tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/w-e-b-dubois-65664/articlesW.E.B. DuBois – The Conversation2024-02-28T17:09:36Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2220322024-02-28T17:09:36Z2024-02-28T17:09:36ZW.E.B. Du Bois’ study ‘The Philadelphia Negro’ at 125 still explains roots of the urban Black experience – sociologist Elijah Anderson tells why it should be on more reading lists<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576236/original/file-20240216-26-ucw3z0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A mural dedicated to Du Bois and the Old Seventh Ward is painted on the corner of 6th and South streets in Philadelphia.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/general-view-of-the-mural-commemorating-the-seventh-ward-on-news-photo/502954290">Paul Marotta/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>W.E.B. Du Bois is widely known for his civil rights activism, but many <a href="https://doi.org/10.7709/jnegroeducation.87.3.0230">sociologists argue</a> that he has yet to receive due recognition as the founding father of <a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-sociology-a-sociologist-explains-why-floridas-college-students-should-get-the-chance-to-learn-how-social-forces-affect-everyones-lives-222365">American sociology</a>. His groundbreaking study, “<a href="https://www.pennpress.org/9781512824346/the-philadelphia-negro/">The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study</a>,” was published in 1899 and exhaustively detailed the poor social conditions of thousands of Black Philadelphians in the city’s historic Seventh Ward neighborhood.</em> </p>
<p><em>We spoke with <a href="https://sociology.yale.edu/people/elijah-anderson">Elijah Anderson</a>, Sterling Professor of Sociology and of African American Studies at Yale University, about the importance of Du Bois’ seminal study and why it’s still relevant for Philadelphians 125 years later.</em></p>
<p><strong>How did the ‘Philadelphia Negro’ study come about?</strong></p>
<p>Much of Philadelphia’s elite of the day believed that the city was going to the dogs, and that the reason was the huge influx of Black people from the South. Susan Wharton, a philanthropist and the wife of Joseph Wharton – after whom the Wharton School is named – and then-provost at the University of Pennsylvania Charles Harrison invited Du Bois to come to Philadelphia to study Philadelphia’s Black population and try to find answers to this problem.</p>
<p>Du Bois accepted their offer, which came with a small stipend, and came to Philadelphia along with his new bride, Nina Gomer. They settled in the Old Seventh Ward in a local settlement house, located at Sixth and Waverly streets, down the street from Mother Bethel AME, the famous Black church. Du Bois then set about studying the Seventh Ward, known for its concentration of the Black population. These people lived in the alleys and streets adjacent to the wealthy white people for whom they worked as servants. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Family portrait of W.E.B. Du Bois, his wife Nina, and their baby son Burghardt in 1898." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577096/original/file-20240221-20-awssda.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577096/original/file-20240221-20-awssda.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577096/original/file-20240221-20-awssda.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577096/original/file-20240221-20-awssda.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577096/original/file-20240221-20-awssda.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577096/original/file-20240221-20-awssda.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577096/original/file-20240221-20-awssda.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Family portrait of W.E.B Du Bois, his wife, Nina, and their baby son Burghardt in 1898.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-i0389">W.E.B. Du Bois Papers, 1803-1999, Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries</a></span>
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<p>Due to Du Bois’ upbringing and Harvard education, his bearing was that of the elite. While conducting his field work, he at times dressed in spats and a suit and tie. </p>
<p>Du Bois approached his subjects as an objective social scientist. He wanted to understand the condition of Philadelphia’s Black population and then provide his report to the white elite whom he believed would use his work to improve the condition of Black people, both within Philadelphia and beyond. </p>
<p><strong>Can you explain his idea of the benevolent despot?</strong></p>
<p>This term is based on Du Bois’ original premise: that the inequality between the living conditions of Blacks and whites could be rectified by the wealthy people who controlled the city. He regarded these leaders as despots due to the power they wielded, but also believed them to be benevolent as well as rational. Du Bois observed the Irish and Scottish immigrants who were employed in certain industries. He wondered why these companies would fail to employ Black people, as well, and concluded that they must simply be ignorant. After all, in his mind, these were benevolent people as well as rich and powerful – and most importantly, they were rational. So why would they employ the Irish and Scots, but not the Black people? This was a critical question for Du Bois, and one he was determined to answer through his study.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576238/original/file-20240216-30-6f7ir.