Toward a Transnational Agenda_Gerald Horne

8/16/2019 Toward a Transnational Agenda_Gerald Horne

1/17

TOWARD A TRANSNATIONAL

RESEARCH AGENDA FOR

AFRICAN AM ERICAN HISTORY IN THE

21st CENTURY

Gerald Home

Globalization is the buzzword of th e first decade o ft h e 21st century,

development which comes as no revelation to close students of Africa

American history, who, after all, scrutinize a people with roots in Africa wh

now sojourn in No rth Am erica, Still, globalization should be a major them

for any viable research agenda in African American history, not least sinc

the growing interdependence of this planet bids fair to have a transformin

impact on the people who have come to be known as African Americans, a

jobs traditionally relied upon for sustenance migrate relentlessly abroad, whic

suggests that this century will involve an ever increasing level of globa

interdependence. Of course, since employment—or slavery—was the primar

reason why Africans were brought to North America in the first place,

comes as no great surprise that political economy is a primary lens throug

which we should view the fate of African Americans,

The acceleration of globalization, with its handmaidens of the Worl

Wide Web, super-sonic transport, the proliferation of English-language skill

and the like, suggests that if one's work-product can be digitized, or if one'

job can be performed more profitably abroad—and that includes attorneys

architects, x-ray technicians, along with factory workers—then one runs th

risk of being dis-intermed iated or, basically, unem ployed. Co nsequ ently

more than most, African Americans, whose status in this nation is perennially

parlous, should be conversant with global developments and conscious o

some of the historical trends that have brought us to this point.

Moreover, as scholars have informed us at length, it is no accident tha

the miserable system of Jim Crow segregation began to retreat precisely a

World War II and the Cold War were unfolding: how could the United State

purport to be a paragon of human rights virtue in the face of Japan's claim to

be the cham pion of the colored ra ce s ?' The leaders of the Soviet Union

made similar claims of non-discrimination,^ How could Americans win heart

and minds and convince the wavering colored peoples in the developing world


2/17

Toward a Transnational Research genda for frican merican History 289

that did not practice what it preached? The sensitivity of this nation to global

pressure is reflected in the odyssey of both Martin Luther King, Jr., and Paul

Robeson: the former came under ever sharper criticism after he condemned

the war in Vietnam, while the latter ran afoul of American officials when he

refused to go along with Cold War premises,

Tlie argument here is that this confluence between global politics and the

fate of African Americans was not simply a product of events that unfolded

at a certain point in the 20th century but, instead, have inhered in the nature

of the African experience in North America. Just as the way we view history

changes when gender is invoked, leading to different questions and different

answers, something siniilar occurs when the global is invoked in writing

African Am erican history,^ The rather m odest points I m ake here arguing for

the development of a transnational research agenda should not be seen as

grappling definitively with this crucially important matter. Instead, it should

be seen as a tentative first step that by its nature cries out for collaboration

and collective consideration.

As the writer Juan Enriquez informs us, it is not altogether clear that the

nation now known as the United States of America will survive in its present

form in this century-^a projection that, if true, will have enormous

consequences for the most vulnerable, especially U,S, African Americans,'*

Already, there is a thriving sovereignty movement in Hawaii, which bids fair

to reduce the stars on the fiag from fifty to forty-nine. Scholars would be

remiss if we were to suffer a failure of imagination and neglect to anticipate

weighty developments of gargantuan importance for the community we

purport to know and inform. That is, the development of a transnational

research agenda could help tremendously in ascertaining more precisely the

identity of African Americans and, more importantly perhaps, in answering

the question: where do we go from here?

THE ENEMY OF MY ENEMY IS MY FRIEND

The question of slavery looms large in consideration of the founding of

this nation with an understandable emphasis on how Africans, enslaved and

otherwise, played a crucial role in bringing into being the nation now known

as the United States of America, This has been an important research

question in the field, not least since it helps to bolster the claim that this

nation owed a profound debt to African Americans and undercuts the once

seriously debated notion that African Americans should be expelled from this

country and repatriated to Africa, Central, or South America,^


3/17

9

The Journal of frican merican Histor

examination of the question of how African Americans fit into this nation'

founding, a question whicb has been engaged by a number of historians. Mos

recently, Alfred W. and Ruth G. Blumrosen bave argued persuasively that th

1776 revolution was sparked in no small part by Som erset's Cas e i

England, whicb suggested that abolition of slavery was on the agenda in th

British Empire and, rather than adhere to this new reality, the colonist

revolted, led by slaveholders George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.'' Tb

work of Steven Wise complements that of the Blumrosens nicely, whicb

suggests that a trend in the historiography is developing.^

In this sense, the American Revolution should be viewed in the same ligh

as the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) in 1965 in anothe

former British colony—the nation once known as Rhodesia and now known

as Zimbabwe—where interestingly the rebellious white colonists claimed tha

tbey were merely following in the footsteps of the 1776 revolt. Intriguingly

UD I wa s a direct response to London's proclam ation of winds of change

blowing through tbe continent, i.e. decolonization, just as the 1776 revolt bas

been said to be a response to incipient abolitionism.^ Certainly, it is striking

that so many Africans fled the newly minted U.S. after the triumph of the

revo lution ; rarely bave events described as revolutiona ry w itnessed th

flight of so many of the dispossessed with Africans fleeing in all directions

including the South Pacific where tbey could be seen at the founding of

m od em A ustralia in 17 88 . ' Yet despite the spade work tbat has been done on

tbis topic, more needs to be done, particularly to incorporate the voices of

the Africans themselves and to determine whether they saw the secession

from the British Empire as a new birth of freedom, or an opp ortunist coup

de main.

