toward a transnational agenda_gerald horne
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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
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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,^
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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Toward a Transnational Research genda for frican merican History
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).
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