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Book cover of 'The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study' by W.E.B. Du Bois" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576238/original/file-20240216-30-6f7ir.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576238/original/file-20240216-30-6f7ir.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576238/original/file-20240216-30-6f7ir.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576238/original/file-20240216-30-6f7ir.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576238/original/file-20240216-30-6f7ir.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576238/original/file-20240216-30-6f7ir.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576238/original/file-20240216-30-6f7ir.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Elijah Anderson wrote the introduction to the 1995 and 2023 editions of ‘The Philadelphia Negro.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.pennpress.org/9781512824346/the-philadelphia-negro/">University of Pennsylvania Press</a></span>
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<p>However, as the study progressed, Du Bois began to realize that the problem was much more complicated than he’d originally assumed. He realized that the so-called benevolent despots may not be so benevolent after all, focusing on their own financial interests. These included pitting Irish and Scottish workers against Black people to keep wages low, but also a simple preference of white workers over Black workers.</p>
<p>Halfway through the study, Du Bois pours out a soliloquy of disappointment. He declares that there is, in fact, no benevolent captain of industry, because if such a person existed, he wouldn’t let these Black boys and girls fester in poverty and crime. </p>
<p>He writes:</p>
<p>“If now a benevolent despot had seen the development, he would immediately have sought to remedy the real weakness of the Negro’s position, i.e., his lack of training; and he would have swept away any discrimination that compelled men to support as criminals those who might support themselves as workmen.</p>
<p>"He would have made special effort to train Negro boys for industrial life and given them a chance to compete on equal terms with the best white workmen; arguing that in the long run this would be best for all concerned, since by raising the skill and standard of living of the Negroes he would make them effective workmen and competitors who would maintain a decent level of wages. He would have sternly suppressed organized or covert opposition to Negro workmen.</p>
<p>"There was, however, no benevolent despot, no philanthropist, no far-seeing captain of industry to prevent the Negro from losing even the skill he had learned or to inspire him by opportunities to learn more.”</p>
<p>This is also where Du Bois began to see and clarify the situation as a problem of racism. He doesn’t use the word “racism” – that word did not exist at the time – but he speaks in terms of racial preferences and discrimination. </p>
<p><strong>How are his findings relevant to Philadelphians today?</strong></p>
<p>“The Philadelphia Negro” remains a powerful work. It depicts the social organization of the Black community, and especially the Black class structure of Du Bois’ day. It also utilizes the technique we know today as “<a href="https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8wc8v8cv">cohort analysis</a>” – the idea that social conditions affecting a group are also impactful to the individual, and that what happens to the group is a function of historic moments of society. </p>
<p>Du Bois’ ethnographic descriptions of Black people living in isolated communities after the end of slavery and migrating to these cities presages the dire conditions in inner-city communities of today, many of which are still largely Black. </p>
<p>Additionally, the role of European immigration in Du Bois’ day played a critical role in undermining the position of Black people in society. In the context of “white over Black,” each successive wave of immigration from Europe since the end of the Civil War typically worked to undermine the position of the emerging Black middle class. </p>
<p>Du Bois pointed this out back in 1899. He observed that employers preferred white immigrants from Europe over Black people. The benevolent despot Du Bois hoped to reach ignored his work, with implications for Philadelphia race relations to this day.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577092/original/file-20240221-24-gr3t9h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="W.E.B. Du Bois seated at desk in office at Atlanta University in 1909" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577092/original/file-20240221-24-gr3t9h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577092/original/file-20240221-24-gr3t9h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577092/original/file-20240221-24-gr3t9h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577092/original/file-20240221-24-gr3t9h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577092/original/file-20240221-24-gr3t9h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577092/original/file-20240221-24-gr3t9h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577092/original/file-20240221-24-gr3t9h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">W.E.B. Du Bois seated in his office at Atlanta University in 1909.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://credo.library.umass.edu/cgi-bin/pdf.cgi?id=scua:mums312-i0393">W.E.B. Du Bois Papers, 1803-1999, Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries</a></span>
