Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia by Winston James

Author:Winston James
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Verso Books

Schomburg, forever concerned with group survival, became more worried about the prospects for black people in the United States as he grew older. Even though he at times expressed great faith in Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal—he conveyed to the President his “deep appreciation for the great good you are doing to bring sunshine to the nation”62—Schomburg remained pessimistic. Less than a year before he died he made a bleak prophecy: “I am becoming very doubtful of the Negro finding a place for himself in the next quarter of a century. I believe that the forces that are working in this nation against radicalism and syndicalism are going to convert their forces like pincers and crush our group. We will either be relegated to the level of the sidewalk or back to Africa in the spirit of the philosophy of Marcus Garvey.”63

Schomburg was a strong supporter of Marcus Garvey, but he never believed in the idea of a return to Africa. The fact that in all seriousness, albeit in despair, he contemplated such an idea showed the gloom and desperation that invaded Schomburg’s thoughts toward the end of his life. But Schomburg’s attitude toward Garvey, and, by extension, toward black nationalism, requires elaboration here. These are in fact some of the most under-explored issues surrounding Schomburg’s life and politics, yet some of the most crucial to elucidating his politics.

It is somewhat misleading to claim, as one author does, that Schomburg was a Garvey “disciple.”64 Schomburg had more than ample opportunity to join the UNIA, but never did. Having said that, however, Schomburg’s support of Garvey was very strong, even passionate, and remarkably enduring.

It appears that from his very earliest encounter with Garvey, Schomburg’s rebel heart began to sing. Never a conservative, Schomburg admired Garvey’s audacity, his lion-heartedness. His closest friends reacted in a similar manner to the emergence of Garvey and the UNIA. After initial hesitation, John Edward Bruce, Schomburg’s spiritual father, threw in his lot with Garvey, became an official, a columnist of the Negro World, and one of the UNIA’s leading intellectuals and staunchest defenders up to his death in 1924, aged sixty-eight. William Ferris, like Bruce, a leading member of the American Negro Academy, became at an even earlier stage than Bruce a fervent supporter of Garvey and an official of the UNIA, editing the organization’s newspaper through its most crucial years. (George Schuyler, who hated Garvey, said that Ferris, a graduate of both Yale and Harvard, provided the best philosphical defense of Garveyism that he had ever heard.)65 Dr John Wesley Cromwell, a former president of the American Negro Academy, and a very close friend of Schomburg’s, was also a strong supporter of the UNIA.66 Schomburg shared some of his innermost thoughts about Garvey and the UNIA with Cromwell, who lived in Washington, DC.

Schomburg evidently attended the 1919 UNIA convention in New York. He reported to Cromwell that “our friend” Ferris delivered a very inspiring address that “shook the timbers of the ceiling” of Liberty Hall.

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