88. Gordon to Cox, May 22, 1938, Box 4, Folder 5, Cox Papers.
89. George Shepperson, “Ethiopianism and African Nationalism,” Phylon 14, no. 1 (1953): 9–18; St. Clair Drake, The Redemption of Africa and Black Religion (Chicago: Third World Press, 1970); Wilson Jeremiah Moses, Afrotopia: The Roots of African American Popular History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 26–27.
90. PME Installation Ceremony, September 20, 1942, Exhibit No. 29, FBI Investigative Files, “Peace Movement of Ethiopia” (SAC, Chicago, 100-8932), File No. 100-124410, RG 60, National Archives, Washington, D.C.
91. Moses, The Golden Age of Black Nationalism, 156–57.
92. Melinda Plastas, A Band of Noble Women: Racial Politics in the Women’s Peace Movement (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2011).
93. On the women’s peace movement, see Harriet Alonso, Peace as a Women’s Issue: A History of the U.S. Movement for World Peace and Women’s Rights (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1993); Joyce Blackwell, No Peace Without Freedom: Race and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, 1915–1975 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2004).
94. Jill Watts, God, Harlem, USA: The Father Divine Story (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); Beryl Satter, “Marcus Garvey, Father Divine and the Gender Politics of Race Difference and Race Neutrality,” American Quarterly 48, no. 1 (March 1996): 43–76; Weisenfeld, New World A-Coming.
95. Statement of Sam Hawthorne, November 7, 1942, File No. 100-124410.
96. McCray, The Universal Negro Improvement Association.
97. Membership roll in the Peace Movement of Ethiopia Report, August 8, 1942, FBI File No. 100-124410-65, National Archives, Washington, D.C.
98. Hill, FBI’s RACON, 93.
99. Peace Movement of Ethiopia Minutes, June 15, 1942, Exhibit No. 46, FBI Investigative Files, “Peace Movement of Ethiopia” (SAC, Chicago, 100-8932), File No. 100-124410, RG 60, National Archives, Washington, D.C.
100. Report of PME Meetings (Excerpts of Minutes), FBI Investigative Files, “Peace Movement of Ethiopia” (SAC, Chicago, 100-8932), File No. 100-124410, National Archives, Washington, D.C.
101. Report of PME Meetings (Excerpts of Minutes).
102. “Nation Stirred over Move to Colonize Race in Africa,” Chicago Defender, March 7, 1936.
103. “Nation Stirred over Move to Colonize Race in Africa.” “Better class” phrase comes from W. E. B. Du Bois, who used it to describe class divisions in The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study (Philadelphia: Published for the University, 1899).
104. Quoted in Ibrahim Sundiata, Brothers and Strangers: Black Zion, Black Slavery, 1914–1940 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2003), 312. Such critiques were also reminiscent of the ones Garvey received from Du Bois and other race leaders during the 1920s. See Martin, Race First, 274–280; Grant, Negro with a Hat, 298–317.
105. Mitchell, Righteous Propagation, 20; Nell Irvin Painter, Exodusters: Black Migration to Kansas After Reconstruction (New York: W. W. Norton, 1986), 141–45. Steven Hahn makes a similar argument that emigrationism held greater currency for southern black laborers. See Hahn, A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003), 318.
106. Hill, FBI’s RACON, 528–29.
107. Kearney, African American Views of the Japanese, 99.
108. Organizational Records of the Peace Movement of Ethiopia, January 23, 1941, Exhibit No. 32, FBI Investigative Files, “Peace Movement of Ethiopia” (SAC, Chicago, 100-8932), File No. 100-124410, National Archives, Washington, D.C.
109. This is based on the author’s calculations.
110. Peace Movement of Ethiopia Constitution, 12.
111. Peace Movement of Ethiopia Constitution, 7–8.
112. Organizational Records of the Peace Movement of Ethiopia, January 23, 1941, Exhibit No. 32, FBI Investigative Files, “Peace Movement of Ethiopia” (SAC, Chicago, 100-8932), File No. 100-124410, National Archives, Washington, D.C. 1940 Census records indicate that Jernigan was a housewife, although city records from 1926 have her listed as a “laborer.” See United States of America, Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census of the United States, 1940, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C., 1940, Ancestry.com subscription database, http://www.ancestry.com (accessed February 5, 2013); U.S. City Directories, 1821–1989, Galesburg, Ill., City Directory, 1926, Ancestry.com subscription database, http://www.ancestry.com (accessed February 5, 2013).