Con sideration of the revolution raises related research ques tions that

should be a part of a 21st century agenda: researchers must look at Africans in

North America on their own terms, as opposed to trying to shoehorn them

into a larger U.S. narrative; and in order to do this they must look abroad for

archival sources, which may entail collaboration with scholars overseas.

Scholars will find that a cornucopia of sources await them overseas, starting

witb tbe Public Records Off ice in Kew Gardens, London, whicb—

unfortunately—has not been fully utilized in penning histories of colonial

slavery, or narratives of tbe revolution. U nde rstand ably, given that its past

has been more glorious than its present or future, archives in the nation that

gave birth to the U.S. are quite ample, particularly for the earlier periods (the

same holds true for its counterparts in Madrid and Lisbon, whicb are also

valuable for researching the African Slave Trade). Tbis search for sources


4/17

Toward a Transnational Research genda for frican merican History

29

Africans who fled to Nova Scotia in the 18th century in the wake of the

colonists ' triumph),'^ A pressing project for scholars of African American

Studies is to re-visit the question of the Black Lo yalists, to listen to what

they were saying—a mission that should take us to London, Ottawa, Canada,

and Freetown, Sierra Leone,

Part of scrutinizing Africans on their own terms entails shedding the

autom atic notion that some how they we re always s triving for U S ,

nationality, as opposed to departing the U,S, and challenging its practices.

Thus , scholars should take seriously the court testimony given in the great

and earthshaking Gabriel slave conspiracy in 1800 that indicated that the

insurgents planned to spare the lives of Frenchmen, then being vilified by

numerous Euro-Americans, just as we should not ignore the salient point that

for decades during the 19th century there was an objective alliance between

enslaved Africans who opposed the illicit African Slave Trade, and the British

government, which sought to bar this odious commerce after it finally

abolished slavery within its own empire,'^ Virtually every U,S, President from

Thomas Jefferson to James Buchanan, and particularly John Tyler and

Jam es K, Polk, held that British abolitionists were U,S, slaveo w ners' natural

enem y, Also natural was the supposition that Am erican abolitionists were

in effect agents of a British con spiracy, ju st as segregationists saw advocates

of civil rights in the 20th century as agents of Moscow, Similarly, Denmark

Ve sey had suppose dly sent a letter to the H aitian leadership and had told

his insurgent followers that after killing Charleston's whites and setting the

city ablaze, they would either be rescued by Haitian ships or could sail to the

island safely, (Some testim ony also referred to aid from A frica,) U ,S,

slavery, David Brion Davis instructs us, can no longer be understood in

parochial terms or simply as a chapter in the history of the U.S, South, •'*

How true.

Yet this dictum should be updated to recognize that the enemies of

Washington or Euro-American elites generally (it took decades, for example,

for the U,S, to recognize Haiti) should not be reflexively seen as enemies of

African Americans, This was no less true in the 20th century and will, no

doubt, still be true in the present century. Scholars should take seriously the

age-old dictum of diplom atic statecraft that the enem y of m y enem y is my

friend and recognize that there was a basis for an alliance betw een those held

in bondage in the U,S, and the nation's real and imagined foes abroad,

A transnational research agenda should include revolutionary Haiti, When

in 1893 the elderly Frederick Douglass, speaking at Chicago's World Fair,

chose to allocate credit for the kind of freedom that he and other former

slaves enjoyed, he was unequivocal in thanking those who resided beyond the


5/17

The Journal of frican merican H isto

within the hemisphere and, by inference, within the U.S.) were to be found

the Spanish archives at the Foreign Ministry.' ' Similarly, in Mexico City an

Lisbon, many of the records relevant to African Americans are located at th

Foreign Ministry or its equivalent. '^ Indeed, an intriguing book awaits

researcher who scours the archives of this hemisphere, especially those

Caracas, Venezuela and Bogota, Colombia, in order to tell the story of th

w idesp read and transformative im pact of the Ha itian Revolu tion and i

effects on the fate of slavery and the illicit slave trade, in the U.S. and oth

parts ofthe Americas.

Admirable work has been done on the African origins of Africa

Americans in the United States.'^ However, much niore can and should b

done that utilizes the formidable archives in Cape Town, South Africa an

Luanda, Angola, the latter nation being the homeland of many of th

enslaved who were transported to this hemisphere, including the actor an

comedian, Chris Tucker, who only recently discovered that his roots exten

to Southwest Africa.20 Zanzibar, just off the coast of East Africa, was once

major entrepot for the African Slave Trade and, after the British Navy bega

patrolling West Africa, assumed even more importance during the 19t

century as a site for dispatching kidnapped Africans to the Wester

Hemisphere. A research project that targeted the archive there, along wit

that of neighboring Maputo, Mozambique, would be more than appreciated.

