Building a Movement in Mississippi
During the late 1930s, when Celia Jane Allen ventured out into the state to begin organizing rural blacks, white mob violence had become commonplace in Mississippi. Though there appears to be fewer lynchings in Washington County—where Reverend Green resided—than in other parts of the state, white vigilantes were active in every region of the state, and black residents could not escape this sobering fact.20 An estimated 12.7 percent of those who were lynched in the state—from 1889 to 1935—were accused of rape.21 However, records of the period only confirmed what journalist Ida B. Wells had long acknowledged: whites used the threat of rape as a means of terrorizing black Americans in order to keep them “in their place.”22 Though white vigilantes generally targeted black men, women were also victims of white mob violence.23 Between 1880 and 1930, at least 130 black women were lynched in the Southern region.24 In the state of Mississippi, roughly eighteen black women were victims of mob violence during this period.25
Significantly, one of the most infamous lynchings of the period took place in Duck Hill (Montgomery County) in 1937. In April of that year, a mob of white men seized Roosevelt Townes and Robert McDaniels, two African Americans who had been accused of murdering a local white merchant. After mob leaders hung Townes and McDaniels to a tree, hundreds of local whites watched on as they used gasoline blowtorches to burn the men alive. The Duck Hill lynching might have gone unnoticed, as many other acts of racial violence in Mississippi during this period, were it not for the fact that someone in the crowd chose to take photographs. Images of the gruesome scene later circulated across the nation as Congress debated the passage of a federal anti-lynching bill.26 Despite the public outcry, no one was ever arrested for the murders. These incidents, combined with a string of highly publicized black lynchings, helped the state gain its reputation as “the land of the tree and the home of the grave.”27
Despite the clear danger associated with organizing in rural Mississippi during this period, black activists of various political persuasions attempted to galvanize black men and women in the state. Civil rights organizations and women’s clubs—including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the National Association of Colored Women (NACW)—maintained an active presence in the state, providing a platform for black residents to challenge white supremacy and agitate for social and political rights.28 These groups, which generally appealed to black middle-class and elite activists, promoted racial uplift politics, publicly decried the extreme educational disparity in the state, and lobbied for improved educational opportunities for black Mississippians.29 During the Depression, many black sharecroppers in the state turned to the Southern Tenant Farmers Union (STFU), an interracial organization that challenged the discriminatory politics of New Deal programs.30
During this same period, members of the Communist Party began to mobilize black Mississippians, articulating a radical black internationalist and anticapitalist political vision. The party, however, was unable to attract a significant following in the state as a result of limited resources.31 By 1936, the combined party membership for Mississippi and two other states—Alabama and Georgia—was 425, representing a significant decrease from two years prior when the party boasted 1,000 members in the city of Birmingham alone.32 The exact figures are murky, but the Communist Party yielded far less success in organizing blacks in Mississippi during the 1930s than it did in other Southern states.33 Additionally, the party’s influence began to wane considerably in the South during the late 1930s—at the very same moment that PME organizers began to target the region. As a result, the Communist Party posed little competition to the PME, which also targeted the working class, despite different ideological commitments, methods, and goals.
Against this backdrop, Allen showed up at Reverend Green’s home unexpectedly, asking for a place to stay. Born in Mississippi in 1875, Green was a widower who resided on a farm he rented with his aunt and several other relatives.34 A sharecropper by day, Green was also a preacher at a local church and may have had ties to various other churches in the region. As a preacher, Green would likely have many local connections, and his endorsement of the organization and its platform would certainly make Allen’s work a bit easier. While it is plausible that someone—perhaps a black churchgoer who read about the PME’s popular emigration campaign in Chicago—suggested that Allen stay with Green, the preacher had never heard of Allen or the PME prior to the activist’s arrival.35 Pointing out the limited opportunities available for Southern blacks and insisting that emigration to Liberia offered the most viable solution, Allen convinced Green to become a PME member and also help her establish a series of local chapters. Although Green later shrewdly told FBI officials that Allen never made him aware of the organization’s stance on black emigration, his writings confirm his full knowledge of the PME’s aims and his conscious decision to join the movement.36
Green’s endorsement of the PME marked a turning point in Allen’s political activities in the area. His involvement certainly strengthened Allen’s ability to garner support for her cause. As a minister who had been residing in the area for quite some time, Green occupied a place of privilege in the black community. Unlike Allen, who was fairly new to the community, Green was likely already well connected, and as a spiritual leader, he wielded some amount of influence and respect.37 Green’s support provided Allen with access to a public meeting space where she could address local residents. Largely shut out of the formal political process during this period, black churches, like black-owned businesses and other institutions, provided a significant space for black southerners to meet, plan, and disseminate ideas.38 These churches provided crucial spaces for African Americans during the Jim Crow era to challenge discrimination and white supremacy.39