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<p><strong>How did it inform your own work as a sociologist?</strong></p>
<p>When I was a sociology graduate student at the University of Chicago in the 1970s, “The Philadelphia Negro” was not required reading. But later, I taught a summer course at Northwestern University about Du Bois and, like so many young Black scholars of my generation, I was deeply inspired by his work.</p>
<p>Afterwards, when I was recruited by Swarthmore College – located 11 miles outside Philadelphia – I felt honored to reside near the city where Du Bois had conducted his work. I often traveled to Philadelphia to walk through the neighborhoods where he’d worked. Ultimately, the University of Pennsylvania – the very place that had originally recruited Du Bois to conduct his study – offered me a position. I moved to the city and began conducting ethnographic studies. In some sense, I followed in the footsteps of Du Bois. </p>
<p>In fact, my entire body of ethnographic work grows out of some of the questions Du Bois raises, and the unresolved problems he uncovers. “<a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo3638183.html">Streetwise</a>” focuses on the sociology of gentrification and its implications for both white and Black people living in gentrifying neighborhoods. “<a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/Code-of-the-Street/">Code of the Street</a>” addresses the violence that occurs in inner-city neighborhoods, as well as the issue of policing and the abdication of the police. After that, I began to deal with some of the issues that brought different races together. “<a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393340518">The Cosmopolitan Canopy</a>” is an ethnographic study of Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square and the Reading Terminal Market and Center City.
Most recently, in 2022, I published “<a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/B/bo119245209.html">Black in White Space</a>,” a fine-grained ethnographic portrait of how systemic racism operates in everyday life. </p>
<p>All these books, based on studies that were conducted in Philadelphia, stem from the inspiration of reading Du Bois as a graduate student.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576852/original/file-20240220-20-uaxpth.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="View of empty street in Kensington neighborhood of North Philadelphia" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576852/original/file-20240220-20-uaxpth.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576852/original/file-20240220-20-uaxpth.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576852/original/file-20240220-20-uaxpth.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576852/original/file-20240220-20-uaxpth.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576852/original/file-20240220-20-uaxpth.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576852/original/file-20240220-20-uaxpth.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576852/original/file-20240220-20-uaxpth.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Philadelphia has more residents living in poverty than any other big city in the U.S.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/buildings-stand-in-the-neighborhood-where-the-west-news-photo/1308933509">Spencer Platt/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p><strong>Why should Philadelphians read this book?</strong></p>
<p>The book is a seminal work, and while it has influenced many Black sociologists, it has <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520286764/the-scholar-denied">not yet received the attention it deserves</a>. However, an increasing number of scholars, both Black and white, are beginning to grapple with Du Bois’ work.</p>
<p>Philadelphians should read this book to become enlightened about the city’s history and how it relates to the dire circumstances of the city’s impoverished population of today. </p>
<p>The Philadelphia economy is undergoing a <a href="https://selectgreaterphl.com/doing-business/economic-overview/">period of profound transition</a>, from an economy based on manufacturing to one based increasingly on service and high technology, including robotics, computers and social media. Jobs and financial opportunities are <a href="https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/issue-briefs/2022/02/how-the-pandemic-has-affected-philadelphias-economy-and-jobs">sent away from Philadelphia</a> to non-metropolitan America and to underdeveloped nations around the world. As a result, many residents of the city have become dislocated economically; <a href="https://www.inquirer.com/news/philadelphia-poverty-rate-big-city-20230914.html">22% of the city’s population is impoverished</a>, and a <a href="https://www.pewtrusts.org/-/media/assets/2017/11/pri_philadelphias_poor.pdf">majority of them are Black</a>. Hence, the condition of the disenfranchised underclass whom Du Bois regarded as the “submerged tenth” has become remarkably more complicated and dire.</p>
<p>This complex mix of factors creates a good deal of crime and alienation, which feeds into the dominant narrative that our cities are falling apart – and that it’s the fault of this disenfranchised underclass, this “submerged tenth.” This is blatantly incorrect. The problems facing today’s poor inner-city residents stem from <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/B/bo119245209.html">systemic racism</a> and <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/T/bo13375722.html">the structure of capital</a>, not the individuals trapped inside that structure. </p>