Mention should also be made of real and imagined enemies at home

Native Americans in the first place. More research needs to be conducted o

the relations between the indigenous peoples of North America and enslaved

Africans and African Americans.2' Fortunately, there are adequate sources

including the archives of the University of Oklahoma and the Nationa

Archives and Records Administration at Fort Worth, which probably has th

largest cache of documents extant for the study of the history of Native

Americans: their sources are particularly strong for the Cherokee (who

published their own newspapers), the Chickasaw, the Choctaw, the Creek, and

the S eminole.22 This site is particularly good for one-stop shop ping in tha

they also have on microfilm the rich records of the Oklahoma Historica

Society. Again, 21st century scholars would be well-advised to avoid a

teleological approach to this subject, assuming implicitly that the coming o

the U.S. was either inevitable

T

welcome by the subjects of the ir research

Nor should the episodes of conflict between the two major victims of the

nation-building enterprise in North America—the Africans and indigenes—be

avoided, or examples of their collaboration against white supremacy be

downplayed.


6/17

Toward a Transnational Research genda for African American History 29

on these shores, have sought to pursue an independent diplomatic and global

strategy in order to defeat or contain the victorious colonists in North

America,^'' A question that needs to be explored further is how the enslaved

African fit into the indigenes' diplomatic strategy, beyond the well-explored

initiatives of the vaunted Seminole nation,^^

Of course, the revision of the story of enslaved Africans on these shores,

will not be greeted with equanimity, as the most popular practitioner in our

field, Lerone Bennett, discovered when he published his insightful Forced into

Glory: Abraham Lincoln s Wh ite Dream, which examines the seriously

contemplated plans to remove African Americans en masse from the United

States.^^ Historians looking back on this episode may very well conclude that

Benn ett 's m istake wa s simply being prem ature in his perspic acity in not

adhering to the teleological model that sees enslaved Africans marching in an

uncomphcated path to freedom in the U,S,, assisted mightily of course by

sympathetic Euro-Americans,^^

The conclusion of the U,S, Civil War, brilliantly lampooned recently by

Kevin Willmott in his faux documentary film Confederate States of America,

a savage spoof of the teleological model, marks the rise of U,S, imperialism,

and the deepening of this nation's global engagements,^^ Perforce, this also

meant a deepening engagement with the intemationai community by the

formerly enslaved. Then (as now) joining the U ,S. military was n ot widely

viewed as the ideal career choice, so that the formerly enslaved were well-

represented within the ranks of this Praetorian Guard and did more than their

share in subduing restive Native American nations, battling from time to time

with Mexicans along the border, and wresting from a tottering Spain key parts

of her colonial empire.^^

This reach beyond the borders was a double-edged sword. Relying upon the

primary victims of white supremacy to wage war on behalf of the U,S, handed

a potent weapon to various U,S, antagonists who appealed to the disaffected

on these shores. Fortunately, as noted, historians have thoroughly explored

how this tension between national security and white supremacy was resolved

in favor of the former during the course of the Cold War, Indeed, it is no

exaggeration to suggest that other than the struggles of the formerly enslaved

themselves, it has been this kind of global pressure that has been the single

most important factor in explaining the difficult transition from Jim Crow to

the racialized inequality that presently exists. However, research in the field,

which has been marvelous in detailing the struggles of the formerly enslaved,

has not been as adept in limning the nature of global pressures and influences,

except for World War II and the Cold War era. But the stunningly crucial


7/17

9 4

The Journal of frican merican Histo

AFRICAN AMERICANS IN THE PACIFIC REGION

Scholars have been insightful in informing us about the thrust of U S

imperialism toward the Pacific and the planet's most populous continent

Asia,^^ African American soldiers were present during these often distressin

episodes, but we do not know as much as we should about these events, though

it is easy to surmise that knowledge of these developments would b

informative since the Pacific had long been a haven for enslaved African

fleeing the Western Hemisphere, One estimate suggests that there wer

about two thousand W est Indians residing in A ustralia alone in 1860,^

Perhaps not surprisingly, a turning point in the history of that continen

occurred in the 1850s, after the notorious rebellion against British rule in

V ictoria, The first case [tried in court] was that of an Am erican N egro

named Joseph, , , , ^2

A man hailed in the U,S, as a Black History hero, the talented inv ento

Granville T, Woods was actually bom in Australia, as were his parents. Woods

was proba bly a quarter black : his mo ther's father w as a M alay Indian and

his other grandparents were by birth full-blooded savage

[sic],

, , Australian

abo rigin es, bo m in the w ilds back of M elbo urne , , , , ^3

j

was reported by

some ofthe first Euro-Americans to encounter Fijians in this island complex

ju st east of Sydney in the 1830s that the indigenes were und er the com mand

of an American Negro, -' ' '

In 1820 Sylvia Moseley Bingham, the prominent U,S, settler in Hawaii,

wa s surprised to f ind a black m an, A ntho ny Allen , brough t up in

Schenectady, New York, who [she believed lived] the most comfortably of

any on the island, , , , ^^ By 1833 African A m erican s were so num erou s in

Honolulu that they had begun to feel the need for community organizations,

as possibly half the whalers who docked there were African Am ericans wh o

also formed the core of a royal band for [King] K am eh am eha III in

1834, , , , King Ka lakau a, it wa s reported, wa s un usu ally dark for a

Polyne sian and several of his features suggested a N egro inheritan ce, a

presumption that caused the Tokyo press to term him a 'dark almost Black

King,' He solidified his ties with African A m erican s by visiting H am pton

Institute in Virginia, which was modeled after a school in Hawaii,^^ Barack

Obama spent his early years in Honolulu where his brown skin made plausible

his grandfather's otherwise im plausible assertion that the ftiture U S , Senator

