In the depths of a long dark corridor
Stands the remains of a Noble Race
They’ve butchered, lynched and hanged us
Because we wanted better place
We’ve been kicked, shunned and segregated
And looked upon as an outcast,
We’ve suffered under the foot of the white man
How long will this terror last?21
Wilkes’s poem captured the mood of frustration that many African Americans felt during the 1940s. As the global war for democracy waged on, these men and women were engaged in a seemingly never-ending struggle for freedom and equality at home. Wilkes’s question—“How long will this terror last?”—was certainly one that countless black activists were pondering.
For black nationalist women in the United States, the pervasive acts of racial violence and terror undermined the very notion of democracy. In her article, “The Real Solution,” black nationalist writer Theresa E. Young upheld this point of view. An activist from Cincinnati, Ohio, Young served as the UNIA’s assistant secretary general and an associate editor of the New Negro World newspaper. In her 1943 editorial, Young described white mob violence and racial discrimination as part of the very fabric of American society. “Discrimination has extended to every phase of racial life,” she argued, “In every city, state, and town, Negroes are restricted from white residential areas and forced to live in undesirable sections.” “Negro children must attend separate and inferior schools,” she continued, “and where school opportunities are available nothing of the history of the Black Man is taught, but in every instance the race is reminded that it [cannot] successfully aspire to a social and personal relation on the same level as whites.”22 Young’s editorial cited racial prejudice as the ultimate failure of American democracy.
Despite the political gains of the 1940s—most notably, the passage of FDR’s Executive Order 8802 in 1941 to prohibit discrimination in the defense industry—many black activists were frustrated with the slow pace of social change in the United States. Similar to black women in U.S. leftist and civil rights groups during this period, black nationalist women used their writings to bring attention to the persistence of racial inequality domestically and abroad.23 In her 1940 master’s thesis at Fisk University, entitled “The Negro Woman Domestic Worker in Relation to Trade Unionism,” Communist Party activist Esther Cooper Jackson decried the exploitation of African American women along the lines of race, sex, and class.24 Cooper Jackson’s writings were consistent with those of other black women in the Communist Party, including Claudia Jones and Grace P. Campbell, who framed “black women domestics as the most vulnerable and exploited women and workers in the U.S. political economy.”25
Although black nationalist women were certainly cognizant of the class dimensions of their political struggle, their writings centered on challenging all forms of racial oppression.26 In a 1941 poem, one black nationalist woman in the PME—referred to only as “Mrs. Canada”—denounced racism in the United States and emphasized the need for racial equality: “All we want is equal justice / The color of skin doesn’t mean a thing.” “God created all men equal,” she continued, “How dare you discriminate?”27 Similarly, Ethel M. Collins, the veteran activist from Jamaica who had joined the UNIA during the early 1920s, called on black men and women across the globe to demand their God-given rights in a 1942 editorial. “As far as humanity goes,” she wrote, “all men are equal.” “It is true,” she continued, “that economically and scientifically certain races are more progressive than others; but that does not imply superiority.” Rather than sit idly by as the ideology of white supremacy continued to spread throughout the world, Collins appealed to readers to take a definitive stance toward racial progress. Employing masculine language that underscored the gendered dynamics of black nationalism, Collins declared, “Our appeal to the world today is [this]: Let us have justice, let us have fair play and we shall prove ourselves as real men should.”28