<p>Strikingly, despite being written over a century ago, “The Philadelphia Negro” anticipates not only the condition of today’s poor inner-city Blacks, but also the unwillingness or the inability of today’s “benevolent despots” to rectify or even address the situation. We see Du Bois’ “submerged tenth” in today’s drug dealers, drug addicts and the persistently impoverished Black community. And we see his not-so-benevolent despots in politicians who would rather blame the victims than take any steps to improve their lot.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222032/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elijah Anderson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Over a century ago, white Philadelphia elites believed the city was going to the dogs – and they blamed poor Black inner-city residents instead of the racism that kept this group disenfranchised.Elijah Anderson, Professor of Sociology and African American Studies, Yale UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2186802023-12-14T13:11:18Z2023-12-14T13:11:18ZIn the worst of America’s Jim Crow era, Black intellectual W.E.B. Du Bois found inspiration and hope in national parks<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564987/original/file-20231211-21-dcxo75.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A view of the Grand Canyon after a snowfall.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/view-of-the-grand-canyon-after-snow-fall-in-arizona-january-news-photo/74363220?adppopup=true">Tom Stoddart/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In his collection of essays and poems published in 1920 titled “<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/15210/15210-h/15210-h.htm">Darkwater</a>,” <a href="https://hutchinscenter.fas.harvard.edu/web-dubois">W.E.B. Du Bois</a> wrote about his poignant encounter with the beauty of the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/grca/index.htm">Grand Canyon</a>, the stupendous chasm in Arizona. </p>
<p>As he stood at the canyon’s rim, the towering intellectual and civil rights activist described the sight that spread before his eyes. The Grand Canyon’s “grandeur is too serene – its beauty too divine!” <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/15210/15210-h/15210-h.htm">Du Bois wrote</a>. “Behold this mauve and purple mocking of time and space! See yonder peak! No human foot has trod it. Into that blue shadow, only the eye of God has looked.” </p>
<p>But Du Bois’ experience undermined a widely held assumption that was reinforced by early conservationists like Theodore Roosevelt – that only white people could appreciate the landscapes of national parks. For Roosevelt and his progressive allies, saving nature was connected to saving the white race. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.sacredwonderland.us/bio-thomas-s-bremer/">My research</a> on <a href="https://www.sacredwonderland.us/religious-and-spiritual-appeal-of-national-parks/">the history of national parks</a> shows that these racial assumptions and federal policies contributed to making the parks unwelcome places for Black nature enthusiasts such as Du Bois.</p>
<p>Du Bois traveled to national parks anyway, and he understood that most other Black people were unable to follow because of the cost and discrimination found at every turn. It still bothered Du Bois, however, that Black people were unable to experience a joy similar to what he found at what would later become Acadia National Park in Maine.</p>
<p>“Why do not those who are scarred in the world’s battle and hurt by its hardness travel to these places of beauty and drown themselves in the utter joy of life?” <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/15210/15210-h/15210-h.htm">Du Bois asked</a>. </p>
<h2>The progressive politics of racial purity</h2>
<p>President <a href="https://www.nps.gov/thri/theodorerooseveltbio.htm">Theodore Roosevelt</a> has been recognized as a “<a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-wilderness-warrior-douglas-brinkley?variant=32122628046882">wilderness warrior</a>” for his unprecedented protection of lands and wildlife. But his conservation record was tied to the belief of white racial superiority that was <a href="https://theconversation.com/francis-galton-pioneered-scientific-advances-in-many-fields-but-also-founded-the-racist-pseudoscience-of-eugenics-144465">embodied in eugenics</a>, the racist pseudoscience of the early 20th century that tried to determine who was fit or unfit to have children.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A sign posted near a road tells visitors where the Negro area is at the park." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565300/original/file-20231212-22-94obqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565300/original/file-20231212-22-94obqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565300/original/file-20231212-22-94obqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565300/original/file-20231212-22-94obqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565300/original/file-20231212-22-94obqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=575&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565300/original/file-20231212-22-94obqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=575&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565300/original/file-20231212-22-94obqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=575&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In this undated photograph taken between 1939 and 1950, the history of racial segregation at the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia is revealed.