Set the World on Fire

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Set the World on Fire Page 24

by Keisha N. Blain


  These changes in perspective underscore how historical developments on the African continent had a profound impact on black Americans’ political vision.77 As individuals like Gordon and Gibbons began to embrace Ghana, so too did a cadre of civil rights activists across the country who saw the appeal of relocating to Africa following Ghana’s independence in 1957. During the early 1960s, several well-known black activists and intellectuals, including poet Maya Angelou, W. E. B. and Shirley Du Bois, and writer Julian Mayfield, relocated to the newly independent nation.78 There, these men and women supported President Kwame Nkrumah’s antiracist platform and Pan-Africanist vision of a unified Africa. They also witnessed the process of nation building for one of the first African nations to break free from the grip of European colonialism.79

  Ruptures and Disruptions

  During the 1950s, black women throughout Latin America and the Caribbean were actively engaged in black nationalist politics—promoting racial pride and unity, economic self-sufficiency, and political self-determination. From her base in Jamaica, Maymie De Mena continued to advance the work of the UNIA despite growing fragmentation, scant resources, and limited support from the organization’s male leaders. Her efforts coincided with the significant growth of the Rastafarian movement, which had begun in Jamaica in the 1930s. Maintaining the belief that Africans were one of God’s chosen people, Rastafarians became increasingly popular during the 1950s and appealed to thousands of black men and women in Jamaica and in other parts of the Caribbean. The core tenets of Rastafarianism—including the emphasis on black pride, African heritage, and Ethiopianism—closely mirrored Garvey’s black nationalism and no doubt resonated with the black masses in Jamaica and other parts of the Caribbean.80 As Rastafarianism and other new expressions of black nationalism dominated black political discourse, De Mena’s efforts to revive the UNIA as an organization—to the place of prominence it once had—appeared futile.

  Still, the veteran black nationalist leader persisted. Despite failing health, De Mena utilized several strategies and tactics that she hoped might draw new UNIA members in Jamaica and throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. Writing to UNIA President Thomas W. Harvey in 1953, she emphasized her efforts to raise funds specifically for this purpose: “I am back on the warpath for our organization along the Caribbean Seaboard where we once reigned strongly. From Cuba down to Panama and Costa Rica, our membership have all scattered and have gone into all sorts of things . . . I am trying to gather up the threads, and resuscitate the [UNIA] membership.”81 She went on to describe efforts to raise money and her decision to organize mass meetings in various locales to attract new members in areas where the UNIA once boasted a large following.

  In her efforts to revive the UNIA, De Mena turned to other veteran black nationalist women for assistance. To that end, she solicited advice from Amy Jacques Garvey, who was also residing in Kingston.82 During the 1950s, Jacques Garvey actively supported De Mena’s efforts as she maintained a busy schedule of her own, raising her teenage sons while continuing to write for several newspaper outlets, including the South African newspaper, the Drum.83 In addition to her own writings that emphasized the core tenets of black nationalism—black pride, African heritage, Pan-Africanism, black political self-determination, and economic self-sufficiency—Jacques Garvey tirelessly promoted the writings and teachings of her late husband and even defended them when others critiqued them.84 Recognizing De Mena’s crucial role in supporting the UNIA, Jacques Garvey provided support and offered advice when needed. Other black nationalist women provided support for De Mena during this period. In 1952, De Mena reached out to U.S.-based activist Ethel Collins for assistance in reviving local chapters in Kingston. Collins had left the UNIA during the mid-1940s after a falling out with James Stewart, Garvey’s successor in the UNIA, but remained in close communication with De Mena during the years. In 1952, Collins made a visit to her native Jamaica, where she delivered speeches before crowds of local residents in Kingston. According to De Mena, Collins’s visit to Jamaica ignited a “new awakening” in the movement and provided a catalyst for drawing new members to the organization.85