was the great-grand son of King Kam eham eha, Haw aii's first monarch, ^^

Reportedly, W, D, Fard—inspiration for the organization now known as the

Nation of Islam (NOI)—was of Hawaiian parentage,^^ In May 2005 the NOI


8/17

Toward a Transnational Research genda for frican merican HLitory

95

the Pacific region. This is true for many reasons, not least since it was easier

for the enslaved fleeing persecution to blend into this region and their

frequently being monolingual in English was not a major handicap. In

addition, the broad sweep of this region made it less likely that they could be

discovered and subjected to the Fugitive Slave Act, or its predecessors. The

literate dark-skinned settlers from North America, often wise in the ways of

the vampire-like Europeans and Euro-Americans who were arriving in droves

in this region, were welcomed heartily and often attained a degree of mobility

that could only be dreamed about in the Westem Hemisphere,

Despite the trailblazing research that has been done in this realm, there is

so mu ch m ore that needs to be uncove red. Fo r exam ple, after the U S , Civil

War, a new form of bonded labor erupted in the region, involving the

kidnapping in the tens of thousands of Melanesians and Polynesians, who

were then compelled to labor on plantations in Queensland, Australia, and

Fiji, '' A frequent con tributor to this jo um al and a legendary heroine in the

field of history, Howard University's Merze Tate, pioneered in bringing this

sordid tale to a larger aud ienc e,' But in a sense, scholars in African A me rican

Studies, and African Americans themselves, have been sadly neglectful of this

important subject, since white Southerners who formerly hounded us simply

migrated to the Pacific to continue their dirty business after being defeated

during the U,S, Civi l War, A number of former Confederates were

instrumen tal in this new slave trad e, know n as blackb irding, A thriving ku

klux klan chapter was formed in Fiji at the same time that Reconstruction in

the U S , South was being strangled,''^ Sp eaking intellectua lly and politica lly,

scholars in our field should be more aware of the broad sweep of those

antagonists who threaten the very existence of African Americans, precisely

because we could gain momentum and resources abroad that could then be

deployed on these shores, '

This is particularly the case in that the sources are so incredibly rich. The

archives in Suva, Fiji, are quite well-organized, as are those of Australia,

Particular mention should be made of the State Library of New South Wales

in Sydney, Also hote that the federation of Australia did not occur until 1901,

so the regional archives in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, and

Tasmania, not to mention the libraries in the major cities such as Melboume,

Brisbane, and Perth, should be consulted in addition to the central archives in

Canberra, Similarly, the archives in Wellington, New Zealand, are more than

adequate. Closer to home, perhaps the best organized state archive in the U S ,

is in Honolulu, thanks to the sadly departed Hawaii Kingdom, which was

dislodged by U,S, officials in no small part because of its friendliness toward


9/17

9 6 The Journal of frican merican Hist

of their presence within the U,S, military. Again, their presence within thes

ranks—wielding weapons and defending the nation against foes, real an

imagined—contributed significantly to the growing pressure that ultimatel

led to a retreat from Jim Crow, This was particularly so during the War in th

Pacific when Tokyo made overt appeals to African Americans on the basis o

the Japanese being the champion of th e colored races' *^ The Dip lom ati

Records Office in Tokyo will no doubt reveal a comucopia of material on thi

strategically important matter. Here, of course, intemational collaboratio

will be critical since one will find documents in this archive in English writte

by African Americans pleading for assistance; but in order to ascertain th

Japanese side of this story, Japanese language skills will be necessary

Similarly, during the Japanese occupation in Asia, there were Enghsh languag

newspapers published by the authorities, I have found that the

Hong Kon

News

for example, contains intriguing and copious infonnation about Africa

Americans and racism in the U,S,, and I suspect the same holds tme for th

other newspapers published in the region during the occupation, particularl

in Shanghai, perhaps the premier city of this new century. Fortunately, they

are all on microfilm and, therefore, available through interlibrary loan.

Detailing African American relations with China, which may very well b

the prime superpower of this century, should also be seen as a priority

Aspects of this relationship have been researched but, unfortunately, thes

have not utilized Chinese language sources,'*'' China also wielded significan

influence on some African Americans of the left during the second half of the

20th century, an influence that was not always positive, which

a fortior

mandates a fresh re-examination,

AFRICAN AMERICANS AND THE INDIAN SUBCON TINENT

Relations between India and African Americans are also richly deserving

of scrutiny. This has occurred to a degree though, again, there is much more

that needs to be done,''^ This is notably the case since the new relationship

between New Delhi and Washington will no doubt lead to further investmen

in India, which contains the largest number of English speakers on the planet.

The World Wide Web allows for an even closer integration of these

economies and, ultimately, may lead to a number of African Americans

decamping to South Asia to work, which, as shall be seen, would only be

replicating past practices.

