Amid these key historical developments, Spain and other leaders of the PME attempted to forge ahead in Gordon’s absence, maintaining the belief that the organization might still be able to draw new supporters interested in black nationalist and internationalist politics. In the months following Gordon’s passing, PME members elected veteran activist Edmond Holiday as the new president—making him the first male activist to lead the organization since its establishment in 1932.112 It is unclear why Alberta Spain did not assume the position as president general—as Gordon had envisioned. Perhaps she chose not to assume the position or perhaps others in the organization preferred Holiday because he was more senior. It is also likely that members preferred Holiday on account of his sex, reflecting the black nationalist-masculinist tradition, especially during a period in which black charismatic male leaders dominated mainstream media.113
Regardless of the circumstances, Spain and Holiday worked closely together during the 1960s—intent on popularizing their collective political vision and broadening their base of support in Chicago and other parts of the country. For Spain, the national struggles over the issue of integration only served to bolster her view that black emigration was absolutely necessary. In 1962, only two years after four black college students in Greensboro, North Carolina, staged a sit-in at a segregated F. W. Woolworth’s lunch counter, Spain passionately argued that “there will be no need for segregation” if African Americans relocated to Africa. “The time has come for separation,” she explained in a letter addressed to senators across the United States, “for [African Americans] will never live peacefully in the same country [with whites].” Her comments mirrored those of earlier black nationalists—and even white separatists—who justified black emigration on the basis that it would guarantee peace and stability in a nation divided along racial lines. Reinforcing her black nationalist vision, Spain went on to argue that “the [black] race is tired of being pushed around and they want to develop their own culture built for themselves that they can be proud of.”114 Similar to Gordon, Spain’s writings reflected her skepticism toward civil rights gains in the United States. Indeed, Spain saw the wave of sit-ins and other developments across the country as evidence that the idea of black emigration to Africa was just as relevant in the 1960s as it was in years prior.
During this period, Spain and her colleagues in the PME attempted to broaden their base of support by reaching out to other black nationalist organizations in Chicago and other parts of the country. They first made efforts to collaborate with Benjamin Gibbons and the UANM, but the organization had dissolved after Gibbons suffered a debilitating stroke in 1962.115 As new expressions of black nationalism reverberated across the nation and other parts of the diaspora, Spain and Holiday began to reach out to new allies, including members of the Nation of Islam (NOI). Established in Detroit in 1930 by street peddler Wallace D. Fard, the NOI encouraged followers to embrace an alternative religious racial identity. Promoting a syncretic version of Islam, Fard instructed black residents to abandon Christianity for a more “authentic” religious practice. By the 1960s, the religious organization was one of the leading black nationalist groups in the nation. Under the leadership of Elijah Muhammad, who assumed control of the NOI after Fard mysteriously disappeared, the organization denounced white people as “devils” and emphasized black pride and racial separatism.116
During the 1960s, the NOI became one of the most popular and influential black nationalist organizations of the period. Its rapid growth was largely attributed to Malcolm X, a follower of Muhammad, who became the national spokesman of the NOI. Born Malcolm Little in 1925, Malcolm X grew up in a Garveyite household in Michigan. His parents had been active in the Garvey movement, laying the ideological foundations for Malcolm’s turn to black nationalism and internationalism later in life. Malcom’s mother, Louise Little—who had joined the UNIA in Montreal, Canada, and went on to serve as an organizer in the local UNIA chapter in Omaha, Nebraska—played a significant role in shaping her son’s political ideas even at a young age.117 After Malcolm’s father, Earl Little, was murdered by local Klansmen, Louise struggled to care for her son while dealing with the trauma of her husband’s tragic death. After being imprisoned for robbery, Malcolm converted to the Nation of Islam in 1948, marking a turning point in his life. Following his release, Malcolm became Muhammad’s protégé, working as a local NOI minister in Harlem.