113. United States of America, Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census of the United States, 1940, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C., 1940, Ancestry.com subscription database, http://www.ancestry.com (accessed February 5, 2013); United States of America, Bureau of the Census, Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C., 1900, Ancestry.com subscription database, http://www.ancestry.com (accessed February 5, 2013).
114. 106th session of the Supreme Council of the Peace Movement of Ethiopia, December 5, 1941, Exhibit No. 35, FBI Investigative Files, “Peace Movement of Ethiopia” (SAC, Chicago, 100-8932), File No. 100-124410, National Archives, Washington, D.C.
115. Organizational Records of the Peace Movement of Ethiopia, January 23, 1941, Exhibit No. 32, FBI Investigative Files, “Peace Movement of Ethiopia” (SAC, Chicago, 100-8932), File No. 100-124410, National Archives, Washington, D.C.
116. Peace Movement of Ethiopia Constitution, 5.
117. Martin Summers, Manliness and Its Discontents: The Black Middle Class and the Transformation of Black Masculinity, 1900–1930 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 93; Organizational Records of the Peace Movement of Ethiopia, 1942, Exhibit No. 38, FBI Investigative Files, “Peace Movement of Ethiopia” (SAC, Chicago, 100-8932), File No. 100-124410, National Archives, Washington, D.C.
118. 106th session of the Supreme Council of the Peace Movement of Ethiopia. On the Deacons for Defense and Justice, see Timothy Tyson, Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999); Lance Hill, The Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004).
119. On armed self-defense, see Akinyele Umoja, We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Struggle (New York: New York University, 2013).
120. Stephen Ward Angell, Bishop Henry McNeal Turner and African-American Religion in the South (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992), 138; Adeleke, UnAfrican Americans, 100.
121. Martin, Race First, 347.
122. On the New Deal, see William Leuchtenburg, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932–1940 (New York: Harper and Row, 1963).
123. Kelley, Hammer and Hoe; Patricia Sullivan, Days of Hope: Race and Democracy in the New Deal Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996).
124. Peace Movement of Ethiopia Constitution, 20.
125. Peace Movement of Ethiopia Constitution, 23.
126. Charles Spurgeon Johnson, Bitter Canaan: The Story of the Negro Republic (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1987); Ibrahim K. Sundiata, Brothers and Strangers: Black Zionism, Black Slavery, 1914–1940 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2003); Emily S. Rosenberg, “The Invisible Protectorate: The United States, Liberia, and the Evolution of Neocolonialism, 1909–40,” Diplomatic History 9 (Summer 1985): 191–205.
127. Peace Movement of Ethiopia Constitution, 4; United States v. Mittie Maude Lena Gordon, et al., 138 F.2d 174 (7th Cir. October 9, 1943).
128. Peace Movement of Ethiopia Constitution, 15. By 1933, the organization’s leaders decided on Liberia as the ideal location.
129. Brief History of the Peace Movement of Ethiopia to President Roosevelt Pamphlet, March 1939, Reel 243, American Colonization Society Records, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
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br /> 130. Peace Movement of Ethiopia Constitution, 14–15, 19; Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1944), 813. This account is also described in Ralph J. Bunche and Gunnar Myrdal, The Programs, Ideologies, Tactics and Achievements of Negro Betterment and Interracial Organizations (New York: International Microfilm Press, 1945).
131. Peace Movement of Ethiopia Constitution, 22.
132. Pierrepont Moffat to Gordon, October 11, 1934, Box 4, Folder 1, Cox Papers.
133. Gordon to Cox, March 7, 1934, Box 4, Folder 1, Cox Papers.
Chapter 3
1. Long, Miss., is located between Greenville and Leland on the Washington County/Sunflower County line at the intersection of Longswitch and Bamboo Roads.
2. Neil R. McMillen, Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989), 229. In the postwar era, Mississippi witnessed a significant increase in lynching even as national trends revealed an overall decline in mob violence. See Jason Morgan Ward, Hanging Bridge: Racial Violence and America’s Civil Rights Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016).
