46. Statement of Thomas H. Bonner (Bernard), November 18, 1942, Mobile, Ala., FBI File No. 100-124410-65, National Archives, Washington, D.C.
47. Statement of Thomas H. Bonner (Bernard), November 18, 1942. On black Americans and World War I, see Lentz-Smith, Freedom Struggles; Williams, Torchbearers of Democracy.
48. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (London: Verso, 1991); also see Sidney Lemelle and Robin D. G. Kelley, eds., Imagining Home: Class, Culture, and Nationalism in the African Diaspora (London: Verso, 1994).
49. Peace Movement of Ethiopia Constitution, 29–31.
50. See Wilson Jeremiah Moses, Alexander Crummell: A Study of Civilization and Discontent (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).
51. Harold, The Rise and Fall of the Garvey Movement, 14.
52. Harold, The Rise and Fall of the Garvey Movement, 3, 27.
53. Rolinson, Grassroots Garveyism, 98–100.
54. Rolinson, Grassroots Garveyism, 122.
55. Harold, The Rise and Fall of the Garvey Movement.
56. Rolinson, Grassroots Garveyism, 182.
57. See Kenneth C. Barnes, Journey of Hope: The Back-to-Africa Movement in Arkansas in the Late 1800s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004); James T. Campbell, Middle Passages: African American Journeys to Africa, 1787–2005 (New York: Penguin, 2006); Robert Johnson, Returning Home: A Century of African-American Repatriation (Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 2005); Wilson Jeremiah Moses, Liberian Dreams: Back-to-Africa Narratives from the 1850s (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998).
58. T. Elwood Davis to Gordon, April 24, 1936, Box 4, Folder 2, Cox Papers.
59. “Liberia Offers Haven to U.S. Colored People,” Chicago Tribune, July 6, 1936.
60. See Adeleke, UnAfrican Americans; Moses, The Golden Age of Black Nationalism.
61. See Ibrahim K. Sundiata, Brothers and Strangers: Black Zion, Black Slavery, 1914–1940 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2003).
62. Hedlin, “Earnest Cox and Colonization,” 135; Gordon to Cox, October 9, 1938, Box 5, Cox Papers.
63. Executive Mansion (Monrovia, Liberia) to Gordon, January 3, 1939, Box 5, Cox Papers.
64. Peace Movement of Ethiopia Constitution, 28.
65. Statement of Thomas H. Bonner, Mobile, Ala., November 18, 1942, FBI File No. 100-124410-65, National Archives, Washington, D.C.
66. Report of Special Agent John L. Sullivan, February 4, 1943, Jackson, Miss., FBI File No. 100-124410-65, National Archives, Washington, D.C. On canvassing, see Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom, 250–56.
67. Report of Special Agent John L. Sullivan, February 4, 1943, FBI File No. 100-124410-65, National Archives, Washington, D.C. On armed self-defense, see Umoja, We Will Shoot Back.
68. Statement of Thomas H. Bonner, Mobile, Ala., November 18, 1942, File No. 100-124410-65.
69. Report of Special Agent John L. Sullivan, February 4, 1943, Jackson, Miss., FBI File No. 100-124410-65, National Archives, Washington, D.C.
70. Statement of William Butler, November 23, 1942, Palataka, Fla., FBI File No. 100-124410-65, National Archives, Washington, D.C.
71. Statement of Rosa Boyd, November 23, 1942, Palataka, Fla., FBI File No. 100-124410-65, National Archives, Washington, D.C.
72. Bettye Collier-Thomas, Jesus, Jobs and Justice: African American Women and Religion (New York: Knopf, 2010); Barbara Savage, Your Spirit Walks Besides Us: The Politics of Black Religion (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2008); Elsa Barkley Brown, “Negotiating and Transforming the Public Sphere: African American Political Life in the Transition from Slavery to Freedom,” Public Culture 7, no. 1 (Fall 1994): 107–46; Brooks-Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent.
73. Lincoln and Mamiya, The Black Church in the African American Experience, 277. Also see Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness.
74. Gordon to T. H. Bernard, August 20, 1942, FBI File No. 100-124410 (capitalizations in original text), National Archives, Washington, D.C.
75. Gordon to Tommie Thomas, August 28, 1942, Exhibit 125, FBI File No. 100-124410, National Archives, Washington, D.C. On African Americans’ political engagement with India, see Gerald Horne, The End of Empires: African Americans and Indians (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009); Nico Slate, Colored Cosmopolitanism: The Shared Struggle for Freedom in the United States and India (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2012).
76. PME Installation Ceremony, September 20, 1942, Exhibit 29, FBI Investigative File No. 100-124410, National Archives, Washington, D.C.