Like the PME, leaders in the NOI endorsed the core tenets of black nationalism, including racial pride, political self-determination, and economic self-sufficiency. Muhammad, Malcolm X, and other NOI leaders embraced the idea of racial separatism, but their vision was more conservative than the PME leaders’ views on the issue. While Spain, Holiday, and other PME leaders continued to advocate black emigration to West Africa, NOI leaders called for the establishment of separate black communities within the United States. Reminiscent of earlier black nationalists, including Marcus Garvey and Mittie Maude Lena Gordon, Muhammad envisioned racial separatism as a viable response to racism and racial violence in the United States: “Since we cannot get along with [whites] in peace and equality after giving them 400 years of our sweat and blood . . . we believe our contributions to this land and the suffering forced upon us by white America justifies our demand for complete separation in a state or territory of our own.”118
Like Gordon and many other black nationalists before her, Muhammad insisted that the U.S. government was responsible for advancing these efforts as reparations for past exploitation. “The former slave-masters are obligated to provide such land and that the area must be fertile and minerally rich,” he argued. “We believe that our former slave masters are obligated to maintain and supply our needs in this separate territory,” he continued, “until we are able to produce and supply our own needs.”119 Reiterating Muhammad’s message, Malcolm X also endorsed territorial separatism, arguing in a 1963 speech that the U.S. government needed to provide “some states” and “everything we need to start our own independent civilization.” “It’s time to get a divorce and we want a property settlement,” Malcolm passionately argued before a crowd of an estimated four thousand black people in Harlem.120
This message resonated with many black men and women across the country, including those who were not directly affiliated with the NOI. Certainly, the idea of racial separatism—whether black emigration to West Africa or the establishment of separate communities in the United States—had deep roots in black political discourse. Amid the political upheavals of the period, Muhammad’s ideas held sway in black communities—especially among the black working class. In July 1962, Muhammad spoke before an estimated three hundred people in Chicago in which he reinforced his position on territorial separatism. By one account, the black nationalist leader argued that he was not opposed to going to Africa but would only do so if they were unable to create a separate community for black people in the United States. The very reference to Africa caught the attention of PME leaders and some of their political allies, including Earnest Sevier Cox, who sent a note to Spain inquiring as to whether or not she had reached out to the black nationalist religious leader. Cox emphasized the fact that Muhammad would make a good ally for PME leaders not only because of his mutual stance on black separatism but also because of the widespread popularity of the NOI.121
Spain’s reply to Cox revealed her enthusiasm for collaborating with the NOI—a strategy that marked a departure from Gordon’s approach. During her lifetime, Gordon had resisted efforts to collaborate with the NOI, arguing that they were not authentic black nationalists on account of their religious rituals and practices.122 For Gordon, the distinctions between the PME and the NOI seemed to be more salient than the similar platforms of both groups. In Gordon’s absence, however, the new PME leaders attempted to forge an alliance with Elijah Muhammad on the basis of their mutual interests in racial separatism and black political determination. In a letter to Cox, Spain expressed her optimism that the NOI leader “with all his t
housands that follow him” would join forces with the PME to help advance a bill that would provide funding for black relocation to West Africa.123 To that end, she and other PME leaders sent letters to Muhammad and even asked Cox to do the same. “I hope you can make him understand that unity in this program . . . is strength,” she explained.124 There is no evidence to suggest that Elijah Muhammad or any other leader in the NOI responded or even entertained the PME’s request to collaborate. However, Spain’s attempt to forge this alliance symbolizes the intellectual links between earlier black nationalist groups and new formations. Even when individual efforts to collaborate failed to materialize, ideas connected black activists during an era of significant political transformation.