This relationship is nothing new. As the central colony of the British

Empire, India once exported calico to Great Britain; however, after the


10/17

Toward a Transnational Research genda for frican merican History 29

enslaved Africans and Indians, providing them with a point of unity that

reached efflorescence in the 20th century when Dr, Martin Luther King, Jr,,

adapted Gandhian nonviolent protest strategies to great effect,' '^

But in the period between slavery and the arrival of Dr, King, there were

other points of contact, Amanda Berry Smith of the African Methodist

Episcopal faith was bom to enslaved workers in Maryland in 1837, but by

1881 was spreading the Word of God in British India, specifically in Burma,

She held a m eeting , , , for colored men esp ecially and a nice com pany of

these men gathered; some were from the West Indies, some from the West

Coast of Africa and some from Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, One

m an from the W est Indies had been in Burm a for twe nty years, , , , There

we re abou t twen ty of these m en in all , , , , Un like m any of the ir

com patriots back hom e in North A m erica, it seemed that these men were

better off than m any; some of them were engineers on railways, some

conductors, some in govemment service, and they all had good positions and

m ade m on ey. Som e of them h ad nice fam ilies of children , , , , ' ' ' Th ere

seemed to be a special bond between African Americans and South Asians, or

so thought former U,S, Secretary of State, William Seward, While traveling in

Madras in the wake of his storm-tossed Civil War leadership, he heard a

Tam il lyric that was prettily sung by one class . Its plaintive strain recalled

our Ne gro m elodies, he remarked,''^

These episodes also illuminate larger themes. The records of groups such

as missionaries, performers (particularly the Fisk Jubilee Singers), soldiers,

sailors, and the like will no doubt reveal enlightening material about the

international engagements of African Americans, particularly how global

events have been leveraged for domestic gain. Moreover, more wide-reaching

assemblage of the travel writings of African Americans, particularly these

that might lie abroad, is a must, I suspect that a disproportionate number of

skilled African American workers chose exile over persecution in the U,S,

The exiles in Burma were not unique and this is a topic worthy of systematic

study, particularly since global trends may propel an accelerated African

American Diaspora in the 21st century,

A real bounty of sources awaits scholars interested in exploring tbis

relationship between British India and African Americans, The NAACP

Papers at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, with an abridged

version on microfilm in libraries too numerous to mention, is a good place to

start . But there are also the archives of the Young Men's Christian

Association at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities and the archives of

the American Friends Services Committee in Philadelphia at their national


11/17

2 98 The Journal of frican merican Histo

virtually any project involving the British Empire, the Huntington Library i

San Marino, California (just outside of Pasadena with its lush botanical garden

and delicious subsidized lunches), must also be visited. In New Delhi, the Nehr

Library is more than adequate, having a microfilm version of the voluminou

records of what is now the Congress party, which spearheaded th

decolonization struggle. These records reveal significant contacts between

Indians and African American activists. The Nehru Library also contains

wide range of books that will repay the attention of a diligent scholar

Unfortunately, the central archives in New Delhi are something of a mess and

utterly unbefitting such a great nation.

Raising the issue of India, once the crown jew el of an em pire tha

included the North American colonies that became the United States, suggests

another point: historically, where British colonies have existed, African

Americans have not been far behind. A common language is one reason

common issues are another. Thus, although the central archives of Hong

Kong are more than adequate and are complemented by a commodious library

and archives at the University of Hong Kong, the archives in Singapore are

rather underdeveloped, which is surprising given the rather advanced nature of

this society. There are, however, some useful oral histories in the central

archive in Singapore and helpful microfilm collections based on original

documents from neighboring Malaysia, a special case that eagerly awaits the

enterprising scholar. For there, the long-time leader Mahathir Mohamad has

critiqued white supremacy in a manner similar to the discourses that have

arisen among African Americans, while aggressively pushing Affirmative

Action policies that provide a model for what could be implemented on this

side of the Pacific.''^ C om parative h istory should be deployed m uch m ore

than it has been in African American Studies and Malaysia looms enticingly as

a prime point of comparison.

AFRICAN AME RICANS AND THE CARIBBEAN EURO PE

AND AFRICA

M any enslaved Africans in No rth A m erica began life as property in the

British Empire and, as such, could be transported to India—which some

were—or to the West Indies . The relat ionship between Barbados, the

easternmost Caribbean island, and South Carolina stretches back to the 17th

century. Of the former British West Indies, it is probably Barbados that has

the most efficient and best organized archives. Noteworthy are the papers of

Grantley Adams, a founding father of independent Barbados, who, like many


12/17


99

Association (UNIA), led by Marcus Garvey, whose transnational reach awaits

a more systematic narrative. Due to its ample oil and gas wealth, Trinidad

Tobago is, in many ways, the most developed part of the former British West

Indies; its archives are adequate but, surprisingly, not as well-organized as

those of Barbados. On the other hand, Trinidad's national library may be the

best in the region; take particular note of its well-organized vertical and

clipping files. Guyana has suffered mightily for having the gumption to bring

to office in 1953 the brilliant Marxist intellectual Cheddi Jagan, trained at

Howard and Northwestern universities. He was driven from office after a few

months as a result of a British invasion. Sadly, the archives in Georgetown,

like the rest of the nation, have suffered and the same can be said of the

national library.

Of course, as the example of Japan suggests, it would be a mistake to limit

our research agenda to the English-speaking world, as recent studies have

shown.^'^ Russia has received a comprehensive treatment in this regard.^'

However, with the collapse of the former Soviet Union and the accession of

the voluminous (and surprisingly, yet to be exhaustively mined) papers of the

Communist Party-USA (CPUSA), now located at the Library of Congress

with microfilm versions at Stanford University and elsewhere, it is possible to

gain insigh t into the global activ ities, of such lum inaries as Paul Rob eson,

Claudia Jones , Langston Hughes, Ferdinand Smith, and many others .