77. See Slate, Colored Cosmopolitanism, 2, 7. Also see Horne, The End of Empires.
78. See Kornweibel, Seeing Red.
79. Peace Movement of Ethiopia Constitution, 3.
80. Gordon to Kenji Nakauchi, May 22, 1934, Exhibit 164a in Report by Special Agents Francis A. Regan, Aubrey Elliott Jr., and Richard W. Axtell, FBI Investigative File No. 100-124410, National Archives, Washington, D.C.
81. Gordon to Sadao Araki, n.d., Exhibit 160a in Report by Special Agents Francis A. Regan, Aubrey Elliott Jr., Andrew J. Rafferty, and Richard W. Axtell, FBI Investigative File No. 100-124410, National Archives, Washington, D.C.
82. Gordon to Sadao Araki, n.d., Exhibit 160a in Report by Special Agents Francis A. Regan, Aubrey Elliott Jr., Andrew J. Rafferty, and Richard W. Axtell, FBI Investigative File No. 100-124410, National Archives, Washington, D.C.
83. Marc Gallichio, The African American Encounter with Japan and China: Black Internationalism in Asia, 1895–1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 121–25.
84. These figures are based on the author’s calculations using PME membership data obtained by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1942. The author was unable to determine the sex of thirty-six individuals. It is unclear exactly why much of the organization’s membership was concentrated in these three specific counties.
85. 1930 U.S. Federal Census, Beat 5, Washington, Miss., Ancestry.com subscription database, http://www.ancestry.com (accessed May 13, 2013); Mittie Maude Lena Gordon to Joella Johnson, January 15, 1942, FBI File No. 100-124410-65, National Archives, Washington, D.C.
86. Peace Movement of Ethiopia Constitution, 28–29; Program at the AME Zion Church, February 3, 1939 in Box 5, Folder 2, Cox Papers.
87. Peace Movement of Ethiopia Constitution, 28–29. Allen might have been referring to one of the PME’s standard prayers that members recited during weekly meetings.
88. Peace Movement of Ethiopia Constitution, 28–29 (capitalizations included in the original text).
89. Leon Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery (New York: Knopf, 1979).
90. William Leuchtenburg, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932–1940 (New York: Harper and Row, 1963).
91. Sitkoff, A New Deal for Blacks; Kelley, Hammer and Hoe; Zaragosa Vargas, Labor Rights Are Civil Rights: Mexican American Workers in Twentieth-Century America (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2007); Patricia Sullivan, Days of Hope: Race and Democracy in the New Deal Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996).
92. Bruce Schulman, From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt: Federal Policy, Economic Development, and the Transformation of the South, 1938–1980 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1994).
93. Statement from Joella Johnson, Long, Miss., November 5, 1942, and November 6, 1942, FBI File No. 100-124410-65, National Archives, Washington, D.C.
94. Census records confirm the literacy of Joella Johnson, who was certainly able to read and write. 1930 U.S. Federal Census, Beat 5, Washington, Miss., Ancestry.com subscription database, http://www.ancestry.com (accessed May 13, 2013).
95. 1930 U.S. Federal Census, Beat 5, Washington, Miss.
96. Robin D. G. Kelley, “ ‘We Are Not What We Seem’: Rethinking Black Working-Class Opposition in the Jim Crow South,” Journal of American History 80, no. 1 (June 1993): 75–112. Kelley draws on James C. Scott
’s theory of infrapolitics. See Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1990).
97. The FBI acknowledges that very few African Americans worked as agents during the early twentieth century. They can only confirm that four black agents worked with the agency prior to 1962, when Aubrey Lewis and James Barrow became the first African Americans admitted to the FBI academy. See “ ‘A Byte Out of History’: Early African-American Agents,” Federal Bureau of Investigation, www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2011/february/history_021511 (accessed June 9, 2013).
98. Statement of George G. Green, Matherville, Mississippi, November 5, 1942, FBI File No. 100-124410-65, National Archives, Washington, D.C.; Organizational Records of the Peace Movement of Ethiopia, January 23, 1941, Exhibit No. 32, FBI File No. 100-124410-65, National Archives, Washington, D.C.
99. Statement of George G. Green, Matherville, Miss., November 5, 1942, FBI File No. 100-124410-65, National Archives, Washington, D.C.
100. List of Officers of Locals Number 10 and 11 in Report of Special Agent John Sullivan, February 4, 1943, Jackson, Mississippi, FBI File No. 100-124410-65, National Archives, Washington, D.C.