In another article, Eustance G. Campbell, an activist residing in Newark, New Jersey, decried white supremacy and called for an immediate response from black activists across the globe. “There is no time to lose,” she explained in a July 1942 editorial, “There is a lot of work to be done. We can’t wait until the War is over to be free; the time is now, right now.”29 Similar to nationalist leaders Marcus Garvey and Edward Wilmot Blyden before him, Campbell drew inspiration from the Zionist movement for Jewish self-determination.30 During the 1940s, as news of the Holocaust spread across the globe, Zionist groups attempted to secure international support for the creation of a Jewish state. Campbell insisted that black men and women, like Jews, deserved support and, more specifically, an army of their own: “Don’t you see what the White Race is doing? He is speaking about giving the Jews an Army in Palestine, then, where will OUR Army be?” Emphasizing the urgency of the situation, Campbell implored “Brothers and Sisters of the African Tribe” to join the struggle for black liberation and political self-determination. “This is the only chance we have,” she explained, “and if we let this chance pass us, we will not get it again for a thousand years more.”31 Campbell’s editorial underscored the heightened sense of urgency and awareness of global racial politics among people of the African diaspora during this period. It also illustrates how black nationalists constructed a “transnational and racialized ‘imagined community.’ ” Viewing herself as a member of a diasporic community of black activists across the globe, Campbell emphasized the need for sustained political alliances and collaborations across geographical boundaries.32
Through their political writings and speeches, black nationalist women grappled with questions about citizenship, identity, and national belonging. At a moment when race leaders like W. E. B. Du Bois were calling on African Americans to join the war effort to improve their political standing in the United States, nationalist women emphasized the need to create a black nation-state elsewhere. These women, from wide-ranging cultural backgrounds, envisioned themselves as members of a diasporic polity and hoped to facilitate the unification of people of African descent.33 In their view, the black struggle for full citizenship and equal participation under the law appeared futile. “America knows the story of our 300 years of suffering,” Ethel Collins explained, “We have watered her vegetation with our tears. We have built her cities and laid the foundations of her materialism with the mortar of our blood and bones. We have fought in all wars, and die[d] courageously.” Yet, Collins lamented, the struggle to “solve the race problem” persisted.34
Viewing emigration to West Africa as the ultimate solution for eradicating global white supremacy, Collins explained, “We want the right to have a country of our own . . . Africa is the legitimate, moral, and righteous home of the Black peoples of the world.” Insisting that people of African descent needed to “create their own destinies” and build the “culture and civilization of their own,” she went on to emphasize the importance of reclaiming Africa: “We of the Universal Negro Improvement Association have made up in our minds to work for the restoration of human liberty and the land of our fathers.”35 Elaine Cooper, secretary of the UNIA’s division in Montreal, Canada, expressed similar sentiments, arguing that “Negroes should be more determined today than they have ever been, to protect their own interests.” Emphasizing the need for black men and women to establish their own nation, Cooper implored black readers to “realize that the time is coming when every man and every race must return to its own ‘vine and fig tree.’ ”36
Echoing the sentiments of earlier black nationalist thinkers—Martin Delany, Edward Blyden, and Henry McNeal Turner, among them—black nationalist women writers championed black emigration, arguing that Africa is the homeland for people of African descent. “Africa is calling us Home to our Native Land,” Eustance G. Campbell explained, “Africa, where we can enjoy Peace and Happiness for ourselves.” Other women writers embraced this point of view. In a 1943 editorial, Theresa Young reasoned that black emigra
tion was a viable response to the persistent challenges of racial segregation, black disenfranchisement, violence, and terror. “The conditions of life that Negroes have faced and are still facing in America,” Young argued, “are conducive in the highest degree to a nationalistic spirit.” “At every point in their social evolution,” she continued, “opposition presents persistent discrimination to show that the Negro . . . will be tolerated only in the capacity of menials.” “The Negro must learn,” she concluded, “that if he is to take his rightful place, he too must have a government of his own.”37 Without mincing words, activist Edith Allen endorsed this point of view, informing readers that racial acts of violence would only cease to occur if—and when—black people “had a country of [their] own.”38 Writing in a 1942 editorial entitled “Liberty,” Jamaican-born activist Ethel Collins asserted, “The Pilgrim and colonists did it for America, and the New Negro can do it for Africa.”39 These statements underscore how the rights of self-determination, belonging, and autonomy were essential themes in black nationalist women’s political writings.
