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Notes on Negro American Influences on the Emergence of African Nationalism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 January 2009
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The claims of no people…are respected by any nation until they are presented in a national capacity. (Martin R. Delany, The Condition, Elevation, Emigration and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States, Politically Considered, Philadelphia, 1852, p. 210.)
…it is not so much Afro-Americans that we want as Africans. (Casely Hayford, Ethiopia Unbound, London, 1911, p. 173.)
…on us too depends in a large degree the attitude of Europe towards the teeming millions of Asia and Africa. (William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, ‘The Present Outlook for the Dark Races of Mankind’, African Methodist Episcopal Church Review, Philadelphia, XVI, 1900, pp. 102–3.)
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References
1 With the exception of Ira, De A. Reid'sThe Negro Immigrant (New York, 1939), there has been almost no serious study of West Indian Negro influence on Negro Americans.Google Scholar
2 Southern Workman (Hampton, Va.), 1883, 9.Google Scholar See also Blyden, Edward, The African Problem and other Discourses delivered in America in 1890 (London, 1890).Google Scholar
3 Hayford, Casely, Ethiopia Unbound (London, 1911), 163:Google Scholarcf. Hayford's, introduction to Africa and the Africans. Proceedings…of a Banquet…to Edward W. Blyden, Ll.D., by West Africans in London (London, 1903), especially p. 18.Google Scholar See also Coleman, James S., Nigeria (Berkeley, 1958), 175–6, 183–4, 452–3;Google ScholarCoppin, L. J., Unwritten History (Philadelphia, 1919), 316–17.Google Scholar
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6 Thomas, A. C. Terry, The History of the African Orthodox Church (New York, 1956).Google Scholar See also Cronon, , op. cit. 69, 103, 160, 178–80, 189;Google ScholarThe African Yearly Register, ed. Skota, T. D. Mweli (Johannesburg, 1932), 128, 172, etc.Google ScholarMcGuire, G. A. (misspelt as ‘Maguire’) is now immortalized as an ‘American Negro’ in Historical Survey of the Origins and Growth of Mau Mau (Cmnd. 1030, London, 1960), 173: cf. also pp. 45, 174–5, 178.Google Scholar
7 An Appeal addressed to the Friends of the African Race (c. 1896), 30, in Church of Scotland Papers, Miscellaneous Bundle, Pamphlets No. 1, National Library of Scotland.Google Scholar
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11 Schuyler, George S., Slaves To-day (New York, 1931);Google ScholarJohnson, Charles S. (Negro American member of 1930 League of Nations Commission on Forced Labour in Liberia), Bitter Canaan, unpublished typescript in C. S. Johnson papers, Fisk University.Google Scholar But cf. Azikiwe, N., Liberia in World Politics (London, 1934), 233 et seq.Google Scholar
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16 Ibid. 61. See also Shepperson, George and Price, Thomas, Independent African. (Edinburgh, 1958), 504.Google Scholar
17 Crumrnell's life is one of the great missed opportunities of American biographers, although most of his papers are conveniently collected in the Schomburg Collection of the New York Public Library. There is a brief sketch in Ferris, William H., Alexander Crummell (Washington, D.C., 1920).Google Scholar See also the moving tribute in ch. XII, of Du Bois's, W. E. B.The Souls of Black Folk (New York, 1955 reprint).Google ScholarAn example of Crummell's interest in Africa is his The Future of Africa (New York, 1862).Google Scholar
18 A good example of modern criticisms is Glicksberg's, Charles I. ‘Negro Americans and the African Dream’, Phylon (Atlanta, Ga.), VIII, 4, 323–30.Google Scholar
19 The best indication of Turner's interest in African colonization is his newspaper, The Voice of the People, 1901–1907 (copy on loan in the library of Morris Brown College, Atlanta, Ga.)Google Scholar See also, for example, Roberts, W. K., An African Canaan for American Negroes (Birmingham, Ala., 1896), 18–19.Google Scholar
20 E.g. Deluding the Negroes: ‘The United States and Congo National Emigration Steamship Company’.Google Scholar A ticket to Africa and a Farm for One Dollar. From ‘The (Washington) Post’, 19 January 1891 (Library of Congress).Google Scholar
21 Voice of the People, op. cit. 33, 1 October 1903, 3, 34 ? November 1903, I; African Methodist Episcopal Church Review (Philadelphia, 1903), xx, 302, ‘Menelik the Negus’.Google Scholar
22 The original letter and a small file about it are in the Carnegie Birthplace Museum, Dunferm line.Google Scholar
23 Booker T. Washington Papers, Library of Congress (hereafter cited as B.T.W.), Container 939, Miscellaneous Correspondence, 1915, E–H: Garvey to Washington, 12 April, 1925.Google Scholar