While Green provided Allen with access to a physical meeting space, the preacher’s support also provided a buffer of protection from those who might have questioned a woman’s ability to autonomously lead. Concerns over the proper roles and responsibilities for women often dominated discussions among black churchmen and black nationalists who, more often than not, advocated for a strict gendered hierarchy of leadership. While men recognized women as the “backbone,” they were generally less willing to accept women in positions of visible leadership with authority over both men and women.40
Significantly, the PME did not maintain a strict gendered hierarchy, thereby providing a space for women to articulate proto-feminist views. Unlike women in the UNIA during the 1920s, women in the PME could be found serving in a variety of visible leadership roles from national organizers to members of the executive board.41 This is not to suggest that the organization maintained gender egalitarianism or that Gordon herself promoted gender equality. To the contrary, Gordon maintained a masculinist vision of black liberation, and while she remained at the forefront of black nationalist politics, she still desired to establish a black nation-state led by strong black men. Along these lines, her views were strikingly similar to UNIA women during the 1920s who sought to expand opportunities for women’s leadership yet also reinforced traditional roles and expectations.42
However, women in the PME articulated proto-feminism in ways that were noticeably different from the first generation of women activists in the UNIA. While women in the UNIA during the 1920s used the pages of the Negro World, the official Garveyite newspaper, to publicly challenge male chauvinism and patriarchy in print, women in the PME were often silent on these issues in their writings. Surviving primary sources suggest that PME women were less interested in advocating for a black proto-feminist agenda in writing compared to vocal nationalist women like Amy Jacques Garvey. Their actions, however, spoke louder than their words or lack thereof. Despite the absence of overt feminist writings, the women in the PME maintained positions of leadership and authority over both men and women and engaged in activities that sometimes challenged the gender and sexual conventions of their time. Allen’s decision to travel alone
and live away from home for extended periods of time, particularly as a woman who may have been married, offers a case in point. Similar to black women in the Communist Party during this period, Allen defied traditional expectations about “respectable” black womanhood.43
Moreover, Allen carefully walked a fine line between leading as a woman and adhering to the black nationalist (masculinist) belief in the primacy of black male leadership. When Allen began to organize in Mississippi, she skillfully asserted her leadership in a way that would not appear threatening to male members of the community. Her decision to collaborate with Reverend Green was strategic in this regard. With Green’s endorsement and through his connections, Allen quickly tapped into a widespread network of churchgoers, friends, and relatives located in various parts of the state.44
During her stay in Mississippi, Allen contacted thirty-nine-year-old black resident Thomas H. Bernard, an associate of Reverend Green. Born in Matherville, Mississippi, in 1898, Bernard worked as a sharecropper during his teens until 1918, when he was drafted for the U.S. Army at the age of twenty.45 By the time Allen arrived in Mississippi in 1937, Bernard was still residing in Matherville with his wife, Alee, and his mother, Delia. By his own statement, Bernard’s interest in the PME was directly linked to his encounter with Allen during her visits.46 A few years later, he recalled his motivations for joining the PME, indicating that he found the organization appealing because of its commitment to “get[ting] its members back to Africa, their fatherland” and its emphasis on “peace at all times.” As a World War I veteran, Bernard was especially intrigued by the organization’s instructions that members should “file conscientious objector forms . . . in order that [they] would not have to fight for the United States” in the event of another war.47
Bernard’s interest in relocating to “the fatherland” suggests that he imagined himself as part of a diasporic community of black men and women who would ultimately be (re)united in Africa.48 One of Allen’s surviving poems, “Freedom’s Wind Is Blowing,” captures these same sentiments: “We are a nation / Must go free and stay free forevermore / We are thirty million strong / We bid you all adieu.” After recounting “four hundred years” of the transatlantic slave trade, black enslavement, and racial oppression in the U.S. South, Allen called on blacks in the diaspora to take a definitive stance toward racial progress. Exemplifying the masculinist undertones associated with black nationalist discourses, Allen’s poem appealed directly to black men to lead the way:
The black man now must stand alone
And let the nations see
That he now has a worthy cause
And surely must go free
His Fatherland is calling him
And homeward he must go
He has no envy in his heart
But [b]id you all adieu49
Like many other black nationalists, Allen desired to be (re)united with other blacks in the diaspora and envisioned the PME, in particular, as a vehicle for advancing black emigration and thereby establishing an autonomous black nation-state.