Canvassing the archives of formerly socialist Eastern Europe, particularly

East Germany, the horrie for decades of well-known cartoonist and fonner

NAACP official Ollie Harrington, for records on Afiican Americans would be

an immensely important project.^^ Of course, the CPUSA was not the only

left-wing party with broad support in African America: pride of place in this

regard belongs to the Black Panther Party (BPP), which had offices and/or

members in Algeria and Tanzania. For example, we have yet to explore

thoro ugh ly the influence of the radical intellectua l from revo lutiona ry

Zanzibar, Abdulrahman Mohamed Babu, on African American activists in the

1960s; nor have the sources in Algiers, Stockholfn, Beijing, Havana, or the

other sites of the BPP Diaspora been explored for what they may tell us

about African America.^?

As noted, archives in Cape Town, South Africa, and Luanda, Angola, are

necessary stops for students of the African Slave Trade. To come full circle,

these two nations also niust be visited in order to understand better the 20th

century relationship between Africa and African Americans. The same holds

true for the archives of Zimbabwe, which may be the best organized on the

continent. South Afi'ica, of course, is relatively developed; therefore, like the


13/17

The Journa l of frican merican H istor

the context of the latter's struggles for national liberation, there needs to be a

systematic scouring of the African American press, particularly, the Lo

Angeles Sentinel, the New York Amsterdam News (of course, there are othe

Gotham papers that should be consulted, including the Daily Challenge, New

York City Sun, and Big Red , Mu hamm ad Speaks, Philadelphia Tribune, St

Louis Argus, St. Louis American, and many more. Indeed, one of the man

research centers in African American Studies such as those at Cornell, UCLA

UC-Santa Barbara, and Northwestem needs to seek funding, immediately i

not sooner, for the purpose of digitizing and placing on-line, with a search

engine, the full run of these and other major black newspapers. This would

make for a great leap forward in the field of African American history on the

domestic and transnational fronts.

Yet even if that ambitious project is not on the immediate horizon, there

remains much to be done in this sphere. For example, the papers of Mervyn

Dymally, who is of Tdnidadian origin and was also one of California's longes

serving politicos and a former member of the Congressional Black Caucus, are

located at California State University, Los Angeles. Dymally was quite active

in both African and Caribbean affairs and there is much in this collection on

these topics. For years Charles Diggs of Detroit was a leader in the U.S.

Congress on the question of Africa's decolonization and his voluminous

papers are at Howard University. In addition, there is a collection of Kwame

Nkrumah's papers there that are quite informative. Also at Howard are the

papers of the National Conference of Black Lawyers (NCBL), a group that

since 1968 has been in the forefront of struggles dealing with Africa and the

Caribbe an. The NC BL w as particularly close to the ill-fated revolution ary

govemment of Grenada that was overthrown in the wake of intemal conflict

and a U.S. invasion in 1983. This is a chapter in history that merits detailed

examination,

With regard to Howard University, as this essay suggests and as is

appropriate for this eminent institution, it is the site for a number of

critically important collections. Unfortunately, some of these have not been

processed and, therefore, are not altogether accessible to scholars. This

suggests that a delegation of scholars should seek to engage with the

administration of Howard to assist in expanding its important mission in the

realm of archival preservation.

To reiterate, a transnational research agend a for African A m erican

history in this new century is obligatory since global pressures, along with the

stmggles of African Americans themselves, have been decisive in bringing the

kind of freedom now enjoyed by the descendants of those who were enslaved.


14/17

Toward a Transnational Research genda for African Am erican History 30

Century in the way that the previous one was; and this nation's gro wing

dependence on foreign financing, along with the evolution of the internet and

supersonic transport, ensures that global interdependence will proliferate in a

way that can be of benefit to researchers and African Americans alike,

N O T E S

'March Galiicchio,

The African American Encounter with Japan and China: Black Internationali.im in Asia.

1895-1945

(Chapel Hill, NC , 2000); Gerald Ho me,

Race Wa rl White Supremacy and the Japanese Attack on

the Briti.ih Empire (New York, 2004),

^Brenda Gayle Plummer, Ri.sing Wind Black Americans and U .S. Foreign Affairs. 1935-1960 (Chapel Hill,

NC,

1996); Penny M, Von Escheh, Race Against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism. 1937-1957

(Ithaca, NY, 1997); Mary L. Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image o f American Democracy

(Princeton, NJ, 2001; Azza Salam Layton, International Politics and Civil Rights Policies in the United States.

1941-1960 (New York, 2000),

•'joan Scott, G ender and the Politics of History (New York, 1988),

'*Juan Enriquez, The Untied States of America: Polarization. Fracturing, and O ur Future (New York, 2005),

^Haunani-Kay Trask, From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawaii (Honolulu, HI, 1999);

Noenoe K, Silva, Aloha Betrayed: Native Hawaiian Resistance to American Colonialism (Durham, NC, 2004),

^'Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, NC, 1996); See also Gary Nash Th e

Forgo tten Fifth: African-Am ericans in the Age of Revolu tion (Cambridge, MA, 2005),

^Alfred W, Blumrosen and Ruth G, Blumrosen, Slave Nation: How Slavery United the Colonies and Sparked

the American Revolution (Naperville, IL, 2005).