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nps.gov/media/photo/gallery-item.htm?pg=5994917&id=1e62a6e9-155d-451f-6737-61d6190f8193&gid=20B61590-155D-451F-6786CFBCF8DF232B">National Park Service</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One initiative of the Roosevelt administration was the creation of the <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/09035662/#:%7E:text=The%20National%20Conservation%20Commission%20was,an%20inventory%20of%20those%20resources.">National Conservation Commission</a> on June 8, 1908. Though Congress eliminated the commission’s budget after six months, its task was to take an inventory of all the nation’s natural resources and make recommendations on how best to protect them.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/gifford-pinchot.htm">Gifford Pinchot</a>, the president’s most trusted environmental adviser, served as the commission’s executive chairman and <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/09035662/">compiled its final report</a> in February 1909. </p>
<p>It offered 10 far-reaching recommendations on topics as diverse as public health to labor regulation and the elimination of poverty and crime. The 10th recommendation advocated for “eugenics, or hygiene for future generations” that connected federal conservation to white supremacy. </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/forced-sterilization-policies-in-the-us-targeted-minorities-and-those-with-disabilities-and-lasted-into-the-21st-century-143144">Pinchot’s report called for the forced sterilization</a> of “degenerates generally” – namely, most immigrants, Black and Indigenous people, poor whites and people with disabilities. It also sought to increase the breeding of what they believed to be racially superior races, such as white Anglo Saxons and people of Scandinavian heritage.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Two middleaged white men are talking with each other as they stand on boat that is traveling on a river." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564975/original/file-20231211-17-yo44o1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564975/original/file-20231211-17-yo44o1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564975/original/file-20231211-17-yo44o1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564975/original/file-20231211-17-yo44o1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564975/original/file-20231211-17-yo44o1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=949&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564975/original/file-20231211-17-yo44o1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=949&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564975/original/file-20231211-17-yo44o1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=949&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President Theodore Roosevelt, left, and Chief Forester Gifford Pinchot aboard a steamship on the Mississippi River, in October 1907.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/president-theodore-roosevelt-and-chief-forester-gifford-news-photo/1486782930?adppopup=true">Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“The problem of the conservation of our natural resources is therefore not a series of independent problems, but a coherent, all-embracing whole,” the report concluded. “If our nation cares to make any provision for its grandchildren and its grandchildren’s grandchildren, this provision must include conservation in all its branches – but above all, the conservation of the racial stock itself.”</p>
<p>Another of Roosevelt’s close associates took an even more pointed approach to white supremacy and conservation. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.nps.gov/people/madison-grant.htm">Madison Grant</a> had worked with Roosevelt since the 1890s and was an avid conservationist. He was also the author of an influential book on eugenics, “<a href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcmassbookdig.passingofgreatra01gran/?st=gallery">The Passing of the Great Race</a>,” a racist tome arguing the superiority of what he called the “Nordic race.” </p>
<h2>New agency, same philosophy</h2>
<p>The election in 1912 of President Woodrow Wilson saw the implementation of <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469628387/racism-in-the-nations-service/">discriminatory policies</a>.</p>
<p>According to historian <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/eric-s-yellin-212600">Eric S. Yellin</a>, Wilson’s administration was “loaded with white supremacists” who effectively <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-black-middle-class-was-attacked-by-woodrow-wilsons-administration-52200">enacted harsh anti-Black policies</a> in the federal government.</p>
<p>In 1913, for instance, <a href="https://newsroom.haas.berkeley.edu/research/how-woodrow-wilsons-racist-segregation-order-eroded-the-black-civil-service/">Wilson ordered the federal workforce</a> to be racially segregated, first at the U.S. Post Office, where most Black federal employees worked, and then at the Treasury Department, which had the second-largest number of Black workers. </p>
