression experienced by black communities, as it is a subtle and prevalent force that is difficult to escape. This highlights the ongoing struggle of black leaders and activists who must constantly fight against the systems and forces that perpetuate inequality and injustice. Baldwin argues that the multiplicity of black life, particularly the struggles of African Americans that have been suppressed, presents the true challenge. Until America grapples with that reality and views black people with humanity, the role of a black religious leader will remain difficult to fill.

The history of black America is the hauntology, and the ghost which haunts America as a whole. One cannot appoint a black religious leader based on perfection. Martin Luthur King Jr. came closest, but would that be enough, as his myth makes it greater than it was. It is that myth that haunts black leaders. Kyle E. Brook’s argues “that our reckoning with the ghost of even our most venerated icons lead us to an understanding of this challenging, complex, and perhaps even grotesque path we must take towards liberation.”  

In conclusion, by acknowledging the haunting presence of Black history, we can better appreciate the struggles and contributions of black leaders and communities, and work towards a more just and equitable society. 

Works Cited

Baldwin, James, et al. “From the American Scene: The Harlem Ghetto: Winter 1948.” Commentary Magazine, 12 Aug. 2020,

Brooks , Kyle E. Ghostly Ideals: The Hauntology of Black Religious Leadership . Youtube, USDHumanities Center , 17 Feb. 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RTxuQBQxPQ.  Accessed 1 May 2023. 

White , Deborah Gray, et al. Freedom on My Mind, Third ed., Bedford Bks St Martin’S Boston , MA, 2013, pp. 867–870.