  In the months after Collins’s departure, De Mena amplified her efforts to help revive the Garveyite movement in Jamaica. In addition to opening up a new office on Hanover Street in Kingston in 1952, the seventy-two-year-old activist spent much of her time speaking to activists in St. Andrew and other parts of the island. By her own admission, she also attempted to track down old UNIA members in chapters that were no longer active. Desiring to do much more, De Mena asked UNIA leaders in the United States to help her purchase a car to make it easier to travel: “I am comparatively invalided and cannot walk very far or stand on the streets waiting for [buses]. I will have to get some sort of transportation to do this work, and I am of the opinion that the general Organization could supply a small car in Jamaica.”86 In reality, the UNIA was in no position to provide a car for De Mena or offer any amount of financial support. However, De Mena’s request underscores her unwavering commitment to help the movement despite her failing health.

  Although De Mena did not succeed in reviving the UNIA or attracting scores of new members as she had hoped, her political activities were not in vain. Indeed, De Mena helped to sustain black nationalist politics during the 1950s—popularizing the ethos of black political self-determination, racial pride, economic self-sufficiency, anticolonialism, and Pan-Africanism. These ideas held broad appeal for black men and women in Jamaica and in other parts of the diaspora—even as UNIA membership varied from locale to locale. Indeed, black freedom fighters deployed black nationalism during this period even if they were unassociated with the UNIA. Many would credit Marcus Garvey, in particular, for shaping their political consciousness. This was certainly the case for Eugenie Bailey, a black woman residing in Havana, Cuba, during the early 1950s. “The sound of Garvey’s voice has awaken[ed] me,” she acknowledged, “though I never go to sleep.”87 Describing the racial and ethnic tensions in Cuba during this period, Bailey lamented that black laborers on the island were being pushed out of the workforce. “Our service[s] are no longer needed here in Cuba,” she explained, “all you can hear is Cuba por los Cubanos [Cuba for Cubans].”88 Her comments, though brief, alluded to the antiblack racism and segregationist practices in Cuba that marginalized people of African descent in the workforce. By evoking Garvey, Bailey underscored the significance and utility of black nationalism as a viable political response—and, indeed, challenge—to white supremacy. Not surprisingly, Bailey emphasized the need to keep these ideas alive in mainstream political discourse.

  In October 1953, within a year of Ethel Collins’s visit to Kingston, De Mena passed away at the age of seventy-three.89 She had traveled to the United States only a month earlier for medical treatment when she learned that she had cancer, for which she had received treatment years earlier but had recovered. This time, however, the veteran black nationalist leader succumbed to the disease. The obituary that appeared in the Daily Gleaner shortly after her passing captured the spirit and vision of the black nationalist freedom fighter:

  The late [Madame De Mena] had rare courage and strength of will. She was identified with causes that needed fighters and nothing deterred her from fighting. . . . She did not, like many reformers, regard social work as a “palliative” something that enabled a crippled society to continue crawling along: it seemed to her an essential function of leadership to bring practical aid to the poor, and she was long amongst the few figures that commanded respect in certain “tough” areas of the city. . . . Her personality will be greatly missed in the island’s life.90

  Writing to William Sherrill, one of the UNIA’s leaders based in Detroit, Michigan, Amy Jacques Garvey reinforced these views, noting that “the death of [Madame De Mena] is quite a loss out here.” “Please do not make any hasty selection, for her successor,” Jacques Garvey advised Sherrill.91 Further revealing De Mena’s legacy and the significance of women leaders in the
movement in general, Jacques Garvey advised Sherrill to select a woman to lead the UNIA on the island. “A woman is preferable,” Jacques Garvey explained, “as she may not be so much watched politically; but she must be internationally informed, alert, and diplomatic.”92