Importantly, Allen’s poem, “Freedom’s Wind Is Blowing,” highlights the central tenets of black nationalist thought—black liberation, racial unity, black self-determination, and self-sufficiency. These ideas, which were popularized by Marcus Garvey during the 1920s, had already been firmly rooted in black culture since the early nineteenth century. While Allen’s poem addresses many of the core themes reflected in Garvey’s own poetry, it also underscores the ways in which Allen and other PME activists drew on the ideas of earlier black nationalists. Her reference to Africa as the “fatherland,” as opposed to the “motherland,” is more consistent with nineteenth-century black nationalist writers, including Bishop Henry McNeal Turner and Alexander Crummell, the Episcopalian priest and educator who established the American Negro Academy in 1897.50
Given the widespread influence of Turner, Washington, and other early black leaders in the South, it is not surprising that Garvey had found a significant following in the Southern region. By the mid-1920s, his organization, the UNIA, claimed five hundred divisions and branches across the U.S. South.51 The UNIA, which eventually witnessed a sharp decline in membership following Garvey’s arrest and imprisonment on charges of mail fraud, played an integral role in the politicization of many Southern black activists.52 In Mississippi, Garveyism held sway among black tenant farmers and sharecroppers—many of whom read the widely circulated Garveyite newspaper, the Negro World, which encouraged local residents to set up their own divisions. By 1921, thirty-four UNIA chapters were established in the state largely as a result of the efforts of individuals like local black farmer and preacher Adam D. Newson.53 As in other locales, UNIA women in Mississippi were largely involved in the movement as Black Cross Nurses, providing a range of social services for members of the black community.54 By the late 1920s, however, the UNIA branches in the Southern region began to wane.
When Allen went to Mississippi to organize for the PME, local UNIA organizers were struggling to keep their chapters afloat.55 It is likely that Allen was already tapped into this network of Garveyite activists on account of Mittie Maude Lena Gordon’s ties to the UNIA. Certainly, Allen’s emphasis on racial pride, black emigration, political self-determination, and economic self-sufficiency resonated with many black southerners during this period. As the UNIA began to lose its stronghold in the Southern region, the PME emerged as a viable alternative for local black residents interested in black nationalist politics.56 Organizing on their own terms without Garvey’s direct influence or authority, PME activists attempted to build a wide coalition of black supporters in the region, advocating for emigration as a vehicle for black social, political, and economic progress. While there is no doubt that these activists tapped into many of the nationalist ideas that were firmly rooted in black politics and culture during this period, they also employed new tactics that helped to propel the movement. For example, PME organizers were able to convince local black residents to join the movement by insisting that they had already secured land in West Africa. While Liberians had welcomed their interest, the PME had yet to secure land there.
Black nationalists’ views on Liberia during this period reflected a longstanding interest in emigration firmly rooted in black political thought since the eighteenth century.57 While earlier black intellectuals and activists looked to various other nations, including Sierra Leone, Haiti, and Canada, as potential sites for black relocation, Liberia became the focal point of black emigrationist movements during the nineteenth century. The surge of interest in Liberia during this period can be attributed in part to the American Colonization Society (ACS), which financially backed emigrationist efforts during the early to mid-nineteenth century while endorsing white supremacist views. Although emigrationist movements declined during the mid-1860s, African American leaders such as Bishop Henry McNeal Turner of the AME Church helped to revive it. Turner became one of the most vocal proponents for emigration to West Africa, utilizing a variety of outlets, including his newspapers, The Voice of Mission and the Voice of the People, to spread his ideas. Bishop Turner advocated emigration to Liberia as the best means of improving the social and economic conditions of black men and women. His efforts resulted in the emigration of an estimated five hundred African Americans to Liberia during the 1890s. Following the Supreme Court ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)—which formally established Jim Crow segregation laws—many black southerners abandoned life in the United States in pursuit of new opportunities in Liberia. In Arkansas, an estimated one hundred African American men and women relocated to Liberia with the aid of the ACS during the late 1890s. The Garvey movement of the early twentieth century would help to further ignite interest in Liberia despite Garvey’s unsuccessful efforts to create a UNIA colony in Liberia in the 1920s.
Ultimately, then, Allen’s activities in Mississippi during the 1930s and her interactions with Senator Theodore Bilbo represent a continuum of black mobilization around the issue of emigration
to Liberia and black nationalists’ willingness to ally with white supremacists to facilitate emigration. By the time she arrived in Mississippi in 1937, PME leaders had made some strides in their efforts to advance black emigration and emphasized (and sometimes exaggerated) this point to pique the interests of prospective followers. In April 1936, T. Elwood Davis, then aide to Liberian President Edwin Barclay, extended what appeared to be a favorable response to black emigration to the country. Citing President Barclay’s commitment to making Liberia a “respectable and attractive place in which Negroes the world over may find it the true asylum from those handicaps and oppressions peculiar to other places where they are domiciled,” Davis assured Gordon and her supporters that they would receive a warm welcome.58
Circumstances were far more complicated, however, and President Barclay had a number of stipulations for prospective emigrants. In a subsequent article, published in the Chicago Tribune, President Barclay addressed the issue of emigration yet emphasized the need for a certain class of black emigrant: skilled laborers. The newspaper article further elaborated on this issue, indicating that Barclay preferred “skilled artisans, trained agriculturalists, business men with capital, and young physicians willing to go into the interior and develop the aborigines.”59 This description hardly described Gordon and her supporters, but Gordon remained convinced that the invitation to Liberia, regardless of Barclay’s stipulations, was an invitation nonetheless. Significantly, Gordon’s acceptance of Barclay’s request for volunteers to “develop the aborigines” in Liberia also reveals her civilizationist views toward indigenous African people—ideas that were characteristic of earlier black nationalists.60
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