3. Rev. George Green to Theodore Bilbo, March 8, 1938, Box 340, Folder 1, Theodore G. Bilbo Papers, McCain Library, University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, Miss. On Green’s living arrangements, see 1940 U.S. Federal Census, Washington County, Miss., Ancestry.com subscription database, http://www.ancestry.com (accessed May 10, 2013).
4. Statement of Thomas H. Bonner, November 18, 1942, Mobile, Ala., Records of the FBI, Investigative Files on the Peace Movement of Ethiopia, File No. 100-124410, RG 60, National Archives, Washington, D.C. For reflections on life in Matherville, see Gayle Graham Yates, Life and Death in a Small Southern Town: Memories of Shubuta, Mississippi (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2004), 181–200.
5. Peace Movement of Ethiopia Constitution, 29.
6. Celia Jane Allen to Theodore Bilbo, 1939 (no month or date listed), Box 1091, Folder 4, Bilbo Papers.
7. Allen to Bilbo, August 4, 1942, Box 1091, Folder 7, Bilbo Papers.
8. Charles Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007).
9. On scholarship on black women in the Jim Crow South, see Vicki L. Crawford, Jacqueline Anne Rouse, and Barbara Woods, eds., Women in the Civil Rights Movement: Trailblazers and Torchbearers, 1941–1965 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990); Chana Kai Lee, For Freedom’s Sake: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999); Lynne Olson, Freedom’s Daughters: The Unsung Heroines of the Civil Rights Movement from 1830 to 1970 (New York: Scribner, 2001); Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003); Shannon Frystak, Our Minds on Freedom: Women and the Struggle for Black Equality in Louisiana, 1924–1967 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2009).
10. Celia Jane Allen to Thomas Bernard, September 28, 1942, FBI File No. 100-124410-65, National Archives, Washington, D.C. Also see Celia Jane Allen to Theodore Bilbo, no date listed, Box 1091, Folder 4, Bilbo Papers; Allen to Bilbo, October 18, 1941, Box 1091, Folder 7, Bilbo Papers; Allen to Bilbo, August 4, 1942, Box 1091, Folder 7, Bilbo Papers.
11. Photograph of PME’s Executive Council, Oversize Materials, Earnest Sevier Cox Papers, 1821–1973, Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke University, Durham, N.C.
12. James Grossman, Land of Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners, and the Great Migration (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989); Joe William Trotter Jr., The Great Migration in Historical Perspective: New Dimensions on Race, Class, and Gender (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991).
13. 1930 U.S. Federal Census, Cook County, Chicago, Ill., Ancestry.com subscription database, http://www.ancestry.com (accessed May 7, 2013). On black women in domestic service, see Elizabeth Clark-Lewis, Living In, Living Out: African American Domestics in Washington, D.C., 1910–1940 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994); Phyllis Palmer, Domesticity and Dirt: Housewives and Domestic Servants in the United States, 1920–1945 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989).
14. 1940 U.S. Federal Census, Ward 15, Cook County, Chicago, Ill., Ancestry.com subscription database, http://www.ancestry.com (accessed May 7, 2013).
15. Joe William Trotter Jr., From a Raw Deal to a New Deal? Black Americans, 1929–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); Harvard Sitkoff, A New Deal for Blacks: The Emergence of Civil Rights as a National Issue (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978).
16. Allen to Bilbo, August 4, 1942, Box 1091, Folder 7, Bilbo Papers.
17. Allen to Bilbo, June 9, 1938, Box 354, Folder 15, Bilbo Papers.
18. Allen to Bilbo, October 8, 1941?, Box 1091, Folder 8, Bilbo Papers. It is unclear if the five dollar payment was a one-time occurrence or recurring payment.
19. Allen to Bilbo, June 9, 1938, Box 354, Folder 15, Bilbo Papers.
20. McMillen, Dark Journey, 229–230. McMillen points out that the majority of lynchings (about 70 percent) occurred in Mississippi counties with the greatest density of black population.
21. McMillen, Dark Journey, 229, 335.
22. McMillen, Dark Journey, 335. Also see Ida B. Wells and Jacqueline Jones Royster, eds., Southern Horrors and Other Writings: The Anti-Lynching Campaign of Ida B. Wells, 1892–1900 (Boston: Bedford, 1997); Mia Bay, To Tell the Truth Freely: The Life of Ida B. Wells (New York: Hill and Wang, 2010).