<p>The Wilson administration also created the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/quick-nps-history.htm">National Park Service</a>, the federal agency in charge of managing and interpreting the country’s national parks, when Wilson signed the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/grba/learn/management/organic-act-of-1916.htm">Organic Act</a> in 1916. </p>
<p>Not surprisingly, this new park service had the same racial policies of the Wilson administration and abided by local laws on racial segregation. That meant <a href="https://www.nationalparkstraveler.org/2019/08/how-national-park-service-grappled-segregation-during-20th-century">Black nature enthusiasts</a> would continue to be prohibited in national parks in most of the former Confederate South.</p>
<p>My research has shown that the National Park Service <a href="https://www.sacredwonderland.us/bio-thomas-s-bremer/">catered exclusively</a> to the expectations and needs of white visitors and it had very few Black employees or visitors. The <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/segregation-and-desegregation-at-shenandoah.htm">policies included racially segregated</a> dining rooms, picnic grounds and restrooms. Maps and signs in some parks directed Black visitors away from whites and to designated Black sections of the parks. </p>
<p>The official policy didn’t end until 1945, when U.S. Interior Secretary <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/national-parks/article/more-diversity-how-to-make-national-parks-anti-racist">Harold Ickes outlawed segregation</a> at national parks. But local segregation remained in practice in most Southern states for decades and still excluded Black visitors. </p>
<h2>National parks as worth the struggle</h2>
<p>Du Bois was <a href="https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/traveling-through-jim-crow-america">willing to endure the racist laws</a> that made traveling unpleasant for Black people seeking to find joy in natural beauty.</p>
<p>“Did you ever see a ‘Jim-Crow’ waiting-room?” Du Bois wrote in “Darkwater,” referring to the system of laws and social customs that disenfranchised Black people.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="A Black man dressed in a dark suit and wearing a bow tie poses for a portrait." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564972/original/file-20231211-21-345ikt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564972/original/file-20231211-21-345ikt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=787&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564972/original/file-20231211-21-345ikt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=787&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564972/original/file-20231211-21-345ikt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=787&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564972/original/file-20231211-21-345ikt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=989&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564972/original/file-20231211-21-345ikt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=989&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564972/original/file-20231211-21-345ikt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=989&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Black intellectual W.E.B. Du Bois on Jan. 1, 1918.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/black-american-writer-and-advocate-of-radical-black-action-news-photo/2664059">C M Battey/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“Usually there is no heat in winter and no air in summer. To buy a ticket is torture; you stand and stand and wait and wait until every white person at the ‘other window’ is waited on,” he explained. “Then the tired agent yells across, because all the tickets and money are over there.” </p>
<p>For Du Bois, the struggle was worth the experience of the Grand Canyon.</p>
<p>“There can be nothing like it,” Du Bois wrote. “It is the earth and sky gone stark and raving mad… It is human – some mighty drama unseen, unheard, is playing there its tragedies or mocking comedy, and the laugh of endless years is shrieking onward from peak to peak, unheard, unechoed, and unknown.”</p>
<p>The sight of the Grand Canyon, Du Bois concluded, “will live eternal in my soul.” </p>
<p>The same view has had the same effect on generations of visitors – Black, white and of countless other backgrounds – ever since.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218680/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thomas S. Bremer has conducted historical research for the National Park Service as a consultant at the Lincoln Home National Historic Site in Springfield, Illinois.</span></em></p>Though progressive politics at the turn of the 20th century called for the protection of America’s national parks, it did so for the enjoyment of white people.Thomas S. Bremer, Associate Professor of Religious Studies and American Religious History, Rhodes CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2122452023-09-06T12:23:07Z2023-09-06T12:23:07ZThe untold story of how Howard University came to be known as ‘The Mecca’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546503/original/file-20230905-29-n66c1h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4772%2C3250&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Howard University students assemble for a graduation ceremony in 2016.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/Obama/6f638c11ec3448a7854719759a121bd3/photo?Query=howard%20university&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=27&currentItemNo=2&vs=true">Jose Luis Magana for the Associated Press</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>If you ask just about anyone at Howard University what’s the other name for their school, they will readily tell you: “The Mecca.”</p>