Significantly, women’s writings during this period also shed light on their contradictory political ideas. While black nationalist women envisioned black emigration as a means of bolstering black political and economic autonomy, they also subscribed to a civilizationist view of Africa that was characteristic of nineteenth-century black nationalist thought.40 Indeed, these activists laid claim to African land and envisioned relocation to West Africa as an opportunity to control and Americanize native Africans. Their perspectives illustrate the contradictions of black nationalist movements, which emphasized a radical response to white supremacy while propagating conservative and repressive views.41 On one hand, black nationalists were deeply committed to Pan-Africanism in response to imperialism in Africa and Eurocentric attitudes.42 On the other hand, they subscribed to a civilizationist view of racial uplift that mirrored the same practices they rejected. Florine Wilkes captured this contradictory impulse when she declared in a poem, “No man shall successfully rule my people, [b]ut a man who looks like me.”43
Notwithstanding the imperialist undertones that sometimes appeared in their writings, black nationalist women writers rejected the racist belief that black people were devoid of a history. To that end, they centered their writings on acknowledging and celebrating the historical accomplishments of black men and women across the diaspora.44 Rejecting the negative images and stereotypical depictions of black history and culture that dominated mainstream mass media, these women wrote articles that emphasized African beauty and exalted the nobility of African civilizations. In one editorial entitled “Arise,” Adelia Ireland, a black nationalist residing in St. Louis, Missouri, emphasized the rich African heritage of black people: “We are the Sons and our Father left us a great heritage, for in the days of old, there were Kings and Princes. They had a civilization. . . . The City of our Forefathers was traveled by Cesar, and who can forget Hannibal, who scalled [sic] the Alps and marched on Rome. His Nobility shall never die.”45 Subscribing to a romanticized view of precolonial Africa, Ethel M. Collins expressed similar sentiments: “Stand beneath the colossal Pyramid of Egyptian civilization from the books of the dead. Walk along the banks of the Niger and listen to the solemn voice of Nineveh’s ashes and Babylon’s decay; they all tell that the Black Sons of Ham gave to the World its civilization.”46
Similar to earlier black nationalists, women embraced the philosophy of Ethiopianism, evoking biblical verses as a prophetic reminder of inevitable black redemption.47 Reflecting Ethiopianist discourse of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, women writers endorsed the belief that the “redemption” of Africa, the complete liberation of peoples of African descent, was divinely ordained. As one activist woman from Virginia expressed, “Let us ask Him to hasten the day the Princes shall come out of Egypt, and Ethiopia shall stretch forth her hand to God; let us tell Him that we know now that our house is occupied by strangers, but are willing to take a chance to fight, yes even die, for a part of His house that He gave to the Black Race.”48 Collins agreed, urging readers to hold fast to Psalm 68:31: “Princes shall come out of Egypt, and Ethiopia shall stretch out her hands unto God.” “We have accomplished much . . . through Unity of purpose,” she added, “but we shall not stop . . . for there is much more to be done to reach our objective.”49 These statements illustrate how women drew upon earlier Pan-Africanist traditions to refine their political strategies and ideologies during the 1940s.
The global visions of African redemption that appeared in black nationalists’ writings during this period were intertwined with the question of gender roles. Whereas black women on the Communist Left embraced progressive gender politics—by pursuing a “black left feminist” agenda that was attentive to the intersecting dimensions of race, gender, and class—black nationalist women generally endorsed a more conservative point of view.50 As proto-feminists, they challenged sexism and sought to empower black women globally but walked a fine line between advancing women’s opportunities and simultaneously supporting black men’s leadership. In July 1941, UNIA activist Adelia Ireland articulated a masculinist vision of black liberation, emphasizing the absolute necessity of strong black male leadership. “Arise Black men,” Ireland declared, “and come out in the light and let the world know their sense of duty.”51 Speaking before a crowd of UNIA supporters in 1942, Elinor White, state commissioner for Illinois, elaborated on this point: “If the men of the Black race in Africa, West Indies, South and Central America and the United States of America, would work together on this great program given us by the late honorable Marcus Garvey, there is no reason why we cannot present to the world . . . a race of self-respecting and able people.”52 Florine Wilkes expressed similar sentiments in a poem, calling on black men across the globe to “wake from [their] slumber . . . and fight for [the] MOTHERLAND.”53 These examples reveal how black nationalist women envisioned men’s roles in the global struggle for liberation and within the imagined future black nation-state. Like Garvey and other black men in the UNIA, nationalist women often endorsed a masculinist view of leadership.