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25 E.g. M. Mokete Manoedi (Basuto), Garvey and Africa (n.d.), in Schomburg Collection, N.Y.Google Scholar
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32 His first trip was in 1892: see African Methodist Episcopal Church Review (Philadelphia), 1892, 446–98.Google Scholar
33 Roux, Edward, Time Longer Than Rope (London, 1949), 108, 117–18, 258, 260, 296, 306, 357;Google ScholarShepperson and Price, op. cit. 91–2, 102, 145, 162, 203, 461; Southern Workman (1897), 141–2;Google ScholarDube, John L., A Zulu's Message to Afro-Americans in J.E.B. Papers and A Talk about my Native Land (Rochester, N.Y., 1892).Google Scholar
34 Roux, op. cit. 118–19; Shepperson and Price, op. cit. 202;Google Scholar Sol. Plaatje, T., The Mote and the Beam (New York, 1921) in Howard University Library;Google Scholar Sol. Plaatje, T., Native Life in South Africa (London, 5th edn., n.d.), 16, 286, 368, indicate the influence of W. E. B. Du Bois; Plaatje's pamphlet on the 1913 South African Natives’ Land Act was sent to B. T. Washington's secretary, E. J. Scott, by Plaatje, 27 August 1914 (B.T.W. Papers, Container 13, O–R); J. E. Bruce to Carter G. Woodson, 17 JAnuary 1923, in Carter G. Woodson Papers, Library of Congress (hereafter cited as C.G.W.).Google Scholar
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36 A representative list of some of the many South African Africans who visited America or corresponded with Negro Americans might include: The Lincoln University group—22 between 1896 and 1924 and none, apparently, thereafter (figures from an unpublished history of Lincoln University kindly supplied by Dr Horace Mann Bond)—of which one of the most interesting was Livingstone N. Mzimba, son of P. J. Mzimba, separatist church leader (see Lincoln University Herald, Oxford, Pa., XIII, May, 1909, 1–2, and Mzimba, L. N., ‘The African Church’, 86–95, Christianity and the Natives of South Africa, ed. Taylor, J. Dexter, Lovedale, 1927).Google ScholarSoga, A. K., editor of Izwi LaBantu (to Bruce, 23 February 1907, J.E.B. Papers). Representatives of the ‘Ethiopian Church of South Africa’ at 1912 Tuskegee Africa Conference, Reverends Henry Reed and Isaiah Goda Shishuba (C.G.W. Papers, Box 13, galley proof). P. K. Isaka Seme, initiator of the South African Native National Congress (see the reprint of his 1906 olumbia University address, ‘The Regeneration of Africa’, 436–9,Google ScholarFerris, William H., The African Abroad, I, New Haven, 1953).Google ScholarSimango, Columbus Kamba, ‘The African and Civilization’, Southern Workman (Hampton, Va., 1917), 552–5.Google ScholarSomtuuzi, Jeannie, ‘African Contributions to Civilization’, address at 34th annual meeting of the Negro National Baptist Convention, September 1914 (in B.T.W. Papers, Container 12, L—N).Google ScholarNkomo, Simbini Mamba, The Tribal Life of the People of South Africa (Oration delivered at College Commencement, Greenville, Ill., 06, 1917) in Howard University Library. Abraham Le Fleux, ‘who came to London to get justice for land out of which his people had been cheated’ (letters sent by Alice Werner to Carter G. Woodson, C.G.W. Papers, Boxes 4 and 5); etc. It will be noticed that this very brief selection includes one African (P. K. I. Seme) who went to a non-Negro university. In general, such students often had deficiencies in their education made up at Negro American schools and colleges before proceeding to white institutions. A present- day example is Dr Hastings K. Banda, who attended the Negro Wilberforce Academy at Wilberforce, Ohio, in 1928, before he went to Indiana and Chicago Universities.Google Scholar
37 Cf. Smith, C. S. (A.M.E. Church Bishop in South Africa, 1904–6), The Relations of the British Government to the Natives of South Africa (Washington, D.C., 1906), 12–13;Google ScholarSouthern Workman, 1906, 664–5.Google Scholar
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46 Barrett, Samuel, A Plea for Unity among American Negroes and the Negroes of the World (Waterloo, Iowa, 1926), 65, copy in Howard University Library;Google ScholarCayton, Horace R. and St Drake, Clair, Black Metropolis (London, 1946), 720.Google Scholar
47 Bontemps, Arna and Conroy, Jack, They Seek a City (New York, 1945), 171;Google ScholarFrench, Sydney H., ‘Chief Sam and His “Back-to-Africa” Movement’, W.P.A. paper, Schomburg Collection, N.Y.; Sierra Leone Weekly News, 23 January 1915, 6–7, 9, 12; Rhodes House Library, Press Cuttings, 1914–1915, ‘Back to Africa’, Anti-Slavery Society Papers; African Times and Orient Review, 7 July, 1914, 380, ‘Accra Native’ letter.Google Scholar
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52 Walters, Life, op. cit. 257.Google Scholar
