Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T07:14:58.758Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Continuity and Radicalism in American Black Nationalist Thought, 1914–1929

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

Adam Lively
Adam Lively
Affiliation:
Adam Lively graduated from the University of Cambridge in 1985.He is currently a Clare-Mellon Fellow in the Department of Philosophy, Yale University, Box 2393, Yale Station, New Haven, Connecticut 06520. He wishes to thank Mark Kaplanoffand David Wilson for their comments on earlier drafts of this article.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Interest in the historical phenomenon of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American black nationalism has been inspired by the revival of nationalist modes of thought among blacks since the 1950s. Because the placing of post-Second World War Pan-Africanism or the American Black Power movement within a historical context has been seen as an urgent task, the search for a coherent tradition has carried with it the danger of distortions in the historical treatment of the earlier movements. “Traditional” nineteenth-century black nationalism was essentially a conservative movement advocating racial self-improvement through the “civilizing” influence of Anglo-Saxon values, particularly Christianity. Taking black nationalism to mean the assertion of group identity for political purposes (which need not be separatist), its nature clearly changed during the period 1914–1929 as the nature of the American black community changed. For the first time in American history there existed a sizeable number of black intellectuals and a literate audience for them; the rapid growth in the number of black newspapers and magazines reflected these facts. These intellectuals were responsive to new ideas like socialism, yet the transformation of black nationalist thought during this period did not constitute a complete break with the past. This essay attempts to illustrate continuities with the nineteenth century along with those elements of radicalism that presaged modern black nationalism.

Two discontinuities between modern and “traditional” black nationalism constitute essential reference points for the analysis of black nationalist thought during this period. The first relates to who is perceived as being the principal agent or vanguard of the nationalist movement.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , August 1984 , pp. 207 - 235
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1984

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Moses, W. J., Black Messiahs and Uncle Toms. Social and Literary Manipulations of a Religious Myth (Philadelphia: Pensylvania State University Press, 1982), p. xii and passimGoogle Scholar.

2 Geiss, I., The Pan-African Movement (New York: Africana Publishing Company, 1974), p. 232Google Scholar.

3 See, for example, Martin, T., Race First. The Ideological and Organizational Struggles of Marcus Garvey and the UNIA (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1975), pp. 4–5, 116–17, 359–60Google Scholar; and Vincent, T., Black Power and the Garvey Movement (San Francisco: Ramparts Press, n.d.), pp. 165–85Google Scholar.

4 Cronon, E. D., Black Moses. The Story of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969), p. 194Google Scholar. See also Garvey, M., Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey, or Africa for the Africans, 2 vols. (New York: Arno Press, 1968–1969), 2, 51–4Google Scholar.

5 Garvey, 2, 56. See also Garvey, 2, 84–7, 127–28. For the debate between DuBois and Garvey see Vincent, T., ed., Voices of a Black Nation: Political Journalism in the Harlem Renaissance (San Francisco: Ramparts Press, 1973), pp. 93–107Google Scholar.

6 Garvey, 2, 40, 46, 49, 97. See also Cronon, pp. 187–95.

7 Cronon, pp. 189–90. See also Garvey, 2, 71.

8 Garvey, M., More Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey (London. Biblio Dist., 1977), p. 133Google Scholar.

9 Garvey, , Philosophy, 1, 5Google Scholar.

10 Garvey, , Philosophy, 1, 6Google Scholar.

11 Cronon, p. 69: See also Geiss, p. 269.

12 Garvey, 2, 38. See also Cronon, p. 269.

13 Garvey, 2, 42.

14 From W. H. Ferris, The African Abroad, quoted in Moses, p. 133.

15 Garvey, 2, 352. See also 2, 7, 15, 40, 119; 1, 8.

16 Garvey, 2, 40, 380.

17 Garvey, 1, 25; 2, 120.

18 For the eighteenth-century European origins of the idea of progress see Pollard, S., The Idea of Progress (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971), Chap. 2Google Scholar.

19 Moses has pointed Out Garvey's affinities with the tradition of nineteenth-century Ethiopianism, see Moses, , Black Messiahs, pp. 124–41Google Scholar. “Garvey was an African redemptionist in the missionary tradition of Alexander Crummel, a mulatto-hating Ethiopian millennialist,” Moses, p. 132. This, I would argue, is only partly true; Moses' analysis needs to be supplemented by a consideration of Garvey's debt to Washington and his use of Social Darwinian ideas.

20 Washington, B. T., Up From Slavery (New York: The Limited Editions Club, 1970), pp. 147–48Google Scholar.

21 Garvey, 2, 70.

22 Quoted in Martin, , Race First, p. 32Google Scholar.

23 Garvey, 2, 23. See also Ibid., p. 68.

24 Martin, p. 53; Vincent, , Black Power, p. 25Google Scholar; Garvey, 2, 72.

25 Garvey, 2, 16.

26 Garvey, i, 46. See also Garvey, i, 26–7; 2, 34, 101.

27 Hofstadter, R., Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1860–1915 (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 1944), p. 148CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 Garvey, , Philosophy, 2, 15Google Scholar.

29 Garvey, 1, 59–60. See also Ibid., p. 57.

30 Hofstadter, p. 175.

31 Estimates for membership of the UNIA in the 1920S vary considerably. The best seems to be in the region of 4 million. See Cronon, , Black Moses, pp. 205–6Google Scholar.

32 Cronon, pp. 77–102.

33 Garvey, 2, 74–76.

34 Ibid., pp. 27–33.

35 Ibid., pp. 7, 127, and Garvey, , More Philosophy, p. 129Google Scholar.

36 Garvey, , Philosophy, p. 77Google Scholar.

37 Moon, H. L., ed., The Emerging Thought of W. E. B. DuBois. Essays and Editorials from the “Crisis” (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972), pp. 245–46Google Scholar.

