Profiles in Leadership

13 Leaders from American History. Different historians dig into the lives of 13 leaders to analyze what made them good leaders or bad leaders.

America's first President, George Washington is widely regarded as a great leader and amongst the best Presidents, the US ever had. As a general, it was a different thing. Washington won the war by not fighting unnecessary battles. He won by wearing out the British. Yet, he was a successful leader.

FDR was a good President simply because he was a great experimenter and deeply compassionate. He was willing to try anything to see if it will work, which was the exact opposite attitude of his predecessor, Herbert Hoover.

And then there is Charles Finney, McGraw, Ullyses Grant, Chief Joseph, Robert Kennedy, JP Morgan, Wendell Wilkie, Dwight Eisenhower, W.E.B Du Bois, and Pauli Murray. Blacks in the US and around the world owe an immense debt to W.E.B Du Bois. What is more intriguing is that he provided mostly intellectual leadership. By publishing "The Soul of Black Folks", Du Bois defined the struggle of his era giving voice to the thoughts of many blacks. I was deeply touched by the life of Pauli Murray. A woman who herself acknowledged that her struggles failed, and she led many alone, but that it was all part of a transient movement, and she was consoled by that. Her tenacity, brilliance, and love for Justice are infectious. Pauli was always in the minority for almost all of her life, even the NAACP refused to carry her case but she kept trying. At the end of her life, she tried one last revolt, to shake up the Episcopal church. She succeeded, becoming the first woman ordained as a Priest, she preached from a Bible owned by her great grandmother who had been raped during the dark days of slavery. She did all this in front of a bouquet of flowers sent to her by Eleanor Roosevelt, the First Lady. Pauli was a strange woman, yet she didn't stop and she went ahead believing she is part of a struggle that is bigger than her.....

That's what leadership is too, the ability to see ourselves as part of the grand scheme of history where all we have to do is to do our very best!