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Reading Guide |
| 8. |
Africa
| - | Rev. Henry McNeal Turner, "The American Negro and His Fatherland," address, 1895 |
| - | Leigh Richmond Miner, photographs reflecting African traditions at Penn School, St. Helena Island, S.C., early 1900s |
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In the half century between the antebellum migrations to Liberia and the black nationalist movement of Marcus Garvey, the leader of the "back to Africa" movement was Rev. Henry McNeal Turner, a bishop of the A. M. E. Church. After visiting Africa several times, he urged emigration not only for economic opportunity and freedom from white dominance, but for essential black identity and pride. One cannot have "any hope for a race of people who do not believe they look like God," he asserted in an 1898 editorial entitled "God Is a Negro." "This is one of the reasons we favor African emigration . . . for, as long as we remain among the whites, the Negro will believe that the devil is black and that he (the Negro) favors the devil, . . . and the effects of such a sentiment is contemptuous and degrading." He expounds on this theme in the address here, delivered at the Congress on Africa held in conjunction with the 1895 Cotton States Exposition in Atlanta (where Booker T. Washington delivered his "Atlanta compromise" speech).
Not to be overlooked are the myriad ways in which African culture persisted among black Americans. In addition to the musical, religious, and literary culture that James Weldon Johnson praises in his Autobiography, the folk arts of western Africa were preserved in everyday life. Witness the photographs taken of Penn School in the early 1900s by the white photographer Leigh Richmond Miner. Founded in 1862 as a freedmen's school for the black sea islanders, the Penn Center remains a haven today for the study of African American cultural heritage. Total pages: 4.
Note: Although this is the last AFRICA section in the toolbox, the texts in the next three topics contain numerous examples of black Americans' self-referencing to Africa.
Discussion questions
- For those who urged emigration at this time, why did Africa promise the only source of Identity for black Americans, the vast majority of whom were born in the United States?
- Compare Turner's "back to Africa" campaign with the Exoduster migration to Kansas led by Henry Singleton. What would each man find commendable, and wanting, in the other's program?
- Why would Turner's address serve as an apt introduction to the POLITICS section?
- How would Turner respond to Miner's photographs, and to Johnson's concern that black Americans felt no pride in their African heritage?
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Topic Framing Questions
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How did African Americans create personal and group identity after emancipation? |
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How did the challenge differ for those who were previously enslaved and those who were not? |
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How is Christianity central to African Americans' search for identity in this period? |
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How does a culturally disenfranchised group create a "usable past" that guards truth yet nourishes the future?
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