38 Dubois, W. E. B., Writings in Periodicals (Millward: KTO Press, 1975), 2, 101Google Scholar.

39 “Capitalism has now singled out a handful (less than one-tenth of the individuals of the globe; less than one-fifth at a most ‘generous’ and liberal calculation) of exceptionally rich and powerful states which plunder the whole world … Out of such enormous superprofits (since they are obtained over and above the profits which capitalists squeeze out of the workers of their ‘own’ country) it is possible to bribe the labour leaders and the upper stratum of the labour aristocracy. And the capitalists of the ‘advanced’ countries are bribing them in a thousand different ways, direct and indirect, overt and covert.” Lenin, V. I., Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1975), p. 9Google Scholar. Lenin was, of course, drawing upon the previous analyses by liberal and Marxist writers, notably Hobson, J. A., Imperialism (1902)Google Scholar and Hilderling, R., Finance Capital (1910)Google Scholar. Ibid., p. 11.

40 Moon, pp. 246–47.

41 Crisis editorial, Sept. 1917 in Ibid., pp. 252–53. DuBois finished his famous and fiery “Returning Soldiers” editorial of May 1919 with these words: “make way for Democracy! We saved it in France, and by the Great Jehovah, we will save it in the United States of America, or know the reason why.” Ibid., p. 261.

42 “Mental contradiction and moral disintegration have been the price which the United States has paid again and again for refusing to face the problem of its Negro population.” Ibid., p. 114. See also, for example, p. 117, and DuBois, , Darkwater (Miliward: KTO Press, 1975), p. 34Google Scholar.

43 Moon, p. 151. “In a peculiar way … the Negro in the United States has emancipated democracy, reconstructed the threatened edifice of Freedom and been a sort of eternal test of our democratic ideals.” The Gift of Black Folk (Millward: KTO Press, 1975), p. 237Google Scholar.

44 DuBois, W. E., The Negro (Millward: KTO Press, 1975), p. 235Google Scholar.

45 Moon, pp. 267–68.

46 “The great industrial problem which has hitherto been regarded as the domestic problem of culture lands must be viewed more broadly, if it is to reach just settlement. Labor and capital in England, France and America can never solve their problem as a similar and vastly greater problem of poverty and injustice marks the relations of the white and darker peoples.” Moon, p. 268.

47 Ibid, p. 224.

48 DuBois, , Writings in Periodicals 2, 87Google Scholar. See also Ibid., pp. 35, 41, 111, 197, 254; and Moon, , Emerging Thought, pp. 268, 269, 275, 290–91Google Scholar.

49 Moon, pp. 274–75.

50 Vincent, , Black Power, p. 215Google Scholar.

51 Carlisle, R., The Roots of Black Nationalism (Port Washington: Kennikat Press, 1975), p. 117Google Scholar. “DuBois never succeeded in reconciling the two forces of Americanism and black nationalism; he held them in an … unstable equilibrium; which he himself could not always control.” Draper, T., The Rediscovery of Black Nationalism (London: Secker & Warburg, 1971), p. 49Google Scholar.

52 Moses, , Black Messiahs, p. xiiGoogle Scholar.

53 DuBois, , Writings in Periodicals, 2, 112Google Scholar.

54 Ibid., pp. 122–23.

55 Moon, , Emerging Thought, p. 219Google Scholar.

56 Ibid., p. 233.

57 Moses, , Black Messiahs, pp. 223–24Google Scholar.

58 DuBois, W. E. B., Dusk of Dawn: An Essay Towards the Auto-Biography of a Race Concept (Millward: KTO Press, 1975), p. 117Google Scholar. “My African racial feeling was then purely a matter of my own later learning and reaction; my recoil from the assumptions of whites; my experience in the South at Fisk. But it was none the less real and a large determinant of my life and character.” Ibid., p. 113.

59 See Berghahn, M., Images of Africa in Black American Literature (Totowa: Rowman and Littlefield, 1977), pp. 87–101CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

60 DuBois, , Writings in Periodicals, 2, 231Google Scholar.

61 DuBois, , Darkwater, pp. 132–33Google Scholar.

62 Hughes, L., The Big Sea (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1941), p. 173Google Scholar.

63 Locke, A., ed., The New Negro (New York: Atheneum, 1968), p. xviGoogle Scholar.

64 Wagner, J., Black Poets of the United States; from Paul Lawrence Dunbar to Langston Hughes (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1973), p. 161Google Scholar.

65 Locke, pp. 254, 256.

66 See Moses, , Black Messiahs, p. 122Google Scholar.

67 McKay, C., Home to Harlem (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1928), pp. 196–97Google Scholar.

68 Quoted in Vincent, , Voices of a Black Nation, pp. 359–60Google Scholar.

69 Negro World (29 Sept 1928). quoted in Ibid., pp. 357–58.

70 Huggins, N. I., Harlem Renaissance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 173Google Scholar.

71 McKay, C., Banana Bottom (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961), p. 1Google Scholar. The same point is made in Ramchand, K., “C. McKay and Banana Bottom,” Southern Review, 4, (1970), 54Google Scholar; and Ramchand, , The West Indian Novel and its Background (London: Faber & Faber, 1970), p. 260Google Scholar.

72 Stoff, M. B., “Claude McKay and the cult of Primitivism,” in Bontemps, A., ed., The Harlem Renaissance Remembered (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1972), p. 142Google Scholar.

73 McKay, , Banana Bottom, p. 45Google Scholar.

74 See McKay, 's autobiography, A Long Way From Home (New York: L. Furman, 1937), p. 13Google Scholar.

75 McKay, , Banana Bottom, pp. 72–73Google Scholar.