  Amy Jacques Garvey’s desire to find a replacement for De Mena never materialized. Though Jacques Garvey failed to see it at the time, De Mena’s death signified the end of one chapter in the movement’s history. Within ten years, several key women leaders who had once dominated the black nationalist scene passed away. On August 6, 1956, Ethel M. Collins, the veteran black nationalist woman who had traveled to Jamaica to assist De Mena only a few years prior, died around the age of sixty. On the afternoon of October 14, 1956, members of the Garvey Club gathered together at a memorial service in Harlem to honor Collins’s life and memory. Bishop Fred Toote, who had been at the center of the conflict at the UNIA’s Sixth International Convention in 1929 in Jamaica, delivered the eulogy.93

  Four years later, on June 16, 1961, Mittie Maude Lena Gordon died of heart failure at the age of seventy-one. Her husband, Moses Gibson, who she had quietly married after William Gordon passed away in 1948, struggled to provide details of his wife’s life—a likely indication that Gordon withheld crucial information from her new spouse. He did not know her actual date of birth or the specific location of her birth. For this reason, her death certificate indicated that she was ten years younger than her actual age and listed the city of her birth as “unknown.”94 Unlike Maymie De Mena, who had been eulogized in Jamaican newspapers after her death, there is no record of a public announcement of Gordon’s death in the United States. And oddly enough, it does not appear that the men and women with whom she collaborated in the PME organized any public memorial services or meetings in her honor.

  Perhaps at Gordon’s instruction before her passing, Gordon’s mentee, Alberta Spain, tried to take up Gordon’s work, seemingly without much time for mourning. On June 19, 1961, she wrote a short letter to Earnest Sevier Cox alerting him of Gordon’s passing without providing much detail on the matter. “The Peace Movement of Ethiopia [is] very sad,” she wrote, “[because] our leader, Mrs. M.M.L. Gordon passed away Friday evening at 5 o’clock.” After briefly mentioning the date of Gordon’s funeral, Spain went on to ask for Cox’s help with several initiatives, including their efforts to leave the country. “The Peace Movement members and the Executive Council hopes we will continue to have your cooperation and help in our effort to go to Africa,” she explained.95 Spain’s comments reflected her dogmatic political approach—one that closely mirrored her mentor’s.

  Transitions

  The world in which Spain emerged as the PME’s de facto leader was unlike the one Gordon had navigated before her passing. Spain’s newfound leadership position coincided with a period of radical political transformation in the United States as in other parts of the globe. In 1957, following the successful Montgomery bus boycott, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. established the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), an organization largely made up of African American ministers. Emphasizing the use of nonviolent tactics, SCLC would go on to play a critical role in organizing mass protests in Birmingham and Selma, Alabama, during the 1960s.96 The year of SCLC’s debut, Little Rock, Arkansas, took center stage as President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent troops to enforce the admittance of nine black students into the all-white Central High School. Little Rock would represent only one of many battlegrounds during this period as tensions between the federal government and state governments boiled to the surface.

  Within the Civil Rights Movement itself, a strain of black nationalism coupled with armed self-defense efforts arose. Events such as Little Rock reinforced many black activists’ belief that armed self-defense was a viable political strategy—necessary for the protection of black communities against racial violence and terror. While not a new political strategy in African American communities, armed self-defense became increasingly popular in black nationalist discourse during this era. Robert F. Williams, leader of the NAACP branch in Monroe, North Carolina, was arguably the most vocal proponent of armed self-defense during the late 1950s.97 His wife, Mabel Williams, an activist in her own right, also endorsed the tradition of self-defense—a topic she frequently addressed in her writings.98 She and her husband embraced black nationalism and maintained an uncompromising stance on armed self-defense—a decision that ultimately led to Robert’s dismissal by the national NAACP chapter.99 In 1961, Mabel and Robert fled to Cuba, where they ran a popular radio station called “Radio Free Dixie.” Their close associate, Mae Mallory, an activist from Harlem who was incarcerated in 1961 after she was falsely accused of kidnapping a white couple in Monroe, demonstrated a commitment to black nationalism. To that end, Mallory also endorsed black political self-determination and economic self-sufficiency. Significantly, she embraced the view that black people needed to take up arms to protect themselves from southern white violence.100

