Wilson J. Moses - Classical Black Nationalism: From the American Revolution to Marcus Garvey

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The following letters are used with the permission of the Board
of Trustees of the New Bedford Free Public Library:
Paul Cuffe to Peter Williams, August 30, 1816
Paul Cuffe to James Forten, January 8, 1817
James Forten to Paul Cuffe, January 25, 1817

New York University Press
New York and London

1996 by New York University
All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Classical Black nationalism : from the American Revolution to Marcus
Garvey / edited by Wilson Jeremiah Moses.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8147-5524-0 (cloth : alk. paper). ISBN 0-8147-5533-X
(pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Afro-AmericansHistorySources. 2. Black nationalismUnited
StatesHistorySources. 3. Pan-AfricanismHistorySources.
I. Moses, Wilson Jeremiah, 1942
E148.6.C62 1996
973.0496073 95-44335
CIP

New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and
their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability.

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3

Since this volume is intended not as a scholarly edition but as a teaching text, I have dedicated it to my students who, over the past quarter century, have taught me how to teach this material. While aimed at the mid-career college undergraduate, the volume should also be useful to graduate students, whose prior work in African American history has focused on the heroic and necessary struggles of the civil rights movement to the neglect of the equally important self-help tradition. Much of this material will be interesting and familiar to high school students who have been exposed to black nationalist values in their homes, churches, and other social institutions, although it may appear esoteric to persons whose understanding of African American sentiments and traditions derives from standard classroom treatments or from commercialized popular culture. Traditional black nationalist and Pan-Africanist feeling is very much alive in America, as symbolized by the many red, black, and green banners of the Garvey movement displayed during the Million Man March on Washington of October 16, 1995. It may, therefore, be assumed that the documents reprinted in this volume will interest persons entirely outside academic environments. The introduction, head notes, index, and short bibliography should be useful to persons embarking on a scholarly study of the origins of black nationalism, Afrocentrism, and Pan-Africanism.

Some of the ideas contained in the introduction to this work represent a rethinking of my book The Golden Age of Black Nationalism, 1850-1925, published by Archon books in 1978 and reprinted by Oxford University Press in 1988.1 wrote a short article on black nationalism for the sixth edition of The Negro Almanac: A Reference Work on the African American (Detroit: Gale Research, 1994), which the editors granted me permission to rework for use in this project, although, as it turns out, my introduction to the present volume is five times the length of that essay and does not recycle its contents.

Since the early stages of this project, I have piled up debts with such old and new friends as Gary Gallagher, Robert A. Hill, Lloyd Monroe, Carl Senna, William Van Deburg, and Vernon Williams. I am deeply thankful to Timothy Bartlett, who acquired the manuscript for the New York University Press. I also express my thanks to Despina Papazoglou Gimbel and her staff, whose diligence and professionalism helped me to discipline my prose, clarify my ideas, and fortify my documentation. Any stylistic idiosyncracies that persist are due to my own stubbornness and have survived despite editorial warnings. In this, as in all my past work, I have been helped immeasurably by my wife, Maureen Joan Moses, who subjected the page proofs to several close readings and assumed primary responsibility for the index.

Black nationalism, Afrocentrism, and Pan-Africanism are terms widely in use on college campuses today, but few students realize that these concepts had their origins in documents dating as far back as the American Revolutionary period. The purpose of this volume is to offer an introduction to these documents, and to chart the origins of these concepts. Classical black nationalism is defined here as an ideology whose goal was the creation of an autonomous black nation-state, with definite geographical boundariesusually in Africa. Classical black nationalism originated in the 1700s, reached its first peak in the 1850s, underwent a decline toward the end of the Civil War, and peaked again in the 1920s, as a result of the Garvey movement.

Although few living black Americans are classical black nationalists, in the sense that they intend to pack up and migrate to a new homeland, most black Americans have at some time or another felt a quickening of the pulse when black nationalist notions are discussed. Whether leftist or conservative, most African Americans have experienced feelings of sympathy for such ideas as self-help and self-determination for black communities. Persons as different as Justice Clarence Thomas and the Reverend Jesse Jackson have declared support for the sentiments of black nationalism as expressed by Malcolm X, Elijah Muhammad, or Marcus Garvey. The recent resurgence of interest in Malcolm X demonstrates the affinity of many black Americans to a tradition of black separatism. In American cities everywhere, African Americans display the red, black, and green colors of the Garvey movement. African American bookstores in black communities do a thriving business in the writings of Elijah Muhammad and are well stocked with Afrocen-tric, black nationalist, and Pan-Africanist literature. The symbols of black nationalism and African American cultural separatism do not seem to be disappearing from the contemporary American scene.

My purpose in compiling this collection has been to provide college students and professors with a basic set of texts for courses in African American history. The documents, many of which are reprinted in full, trace the historical roots of the popular black nationalism that attracts so many African Americans today. The following paragraphs will provide a few definitions and outline the history of the ideas that are treated in the documents.