^Steven Wise,

Though the Heavens M ay Fall: Th e Landmark Trial That Led to the End of Human Slavery

(New York, 2005),

^See e,g. Gerald Home, From the Barrel of a Gun: Th e United States and the W ar Against Zimbabwe, 1965-

1980 (Chapel Hill, NC, 2001),

'See Cassandra Pybus, Epic Journeys of Freedom: Runaway Slaves of the American Revolution and Their

Global Q uest for Liberty (Boston^ MA, 2006); Simon Schama, Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the

American Revolution (London, 2006),

' 'Alvin Gluek, Minnesota and the Manifest D estiny of Canada: A Study in Canadian-American Relations

(Toronto, Canada, 1965).

'•^ James W. W alker, The Black Loyalists: The Search for a Promise Land in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone,

1 783-1870 (Toronto, Canada, 1992); Harvey Amani Whitfield, From American Slaves to Nova Scotian

Subjects: The Case ofthe Black Refugees, 1813-1840 (Toronto, Canada, 1965); Mary Louise Clitlord, From

Slavery to Freetow n: Black Loya lists After the Ame rican Revolution (McFarland, 1999);

'^See e.g. David Brion Davis,

Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World

(New York,

2006), 170; Julius S. Scott III, The Common Wind: Currents of Afro-American Com mun ication in the Era of

the Haitian Revolution, Ph.D. dissertation. Duke University, 1986; Douglas R. Egerton, G abriel s Rebellion:

The Virginia Slave Conspiracies o f 1800 and 1802 (Chapel H ill, NC, 1993), 45-4 8.

''*Davis, Inhuman Bondage, 272, 282, 223.

'^Waldo Martin, The Mind of Frederick Douglass (Chapel Hill, NC, 1984), 50-52, 269, 271; Chicago Tribune.

3 January 1893.

'^See e.g. Alfred N, Hunt, Haiti s Influence on Antebellum America: Slumbering Volcano in the Caribbean

(Baton Roug e, LA, 1988); Alfred N. Hunt, The Influence of Haiti on the Antebellum So uth, 17 91- 18 65,

Ph.D.

dissertation. University of Texas-Austin, 1975.


15/17

The Journal of African Am erican H isto

Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Slavery an d African Ethnicities in the Am erica. : Restoring the Lints (Chapel Hi

• NC , 2005); Michael Gom ez, Exchanging Our Country Marks: The Transformation o f African Identities in t

Colonial and Antebellum South (Chapel Hill, NC, 1998).

^^Boston Globe, 29 January 2006.

William Loren Katz and Paula A. Franklin, Proudly R ed and Black: Stories of African and Nati

American.:- (New York, 1993); Katja Helma May, Collision and Collusion: Native Am ericans and Africa

Am ericans in the Cherokee and Creek Nations , 1830s to 1920s, Ph.D . dissertation . Un iversity of Californi

Berkeley, 1994; Daniel F. Littlefield, Jr., Africans and Creeks: From the Colonial Period to the Civil W

(Westport, CT, 1979); Daniel F. Littlefield, Jr., Africans and Seminoles: From Removal to Emancipatio

(Westport, CT, 1977).

See e.g. Daniel F. Littlefield, Jr., and James W. Parins, eds., American Indian a nd Alaska Nativ

New.spapers and Periodicals

(Westport, CT, 1984-1986).

^^Kansas City Star, 24 March 2006; Hartford Courant, 25 March 2006.

Colin G. Collaway, New Worlds for All: Indians, Europeans and the Remaking of Early America (Baltimor

M D, 1997); Gregory Fvans Dowd, W ar Under Heaven: Pontiac. the Indian Nations and the British Empir

(Baltimore, MD , 2002 ); Christian F . Feest, ed., Indians a nd Euro pe: An Inter-disciplinary Collection

ofE.s. sa

(Lincoln, NB, 1989). • f J- J J-

25

John Missall and Mary Lou Missall.

The Seminole Wars: America's Longest Indian Conflict

(Gainesville

FL,

2004); Bruce Edward Twyman, The Black Seminole Legacy and North American Politics. 169S-184

(Washington, DC, 1999); Rosalyn Howard,

Black Seminoles in the Bahamas

(Gainesville, FL, 2002).

Lerone Bennett, Forced into Glory: Abrahain L incoln's White Dream (Chicago, IL, 2000).

For reviews of this work, see New York Times Book R eview, 27 August 2000- Los Angeles Times Boo

Review, 9 April 2000.

Detroit News, 24 March 2006; Seattle Times, 24 March 2006; Seattle Weekly, 22 March 2006.

William H. Leckie with Shirley Leckie, Th e Buffalo So ldiers: A Narrative of the Black Cavalry in the Wes

(Norman, OK, 2003); Monroe Lee BilVmglon, New Mexico's Buffalo Soldiers, 1866-1900 (Niwot, CO, 1991).

Brian McAllister Linn, Guardians of Empire: The U.S. Army and the Pacific. 1902-1940 (Chapel Hill, NC

1997);

David F. Long, Gold Braid and Foreign Relations: Diplom atic Activities of U.S. Nava l O fficers, 1798

1883 (Annapolis, MD, 1988); C. Hartley Grattan, The United States and the Southwest Pacific (Melbourne

Australia, 1961); Thomas Schoonover, Uncle Sam's War of 1898 and the Origins of Globalization (Lexington,

KY, 2003); Eric T. L. Love, Race Over Empire: Racism and U.S. Imperialism (Chape l Hill, NC , 2004),

Gregory H. Nobles, American Frontiers: Cultural Encounters and Continental C onquest (New York, 1997)

Norman Graebner,

Empire on the Pacific: A Study in American Continental Expansion

(New York, 1955).