  These core tenets were also popularized by members of the Louisiana-based Universal Association of Ethiopian Women (UAEW). Established in New Orleans in 1957 by Audley “Queen Mother” Moore—a former member of the UNIA who joined the Communist Party during the 1930s—the UAEW emerged as a crucial site for black women to advance black nationalist and internationalist politics.101 The organization represented the blending of various strands of black nationalism and the convergence of both older and newer nationalist expressions.102 Central to the UAEW’s platform was an emphasis on reparations, welfare rights for black women, and providing legal aid for black men who had been wrongly accused of rape.103 The organization drew support from a diverse group of black women activists in Louisiana—including local activists Dara Abubakari (formerly Virginia Collins), Alma Dawson, Bessie Phillips, and Moore’s younger sisters, Eloise and Loretta. These women articulated proto-feminism, challenging patriarchy and advocating black women’s rights and leadership opportunities. Maintaining an internationalist vision, UAEW members situated the experiences of black men and women in the United States within a global context and sought to forge transnational networks with activists across the diaspora.104

  In addition to advocating black internationalism, social justice, reparations, and black feminism, the UAEW reflected Moore’s black nationalist politics.105 In all likelihood, Moore’s decision to integrate the words “Universal” and “Ethiopian” in the organization’s name was influenced by the Garvey movement as well as the earlier Ethiopianist movements from which Garvey drew.106 Viewing her political work as an extension of Garvey’s, Moore framed her discussion about black rights within the discourse of Pan-Africanism. Moore’s UAEW, therefore, emphasized the need to secure freedom for “Africans everywhere at home and abroad,” employing a phrase that was reminiscent of the Garvey movement.107 Echoing some of the same goals as earlier black nationalists, Moore vowed that the UAEW would “uplift and inspire the oppressed, secure justice for those denied constitutional rights,” and bring awareness to African Americans of their “correct status” as Africans in the United States.108 By emphasizing the organization’s core mission as one that would help African Americans understand their “correct status . . . based on origin and national inspiration,” Moore articulated her commitment to the nationalist principles of race pride and African heritage.109

  As Moore and countless other black men and women in the United States denounced white supremacy and advocated civil and human rights, black activists across the diaspora were also fighting against racism, discrimination, and imperialism. Several years before Moore established the UAEW in the United States, armed militants rose up en masse against British colonial rule in Kenya. Referred to as the “Mau Mau” by British colonialists, these militant fighters denounced years of exploitation and disenfranchisement, including the loss of land and lack of political representation. From 1952 to 1960, “Mau Mau” rebels waged a decisive assault on British colonial forces and white settlers, helping to dismantle colonialism
on the African continent.110 In the neighboring Belgian Congo (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), tensions were brewing as organizer Patrice Lumumba and other activists in the Congolese National Movement (CNM) began agitating for Pan-African unity and black liberation. In December 1958, Lumumba attended the All-African People’s Conference in Accra, Ghana, where he met with a diverse group of black activists and intellectuals, including activist Eslanda Robeson, the wife of singer and civil rights activist Paul Robeson, and Kwame Nkrumah, prime minister of Ghana. At the conference, attendees called for the immediate end of colonialism in Africa.

  The liberation of former colonies in Africa inspired and coincided with a new wave of black radical protest—the impact of which could be felt in every corner of the globe. The Cuban Revolution was perhaps the most significant of these developments in Latin America and the Caribbean, representing a triumph in mass political activism. Led by Fidel Castro, the revolution succeeded in toppling U.S.-supported dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959 with the help of Afro-Cuban fighters and activists. Amid diasporic efforts to challenge imperialism, the Cuban Revolution and the unprecedented transformations that followed—including the elimination of racial segregation policies on the island—served as an inspiration for people of African descent across the globe.111 Not surprisingly, Cuba became a haven for black activists, including black nationalists Robert and Mabel Williams, escaping racial injustice in the United States.

 

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