<p>The name has been extolled by former students, such as acclaimed author Ta-Nehisi Coates, who wrote in his 2015 book “<a href="https://ta-nehisicoates.com/books/between-the-world-and-me/">Between the World and Me</a>” that his “only Mecca was, is, and shall always be Howard University.”</p>
<p>But ask anyone in the Howard community how and when the school came to be known as The Mecca – a question I’ve been researching for the past year – and blank stares are mostly the response.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="A woman gestures as she speaks." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546502/original/file-20230905-27904-33dilf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546502/original/file-20230905-27904-33dilf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546502/original/file-20230905-27904-33dilf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546502/original/file-20230905-27904-33dilf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546502/original/file-20230905-27904-33dilf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546502/original/file-20230905-27904-33dilf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546502/original/file-20230905-27904-33dilf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Vice President Kamala Harris, then a U.S. senator, speaks at Howard University in 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/Election2020Democrats/08266c06a61a4dcbac23af1c6bdacb42/photo?Query=howard%20university%20kamala%20harris&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=95&currentItemNo=1">Manuel Balce Ceneta for the Associated Press</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In a 2019 article, The New York Times tried to find the origins of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/15/arts/howard-university-homecoming.html">the use of the term</a> for Howard when U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris, <a href="https://magazine.howard.edu/stories/raising-up-kamala">one of the school’s most well-known alumnae</a>, was still a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate.</p>
<p>Greg Carr, an <a href="https://www.drgregcarr.com/about">associate professor of Africana Studies at Howard University</a>, told the newspaper that the term “emerged after the Civil Rights Movement.”</p>
<p>“In the wake of the death of Malcolm X and in the spirit of the Black Power movement, students began to informally refer to the campus as ‘The Mecca of black education,’” <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/15/arts/howard-university-homecoming.html">wrote Bianca Ladipo</a>.</p>
<p>It seemed intriguing to me as a <a href="https://washingtonmonthly.com/2013/08/18/dropouts-tell-no-tales/">longtime admirer of Malcolm X</a> – and also as one who made the pilgrimage to the original Mecca in Saudi Arabia, as <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1964/05/08/archives/malcolm-x-pleased-by-whites-attitude-on-trip-to-mecca.html">Malcolm famously did in 1964</a>. Still, as a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=W8iRI5cAAAAJ&hl=en">veteran education writer</a> with an <a href="https://cmsi.gse.rutgers.edu/multimedia/media-coverage">extensive history</a> of covering <a href="https://www.diverseeducation.com/students/article/15101319/innovative-strategies-for-hbcus-proposed-at-cbc-conference">historically Black colleges and universities</a> – <a href="https://www.diverseeducation.com/news-roundup/article/15101322/comeys-speech-at-howard-prompts-protests">including Howard</a> – I decided to dig deeper. My efforts were not in vain. </p>
<h2>A new era</h2>
<p>Using Howard University’s <a href="https://dh.howard.edu/">digital archives</a>, I discovered that one of the earliest documented references to “The Mecca” is found in the Feb. 26, 1909, edition of the <a href="https://dh.howard.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1018&context=huj_v6">Howard University Journal</a>, a student-run publication. This was – contrary to what The New York Times said about the term emerging after the death of Malcolm X in 1965 – nearly 15 years before he was even born. </p>
<p>My finding comes at a time when Howard, located in Washington, D.C., is entering a new era. Its new president, Ben Vinson III, a <a href="https://alumni.dartmouth.edu/content/give-rouse-ben-vinson-iii-%E2%80%9992">leading scholar on the history of the African diaspora</a>, took the helm at the <a href="https://wamu.org/story/17/03/03/as-howard-university-turns-150-students-find-inspiration-in-its-history/">storied university</a> on <a href="https://thedig.howard.edu/all-stories/howard-university-appoints-revered-historian-and-academic-leader-ben-vinson-iii-phd-18th-president">Sept. 1, 2023</a>. </p>
<p>Thanks to a <a href="https://www.diverseeducation.com/institutions/hbcus/article/15306096/howard-earns-90-million-dod-contract-a-first-for-an-hbcu">five-year, US$90 million Department of Defense contract</a>, the school recently became the <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/howard-university-hbcu-partner-pentagon/story?id=96636121">first HBCU to partner with the Pentagon to conduct research in military technology</a>.</p>
