African Americans and Africa: A New History by Nemata Amelia Ibitayo Blyden

Author:Nemata Amelia Ibitayo Blyden [Blyden, Nemata Amelia Ibitayo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Africa, General, United States, Social Science, Ethnic Studies, African American Studies
ISBN: 9780300198669
Google: 3TeWDwAAQBAJ
Amazon: 0300198663
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2019-05-28T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

“My Africa, Motherland of

the Negro peoples!”

In May 1935 the Baltimore Afro American reported on a parade in Harlem, New York. Two thousand people marched to the Abyssinian Baptist Church in protest of Italy’s invasion of Abyssinia (later Ethiopia). The crowd congregated in the church to listen to a series of speakers read poems, press for a boycott of Italian American businesses, and urge support for Ethiopia and its citizens. I. Alleyn of the Workers Forum passionately declared that “when a man in Abyssinia is struck by Italy, it is not that one man alone who is hurt, but men in the British West Indies, in America, and in every country where black men are found.” Men and women of African descent around the world were outraged by Italy’s aggression against Abyssinia.1

Alleyn voiced a sentiment shared by many of those crowded in the church that day—that black America and Africa were intimately connected, largely because of the color of their skin. African Americans saw their plight as inextricably linked with that of Africans and their struggle for liberation. This belief was sustained until Africans gained independence from colonial rule.

From the 1930s to the 1950s African Americans agitated, advocated, and spoke out on behalf of Africa and its people. During the Cold War, as the United States began to see the continent’s importance, African Americans played a leading role in the new relationship between Africa and the United States. In this era we can see clear distinctions between African American interest, identification, influence, and engagement with Africa. There were those who continued to identify with Africa as a source of their heritage and those who sought to influence events on the continent, advocate on its behalf, and help shape American policy toward it. As descendants of Africa they frequently crafted a discourse positing themselves as suitable consultants and advisers on African issues. However, by the middle of the twentieth century the voice for Africa in the United States was no longer solely an African American voice. Africans were speaking for themselves.

By the early twentieth century European colonizers had consolidated their hold in Africa. Colonialism was characterized by a racial domination similar to that which existed in the United States. Strong elements of racism, cultural imposition, and economic exploitation marked the relationship between European colonizers and their African subjects. The historian Christopher Fyfe has written cogently on racial rule in Africa, pointing out the use of race as “political control.” “Authority in colonial Africa,” he observes, “was white authority, exercised through the presence of an imputed white skin.”2

Although Africans were a majority in the colonies, they were subordinated and their resources exploited under the guise of European superiority. African subjects had very limited access to education, although missionaries often set up schools to educate them in the ways of Christianity. Consequently, there was a small literate African population in many colonies. Mostly male, literate Africans had acquired at least a secondary school education, which allowed them to hold minor positions within colonial structures.

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