23. Crystal N. Feimster, Southern Horrors: Women and the Politics of Rape and Lynching (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009), 158–85.
24. Feimster, Southern Horrors, 159.
25. These statistics are based on recorded cases between 1890 and 1939. See Kerry Segrave, Lynchings of Women in the United States: The Recorded Cases, 1851–1946 (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2010), 8. Neil McMillen cites fourteen lynch cases involving black women (after 1888). See McMillen, Dark Journey, 229.
26. Amy Louise Wood, Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in America, 1890–1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 197; Jason Morgan Ward, Defending White Democracy: The Making of a Segregationist Movement and the Remaking of Racial Politics, 1936–1965 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011), 22–23.
27. McMillen, Dark Journey, 252.
28. Nan Woodruff, American Congo: The African American Freedom Struggle in the Delta (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003), 38–73.
29. Crystal Sanders, A Chance for Change: Head Start and Mississippi’s Black Freedom Struggle (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016), 11–31; Tiyi M. Morris, Womanpower Unlimited and the Black Freedom Struggle in Mississippi (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2015), 1–14.
30. Woodruff, American Congo, 152–90.
31. Mark Solomon, The Cry Was Unity: Communists and African Americans, 1917–1936 (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1998), 125.
32. Kelley, Hammer and Hoe, 132.
33. Kelley, Hammer and Hoe, 124.
34. 1940 U.S. Federal Census, Washington County, Miss., Ancestry.com subscription database, http://www.ancestry.com (accessed May 10, 2013).
35. Rev. George Green to Bilbo, March 8, 1938, Box 340, Folder 2, Bilbo Papers.
36. Statement of George G. Green, Matherville, Miss., November 5, 1942, FBI File No. 100-124410-65, National Archives, Washington, D.C. For an overview of federal surveillance of black radicals, see Theodore Kornweibel, Seeing Red: Federal Campaigns Against Black Militancy, 1919–1925 (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1991).
37. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya, eds., The Black Church in the African American Experience (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1990); Steven Hahn, A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard Universi
ty Press, 2003).
38. Robin D. G. Kelley, Race Rebels: Culture, Politics and the Black Working Class (New York: Free Press, 1996), 51.
39. Evelyn Brooks-Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880–1920 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), 10.
40. Lincoln and Mamiya, The Black Church in the African American Experience; Cheryl Townsend Gilkes, “ ‘Together and in Harness’: Women’s Traditions in the Sanctified Church, Signs 10, no. 4 (Summer 1985): 678–99; Bair, “ ‘Ethiopia Shall Stretch Forth Her Hands unto God.’ ”
41. Tera W. Hunter, “Feminist Consciousness and Black Nationalism: Amy Jacques Garvey and Women in the Universal Negro Improvement Association” (unpublished paper presented at Women’s History Research Seminar, Yale University, 1983); Bair, “ ‘Ethiopia Shall Stretch Forth Her Hands unto God’ ”; Bair, “True Women, Real Men”; Beryl Satter, “Marcus Garvey, Father Divine, and the Gender Politics of Race Difference and Race Neutrality,” American Quarterly 48, no. 1 (March 1996): 43–76. Historian Claudrena Harold describes the New Orleans division of the UNIA as one notable exception in terms of gendered leadership, arguing that the division was “quite progressive with regards to the promotion of women to leadership positions.” See Harold, The Rise and Fall of the Garvey Movement, 142, n. 102.
42. Taylor, Veiled Garvey, 2.
43. McDuffie, Sojourning for Freedom, 147. Also see Gore, Radicalism at the Crossroads; Harris, “Running with the Reds.” On respectability, see Brooks-Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent; Cheryl Hicks, Talk with You like a Woman: African American Women, Justice, and Reform in New York, 1890–1935 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010).
44. Statement of George Green, Matherville, Mississippi, November 5, 1942, FBI File No. 100-124410-65, National Archives, Washington, D.C.
45. World War I Selective Service System Draft Registration Cards, 1917–1918, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C., Ancestry.com subscription database, http://www.ancestry.com (accessed May 5, 2013).
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