101. In Garvey’s UNIA, the “lady president” was a title bestowed upon women leaders who were responsible for overseeing a woman’s division. See Bair, “ ‘Ethiopia Shall Stretch Forth Her Hands unto God,’ ” 41, 45.
102. Gordon to Johnson, January 15, 1942, FBI File No. 100-124410-65, National Archives, Washington, D.C.
103. Gordon to Johnson, January 15, 1942, FBI File No. 100-124410-65, National Archives, Washington, D.C. See Garvey and Jacques Garvey, The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey.
104. Gordon to Green, July 22, 1941; enclosure in letter from A. H. Johnson to Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, October 29, 1942, FBI File No. 100-124410-65, National Archives, Washington, D.C.
105. Gordon to Hawthorne, April 15, 1942, FBI File No. 100-124410-65, National Archives, Washington, D.C.
106. Gordon to T. H. Bernard, July 29, 1942, enclosure in letter from A. H. Johnson to Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, October 29, 1942, FBI File No. 100-124410-65, National Archives, Washington, D.C.
107. Allen to Bilbo, August 4, 1942, Box 1091, Folder 7, Bilbo Papers.
108. Allen to Bilbo, 1939 (no month or date listed), Box 1091, Folder 4, Bilbo Papers.
109. Gordon to Bilbo, August 10, 1938, Box 1091, Folder 10, Bilbo Papers.
110. Allen to Bilbo, June 9, 1938, Box 354, Folder 15, Bilbo Papers.
111. Harold, The Rise and Fall of the Garvey Movement, 25.
112. On the roots of the southern segregationist movement, see Jason Ward, Defending White Democracy: The Making of a Segregationist Movement and the Remaking of Racial Politics, 1939–1965 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011).
113. Robert L. Fleegler, “Theodore G. Bilbo and the Decline of Public Racism, 1938–1947,” Journal of Mississippi History 68 (Spring 2006): 2; Dan T. Carter, From George Wallace to Newt Gingrich: Race in the Conservative Counterrevolution, 1963–1994 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Press, 1996).
114. Michael Fitzgerald, “ ‘We Have Found a Moses’: Theodore Bilbo, Black Nationalism, and the Greater Liberia Bill of 1939,” Journal of Southern History 63 (1997): 296.
115. Quoted in Chester Morgan, Redneck Liberal: Theodore G. Bilbo and the New Deal (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985), 227.
116. Morgan, Redneck Liberal, 227.
117. Moses, The Golden Age of Black Nationalism; Pinkney, Red, Black, and Green.
118. While Delany and Turner received financial support from the ACS, they were also critical of the organization. See Eric Burin, Slavery and the Peculiar Solution: A History of the American Colonization Society (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2005).
119. Martin, Race First, 344–57; Fitzgerald, “We Have Found a Moses.”
120. Michele Mitchell, Righteous Propagation: African Americans and the Politics of Racial Destiny After Reconstruction (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 220.
121. Allen to Bilbo, June 9, 1938, Box 354, Folder 15, Bilbo Papers.
122. This was the case for several black nationalists including Marcus Garvey, Amy Jacques Garvey, Mittie Maude Lena Gordon, and, later, Malcolm X. See Martin, Race First, 344–57; Manning Marable, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention (New York: Viking, 2011), 178–79.
123. Morgan, Redneck Liberal; Fleegler, “Theodore G. Bilbo and the Decline of Public Racism.”
124. Morgan, Redneck Liberal, 1.
125. Allen to Bilbo, August 4, 1942, Box 1091, Folder 7, Bilbo Papers.
126. Green to Bilbo, March 8, 1938, Box 340, Folder 1, Bilbo Papers.
127. Bilbo to Green, March 17, 1938, Box 341, Folder 12, Bilbo Papers.
128. Bilbo to Green, March 17, 1938, Box 341, Folder 12, Bilbo Papers.
129. Peace Movement of Ethiopia Constitution, 28.
130. Allen to Bilbo, August 4, 1942, Box 1091, Folder 7, Bilbo Papers.
131. The Bilbo Papers include hundreds of pages of signed petitions from the Peace Movement of Ethiopia emigration campaign, which began in 1933. The petitions are not dated, and thus it is impossible to determine exactly when signatures were obtained. See PME Petitions, Boxes 1186 and 1187, Bilbo Papers.
132. Glenda Gilmore argues that black women’s invisibility during the Jim Crow era provided new avenues for their political participation. See Gilmore, Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896–1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996).
133. Celia Jane Allen to Bernard, September 28, 1942, File No. 100-124410-65.
134. For example, Bernard, who helped establish two local PME chapters in Mississippi, went on to help establish a local chapter in Mobile, Ala., where he eventually relocated for work. Statement of Thomas H. Bonner, November 18, 1942, Mobile, Ala., File No. 100-124410-65.