53 In first paragraph of ‘Forethought’ in 1903 ed.: vii in New York, 1953, reprint.
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55 Atlantic Monthly May, 1915, 711.
56 James Weldon Johnson Collection, Yale University, Scrapbook X, see especially clippings for 7 Dec. 1958, and 11 Jan. and 8 Feb. 1919.
57 Op. cit., 15.
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59 Cf. Miller, Kelly, ‘The German Colonies’, Southern Workman (1919), 52–3.Google Scholar
60 (New York, 1918), preface, p. i.
61 Jordan, Lewis Garriett, Pebbles from an African Beach (Philadelphia, 1918), 2.Google Scholar
62 The problem of Negro American relations with French Africans is almost completely unstudied.
63 Du Bois, World and Africa, op. cit. 11. Cf. also Padmore, op. Cit. 122–4;Google ScholarLogan, Rayford W., The African Mandates in World Politics (Washington, D.C., 1948), iv, 42; League of Nations. Mandates. Second Pan-African Congress. August–September, 1921;Google ScholarBeer, George Louis, African Questions at the Path Peace Conference (New York, 1923), 285–6.Google Scholar
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65 E.g. C.G.W. Papers: Box 5—from Amanzimtoti Institute, Natal, 53 March, 1917; Box 6—from Kodwo Nsaaku, Gold Coast, 29 April and 21 July, 1923, from Casely Hayford, 15 June 1916, and 11 Nov. 1917, from D. E. Carney, Sierra Leone, 19 Jan. 1921, from W. Esuman-Awira Sekyi, Gold Coast, 14 Oct. 1920, from Dada Adeshigbin, Lagos, to Jan. 1917, from Majola Agbebi, Lagos, 5 July, 1916; Box 16—from Casely Hayford, 7 July 1923, and 4 Jan. 1924, from Dada Adeshigbin, 25 Sept. 1918; etc.
66 C.G.W. Papers: Box 6—from Aggrey, 13 July, 1927.
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68 Ferris, , op. cit. 11, 865.Google Scholar Cf. also C.G.W. Papers: Box 16—Bruce on Duse Mohammed, 25 Jan. 1922.
69 Blyden, Hayford, Dube items are well indexed in J.E.B. Papers, Schomburg Collection, N.Y.: one interesting item in the Papers is a letter from James Cluny, Sierra Leone, to Blyden, 21 June, 1909, defending clithorodechtomy on ‘nationalist’ lines.
70 Hayford, Casely, William Waddy Harris (London, 1915), xi–xii.Google Scholar
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78 Title page.
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89 See Harr, Wilbur C., The Negro as an American Protestant Missionary in Africa (Ph.D., University of Chicago, 1945); Shepperson and Price, op. cit. passim;Google ScholarGroves, C. P., The Planting of Christianity in Africa (London, 1958), IV, 62–3, 79–80, 113–14, 128–9, 187. See also ref. 6 above.Google Scholar
90 E. W. Smith, op. cit. 181. See forthcoming paper, George Shepperson, ‘Nyasaland and the Millennium’, Comparative Studies in Society and History; R. L. Buell, op. cit. 11, 603.
91 Ottley, Roi, No Green Pastures (London, 1952), 12.Google Scholar
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93 Two useful guides to present-day Negro American interest in Africa are Africa Seen by American Negroes, op. cit. and Isaacs, Harold R., ‘The American Negro and Africa: Some Notes’, Phylon (Atlanta, Ga., 1959), xx, 3, 219–33.Google Scholar
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