The surge of black nationalist activity in the United States during the mid-1960s coincided with the gradual demise of the PME. In 1965, Alberta Spain launched another letter-writing campaign in an attempt to secure support for a new emigration bill. Reminiscent of Gordon’s earlier activities, Spain sent out copies to U.S. senators with a detailed explanation as to why emigration was the best response for African Americans in the face of segregation and racial violence and terror. “We are tired of being pushed around, segregated and what not,” Spain argued. “We want to develop our own culture, and live in a nation built by black men, for we are proud of our ancestry.”125
Although Spain sent copies of the letters to U.S. senators across the country, they received little coverage in the mainstream media. While black-owned newspapers across the country largely ignored the PME—focusing instead on more popular black nationalist groups—the PME received some coverage in Southern white newspapers during the 1960s. In 1963, the Richmond Times-Dispatch featured an article on the “Back to Africa” movement, highlighting the efforts of Alberta Spain in the PME. Including several direct quotes from Spain’s letter to the newspaper, the editors provided a sweeping overview of black emigrationist movements in the United States and took a neutral approach to the issue. “Should they be given an opportunity to emigrate to Africa?” the editors asked. “It is an interesting sociological question,” they concluded.126 In September 1965, the State newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, included a full-page story on black nationalist efforts to relocate to West Africa, highlighting the work of the PME.127 Clearly sympathetic to the group’s cause, the editors credited the PME for reviving an issue that had long fallen out of favor in mainstream political discourse and recounted PME leaders’ efforts to pass several bills over the years. Although they acknowledged that most black activists would not “show much interest in any resettlement program,” the editors insisted that the PME should forge ahead with their plans. “If there are, in fact, American Negroes who have the capacity, the desire, and the racial pride to work towards establishing a homeland in Africa, then the United States government should look carefully into the matter.” “After all,” they concluded, “Uncle Sam is spending millions of dollars in far less-worthy projects with far less prospect of materially aiding in a solution of the racial problem.”128
Despite the backing of these newspapers, the PME could not sustain widespread interest in light of the political transformations taking place nationally and internationally. The focus on black emigration and continued efforts to seek federal aid to advance these efforts found little appeal among a new generation of black activists caught up in the wave of black radical internationalism of the period. Not surprisingly, the PME lost many of its members during the mid-1960s as they found themselves on the margins of the Civil Rights–Black Power era. The passing of Earnest Sevier Cox in 1966 also dealt a severe blow to the organization’s leaders, who lost one of their most avid (if controversial) supporters and political allies. Internally, the organization also underwent more leadership changes. Although the details remain unclear, Spain vanished from extant organization records—perhaps an indication that she parted ways with the PME. A. B. Baker, an activist who had been a member of the organization in Chicago since the 1930s, emerged as the new president general. Under his leadership, the PME continued to hold meetings on Sunday evenings in Chicago until the 1970s.129 While much smaller in size than in prior years, the organization continued to be a platform from which local activists could engage in black nationalist and internationalist politics. Baker’s writings during this period underscore the same ideals Gordon had emphasized in the organization’s founding meeting in Chicago in 1932—a commitment to universal black liberation, racial pride, black internationalism, political self-determination, and economic self-sufficiency.
FIGURE 16. Amy Jacques Garvey with Minister Edward Seaga, Eustace Whyte, and Martin Luther King Jr. at Marcus Garvey Shrine. The Gleaner, June 1965. Universal Negro Improvement Association Records, Box 19, Folder 6, 1916, 1921–1989, Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives & Rare Book Library, Emory University.
All of these ideas provided the ideological bedrock for a range of new black nationalist organizations established during the 1960s and 1970s. A new generation of black nationalists would not only find appeal in earlier organizations like the UNIA, but in turn, these younger activists would help to renew public interest in these earlier movements.130 Not surprisingly, Amy Jacques Garvey would be at the center of these discussions, using her writings during this period to draw the links between Garveyism and Black Power. Her 1966 article, “The Source and Course of Black Power in the United States,” which appeared in the Jamaican Star newspaper, set out to explain the theoretical foundations upon which new expressions of black nationalism were built.131 “[Garvey] paved the way for all local leaders who have emerged since his death,” she argued. “Most of them,” she continued, “were his under-studies or followers, who were inspired by his dynamic leadership, and the universality of his appeal for justice, equality and independence for the Negro peoples of the world.” After recounting her late husband’s efforts, Jacques Garvey briefly mentioned Mittie Maude Lena Gordon’s political work as evidence of her late husband’s influence. By framing Gordon’s political ideas and praxis as solely an extension of Garveyism, Jacques Garvey overlooked the profound complexity of a movement that built on yet also expanded far beyond Garvey’s teachings.