Chapter 4
1. Florence Kenna to Theodore G. Bilbo, March 15, 1938, Box 341, Folder 1, Theodore G. Bilbo Papers, McCain Library and Archives, University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, Miss. (hereafter cited as Bilbo Papers).
2. Examples of these congratulatory letters include Ellen Johnson to Theodore Bilbo, March 15, 1938, Box 341, Folder 1, Bilbo Papers; George Calbert to Bilbo, March 15, 1938, Box 341, Folder 1; Emma Beal to Bilbo, March 13, 1938, Box 340, Folder 16, Bilbo Papers.
3. Fitzgerald, “ ‘We Have Found a Moses.’ ”
4. Du Bois, Souls of Black Folk; Marable and Agard-Jones, Transnational Blackness.
5. Martin, Race First, 344–57.
6. Paula Baker, “The Domestication of Politics: Women and American Political Society, 1790–1920,” American Historical Review 89, no. 3 (1984): 622; Judith Butler, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory,” Theatre Journal 40, no. 4. (December 1988): 521.
7. Mittie Maude Lena Gordon to Earnest Sevier Cox, August 7, 1934, Box 4, Folder 1, Earnest Sevier Cox Papers, 1821–1973, Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke University, Durham, N.C. (hereafter cited as Cox Papers). Capitalizations are included in the original text.
8. Watts, God, Harlem, USA; Satter, “Marcus Garvey, Father Divine.”
9. “Greetings! Children of Ethiopia,” Ethiopian World, May 26, 1934.
10. “Division of U.N.I.A., August 29, Is Active,” Ethiopian World, May 26, 1934.
11. Ibrahim Sundiata, Brothers and Strangers: Black Zion, Black Slavery, 1914–1940 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2003), 79–96.
12. Ibrahim K. Sundiata, “Prelude to Scandal: Liberia and Fernando Po, 1880–1930,” Journal of African History 15, no. 1 (1974): 97–112.
13. James Meriwether, Proudly We Can Be Africans: Black Americans and Africa, 1935–1961 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2002), 24.
14. Albert McCall, “Liberia,” in Peace Movement of Eth
iopia Constitution.
15. Peace Movement of Ethiopia Constitution, 35.
16. “Liberia Offers a Welcome,” Ethiopian World, May 26, 1934.
17. “Liberia Needs U.N.I.A. Groups, Mitchell Says,” Ethiopian World, May 26, 1934.
18. Letter from the African Reconstruction Association to W. E. B. Du Bois, June 15, 1934, W. E. B. Du Bois Papers, Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries (MS 312); Preamble of the Constitution of the African Reconstruction Association (enclosure), June 15, 1934, W. E. B. Du Bois Papers, Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries (MS 312).
19. Ethiopian World, May 26, 1934, vol. 1, no. 1.
20. Gaines, Uplifting the Race.
21. “Home Through Self-Help Is Negro’s Need,” Ethiopian World, May 26, 1934.
22. “A.R.A. Hears Liberian Tell of Possibilities,” Ethiopian World, May 26, 1934.
23. Lloyd Graves, “Help Save Our Race,” Ethiopian World, September 19, 1934.
24. “A Petition,” March 9, 1938, Box 340, Folder 4, Bilbo Papers.
25. Cora Lee Frazier to Theodore Bilbo, March 14, 1938, Box 340, Folder 18, Bilbo Papers.
26. Anonymous letter to Bilbo, May 16, 1939, Box 1091, Folder 12, Bilbo Papers.
27. Albert McCall, “My Home,” in Peace Movement of Ethiopia Constitution, 34.
28. W. E. Johnson, D.D.S. to Theodore Bilbo, February 2, 1939, Box 1091, Folder 1, Bilbo Papers.
29. Anderson, Imagined Communities; Lemelle and Kelley, Imagining Home.
30. James Ciment, Another America: The Story of Liberia and the Former Slaves Who Ruled It (New York: Hill and Wang, 2013), 188.
31. Mary Renda, Taking Haiti: Military Occupation and the Culture of U.S. Imperialism, 1915–1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001); Brenda Gayle Plummer, Haiti and the United States: The Psychological Moment (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1992).
32. Thomas Bender, A Nation Among Nations: America’s Place in World History (New York: Hill and Wang, 2006).
33. W. E. B. Du Bois and Nahum Dimitri Chandle, The Problem of the Color Line at the Turn of the Twentieth Century: The Essential Early Essays (New York: Fordham University Press, 2015), 22.
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