At the same time, women also found ways to challenge patriarchy. The actions of Ethel Collins exemplify this point. In 1943, Collins found herself in a precarious situation when UNIA leader James Stewart openly denounced her in a series of articles published in the New Negro World. Despite her more than twenty years of service to the UNIA, Stewart quickly dismissed Collins, describing her as “totally disloyal.”54 Collins had exerted authority by openly challenging Stewart’s leadership and questioning his “executive” decisions.55 Unwilling to accommodate Collins’s defiance, Stewart went to great lengths to discredit Collins’s standing in the movement. Because she was unable to address the issue in the newspaper, Collins launched a letter-writing campaign shortly thereafter in an effort to defend her actions and clear her name. Writing on August 15, 1943, Collins attempted to set the record straight: “No doubt you have read the articles written by Mr. James R. Stewart, president general of the U.N.I.A. in Cleveland, Ohio; and published in the New [Negro] World . . . quoting me and others as being disloyal to the association. In this act of his, I am compelled to make a reply and give some enlightenment on the matter.” After reminding readers of her twenty-three-year service to the organization, Collins denounced Stewart’s actions, noting that it was “wicked for anyone at this late hour to style me as being disloyal.” “It is too late now for me to change,” she added, “You can count on me to be the same in life and in death—my work for good shall never cease.”56 Despite her inability to challenge Stewart’s leadership directly in the New Negro World, Collins’s actions demonstrate her refusal to accept Stewart’s behavior and exemplify the ways in which women articulated proto-feminism by resisting patriarchy within Pan-Africanist and black internationalist political movements.
Anticolonial Politics in the African Diaspora
If black nationalist women in the United States endorsed a diasporic
politics committed to anticolonialism and racial equality, then so did their counterparts in other parts of the African diaspora.57 In Jamaica, for example, teacher and social activist Amy Bailey published a plethora of writings, addressing a number of key issues concerning people of African descent on the island and in other parts of the diaspora. Born in Manchester, Jamaica, in 1895, Bailey became one of the most prolific Caribbean women writers of the twentieth century.58 Like other black women on the island during the early twentieth century, Bailey had limited access to the formal political process in Jamaica—one that was largely dominated by whites and nonwhite elite men. In 1919, Bailey entered the teaching profession, marking the formal beginning of her public career as a social worker and activist.59 With the introduction of Public Opinion and other progressive black newspapers in Jamaica, Bailey and other black middle-class reformers found an informal yet crucial space in which to engage in Jamaican politics, thereby attempting to influence the direction of public policy.60 Her writings addressed a range of concerns, including racial discrimination and the marginalization of black women in Jamaican society.
During the 1920s, Bailey began to embrace the teachings of Marcus Garvey. While she did not become a member of the UNIA, Bailey endorsed the key tenets of Garveyism, including racial pride, black political self-determination, and anticolonialism. She also deeply admired Garvey during her lifetime. “As a young enthusiast,” she later explained, “I followed Marcus Garvey to every night meeting at Edelweiss Park and to many other meetings that were held in an open space (now a car park) beside Parish Church on Sunday afternoons.” She added, “So enthused was I that on reaching home I would write down much of what I had heard. Unfortunately my bookkeeper friends borrowed those exercise books and I lost them but memories linger.” According to Bailey, one of the “high spots” of her memories included the UNIA’s 1929 procession in downtown Kingston led by Henrietta Vinton Davis and Maymie De Mena, two women pioneers of the Garvey movement. While the 1929 convention marked the effective collapse of the UNIA as an organization, Bailey remained deeply moved by Garvey’s teachings and, during the 1930s, went to visit him in London.61 In the ensuing years, Garvey’s ideas continued to inform Bailey’s writings as well as her social and political work.
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