Yet Jacques Garvey’s essay included an even more glaring omission: it failed to acknowledge the significant part that she and other black women had played in sustaining black nationalist politics. Absent from Jacques Garvey’s essay was a discussion of black women who, regardless of their organizational affiliation, had played a fundamental role in shaping black nationalist movements and discourses in the absence of Garvey’s dominant presence. In an effort to defend her late husband’s ideas and underscore the relevance of Garveyism during the era of Black Power, Jacques Garvey had, in effect, replicated masculinist narratives of black nationalism that had long dominated public discourse. The essay’s deficiencies, however, could never overshadow the robust historical record, filled with the stories—some triumphant, some tragic—of how black nationalist women during the twentieth century vigorously fought to eradicate global white supremacy.
Epilogue
IN 1951, EARNEST SEVIER COX, the white supremacist from Virginia who had collaborated with the Peace Movement of Ethiopia (PME) for decades, wrote a letter to Mittie Maude Lena Gordon, the PME’s founder, to assure her that her political work was not in vain. Cox’s letter, which arrived on Gordon’s desk ten years before her passing, offered words of encouragement during a period in which Gordon lamented her inability to yield any tangible results. Almost twenty years after establishing the PME, she was no step closer to realizing any of her political goals. According to Gordon, many of her supporters had “become disgusted” because of her failed attempts to secure funding for relocation to West Africa—a significant step that she believed was necessary to bolster black political and economic power.1 Encouraging Gordon to look beyond her current realities, Cox praised the black nationalist leader for the “great service you have done for [your] race and country.” “The giant petition prepared by you and
your coworkers of the [PME],” he concluded, “will be discussed by the historians of the future.”2 In some ways, he was right. It was, in fact, the giant emigration petition that first piqued this historian’s interest in Gordon and the other like-minded black activists who passionately supported it during the turbulent years of the Great Depression.
Yet the significance of the petition extends far beyond the actual document itself. For many, the petition tells a story of a failed political movement—an unsuccessful effort by a group of black activists to relocate to West Africa. What few historians have considered, however, is the meaning of the petition for the hundreds of thousands of black men and women who enthusiastically signed their names. Even fewer have considered the central role black women played in order to make the petition possible—with limited economic resources during a tumultuous period of U.S. and global history. In its pages, the PME’s massive emigration petition with an estimated 400,000 names holds a complex and complicated story about social justice, black politics, citizenship, identity, and national belonging. It tells a story of the global black freedom struggle—filled with moments of triumph and hope yet also filled with pain and disappointment, missteps and errors in judgment, and human foibles and imperfections. It tells a story of how a vanguard of black nationalist women fought to eradicate the global color line.
During the Great Depression, World War II, and the early Cold War years, Mittie Maude Lena Gordon, Amy Ashwood Garvey, Ethel Waddell, Maymie De Mena, Amy Jacques Garvey, and other black women leaders dominated the black nationalist scene. These women, from various socioeconomic backgrounds and in various locales, were united in their political view that people of African descent constituted a separate group on the basis of their distinct culture, shared history, and experiences.3 They agitated for the rights and dignity of black men and women in the diaspora, endorsing Pan-African unity, anticolonialism, racial separatism, black pride, political self-determination, and economic self-sufficiency. In the absence of a strong and centralized Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and Marcus Garvey’s domineering presence, these women engaged in black nationalist politics through new, innovative, idiosyncratic, and more creative ways. They employed a range of protest strategies and tactics, drew on numerous religious and political ideologies, and forged alliances with a diverse group of men and women, crossing racial and ethnic, socioeconomic, geographic, and even political lines. Despite their best efforts, however, the women featured in this book did not live to witness the goals they hoped to attain. But long after they were gone, the ideas they promoted and the ideals for which they were fighting persisted. Indeed, new generations of black activists would take up the mantle of the women in this book, often unaware of these women’s courageous—if complex—stories.
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