See e.g. Barry Higha m, Jama icans in the Australian Gold Rush , Jamaica Journal 10 (Number 2,

December 1976): 38-43 ; Robert Hill, e&., Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association

Papers. Volume IV, September 1, 1921-September

2,

7922 (Berkeley, CA, 1985), 573.

Henry Gyles Turner,

Our Own Little Rebellion: The Story of the Eureka Stockade,

no date. 103, Box 1,

Walter Hitchcock Papers, National Library of Australia in Canberra.

Rayvon Fouche, Black Inventors in the Age of Segregation: Granville T. Woods, Lewis Latimer and Shelby

J. Davidson (Baltimore, MD, 2003), 28, 214; Note that theiauthor adds to the mystery of Woods's origins by

observing, I contend that Woods was not an Am erican Negro. . . .

Stanley Brown,

Men from Under the Sky: The Arrival of Westerners in Fiji

(Rutland, VT, 1973), 185.

Journal of Sylvia Moseley Bingham, 20

June . 1820,

Box 2, Bingham Fam ily Papers Yale University New

Haven, CT. ^ f - y,

Kathryn W addell Takara, The Atrican Diaspo ra in Nineteenth Century Hawaii, in Miles Jackson, ed..

They Followed the Trade Winds: African-Americans in Hawaii {}:iono\\i\\\,m,20QA), 1-23 , 10, 11, 16. 17. For

an examination of the work of Betsy Stockton, a black missionary to Hawaii in the antebellum era, see Karen

A. Johnson, Undaunted C ourage and Faith: The Lives of Three Black Wom en in the West and Haw aii in the


16/17


3

' ' ' 'See e.g. Grant McCall and John Connell, A World Perspective on Pacific Islander Migration: Australia

New Zealand and the USA. (Kensington, New South Wales, 1993), 2.3; Thomas Dunbabin, Slavers of th

South Seas (Sydney , Australia, 1935); T. Damo n I. Salesa, Travel Happy Samo a: Colo nialism, S amoa

Migration and a 'Brown Pacific', New Zealand Journal of History 37 (Number 2, October 2003): 171-188

186;

Michael Berry, Refined White: The Story of How South Sea Islanders Came to Cut Sugar Cane in

Queensland and Made History Refining the White Australia Policy (innisfai], Queensland, A ustralia, 2001).

' M e rz e Tate and Fidele Foy, Slavery and Racism in South Pacific An nexations, The Journal of N egro

History 50 (Num ber 1, January, 1965); 1-2 1; Merze Tate, The United States and the Hawaiian Kingdom: A

Political History Qievi

Haven, CT, 1965).

''^Caro line R alston, The Pattern of Race Relations in 19th Century Pacific Port Tow ns,

Journal of Pacific

History 6 (1971): 39-60, 45; John Young, Adven turous Spirits: Australian Migran t Society in Pre-Cessio n Fiji

(S t Lucia, Queensland, Australia, 1984), 319.

'*^Horne, Race War I; for Suzuko Morikowa's review of Nihonjin to Afurikakaei Amerikajin [Japanese and

African American Relation.s], see below, p p.

339-41.

' ' ' 'See e.g. Timothy Tyson, Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power (Chapel Hill

NC,

1994); Gerald Home, Race Woman: The Lives of Shirley Graham Du Bois (New York, 2000).

'^'Sudarshan Kapur, Raising up a Prophet: The African-American Encounter w ith Gandhi (Boston, 1992).

^^See e.g. D. A. Famie, The English C otton Industry and the World Market, 1815-1896 (Oxford, England

1979), 100; Alfred P. W ads worth and Ju lia De La cy M ann, The Cotton Trade and Industrial Lancashire

1600-1780 (Man chester, England, 1931), 16; see also The Importance of the British D ominion in India

Compared with That in America (London: J. Almon, 1770), Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

''^Farah J. Griffin and Cheryl J. Fish, ^ Stranger in the Village: Two Centuries of African-Atnerica n Travel

Writing (Boston, 1998), 56, 77, 8ft, 86.

'*^Olive Risley Seward, ed.,

William H. Seward s Travels Round the World

(New York, 1873), 329.

' '^Mahathir Mohamad and Shintaro Ishihara, Th e Voice of Asia: Two Asian Leaders D iscuss the Coming

Century (Tokyo, 1996).

^^Heike Raphael-Hernandez, ed.. Blackening Europe: The African-American Presence (New York, 2004)

May Opitz, et al., eds.. Showing Our Colors: Afro-German Wom en Speak Out (Amherst, MA, 1992); Miche

Fabre,

From Harlem to Paris: Black American Writers in France,

/S-/O-yPSO (Cham paign-U rbana, IL, 1991)

^ ' Allison Blakely, Russia a nd the Negro: Blacks in Russian History and Thought (Washington, DC, 1986).

^^Oliver W. Harrington, Why I Left America and O ther Essays (Jackson, MS, 1993).

^•'Besides Babu's writings, a useful place to begin is Don Petterson, Revolution in Zanzibar: An American s

Cold War Tale (Boulder, CO, 2002).

^'^Francis Njubi Nesbitt, Race for Sanctions: African-Americans Against Apartheid, 1946-1994 (Bloomington

IN, 2004).


17/17

Toward a Transnational Agenda_Gerald Horne

Documents

Transcript of Toward a Transnational Agenda_Gerald Horne