<p>The university is also <a href="https://thedig.howard.edu/all-stories/howards-historic-90-million-contract-university-affiliated-research-center-spotlights-stem-and-r1">on a quest to attain R-1 status</a>. R-1 is a classification level reserved for universities that grant doctoral degrees and also have <a href="https://carnegieclassifications.acenet.edu/carnegie-classification/classification-methodology/basic-classification/">“very high research activity.”</a> </p>
<h2>Going way back</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/today-in-history/november-20/">Named after one of its founders</a>, Union general and <a href="https://valor.militarytimes.com/hero/2473">Civil War hero</a> Oliver Otis Howard, the school opened in 1867 and was <a href="https://americanhistory.si.edu/brown/history/3-organized/howard-university.html">established through an act of Congress</a>. </p>
<p>Its founders <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/today-in-history/november-20/#:%7E:text=Howard%20University%20was%20incorporated%20on,four%20million%20recently%20emancipated%20slaves.">envisioned Howard</a> as a school for educating and training Black physicians, teachers and ministers from the nearly 4 million newly freed slaves.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/04/howard-chess-fundraise-competition-hbcu/">Malik Castro-DeVarona</a>, a political science major and a former president of the Howard University Chess Club, unwittingly helped me discover how the school came to be known as “The Mecca.” He suggested that I look in the <a href="https://dh.howard.edu/hilltop/">digital archive for The Hilltop</a>, the campus newspaper <a href="https://thehilltoponline.com/2023/01/23/the-nations-oldest-celebrating-99-years-of-the-hilltop/">co-founded in 1924</a> by novelist <a href="https://encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/zora-neale-hurston/">Zora Neale Hurston</a>. </p>
<p>In my online search, I discovered a different digital archive: <a href="https://dh.howard.edu/huarchives/">Digital Howard</a>. There, I did a simple search for the term “Mecca” and got <a href="https://dh.howard.edu/do/search/?q=mecca&start=0&context=4339039&facet=">more than 400 results</a>, including the one from 1909.</p>
<h2>The meaning of ‘The Mecca’</h2>
<p>Through my research, I discovered that over the years “The Mecca” has been used in different ways. It is most often meant to preserve Howard’s reputation as a beacon of Black thought. </p>
<p>That first reference from February 1909 came in an article written by J.A. Mitchell, a student who referred to Howard as a potential Mecca for young Black students. Specifically, Mitchell wrote: “Howard indeed bids well to become the Mecca, toward which the eyes of our youth will instinctively turn,” Mitchell wrote in the <a href="https://dh.howard.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1018&context=huj_v6">Howard University Journal</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A black-and-white image shows a large building with a clock tower." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545827/original/file-20230831-21-fl6tsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545827/original/file-20230831-21-fl6tsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545827/original/file-20230831-21-fl6tsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545827/original/file-20230831-21-fl6tsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545827/original/file-20230831-21-fl6tsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=944&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545827/original/file-20230831-21-fl6tsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=944&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545827/original/file-20230831-21-fl6tsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=944&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In this 1900 image, the exterior of Founders Library is seen at Howard University in Washington, D.C.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/photo-shows-an-exterior-view-of-founders-library-howard-news-photo/515351082?adppopup=true">Bettmann/GettyImages</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“In fact,” Mitchell continued, “it seems as if the present outlook already forecasts a new era in the history of our school and tells of a future Howard, situated on a hill overlooking the national capital, that is second to no institution of its kind.”</p>
<p>That statement was prophetic. In its 2022 rankings, U.S. News and World Report ranked Howard as <a href="https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/howard-university-1448">No. 2 among historically Black colleges and universities</a>, making Howard second only to Spelman College, an HBCU for women, located in Atlanta, according to the magazine.</p>
<p>Mitchell’s reference was not the only one. A few years later, in a <a href="https://dh.howard.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=huj_v11">1913 edition of the Howard University Journal</a>, an article stated: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Howard is a strategic institution. She is "The Mecca” of higher education attended in main by Negro youths. … She commands the interest of multitudes of people throughout the land and gives impetus to the life of thousands of alumni and alumnae. Again, she nurtures fifteen hundred select youths of a race.“</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>A different Mecca?</h2>
<p>Anyone familiar with the culture at Howard knows there’s a <a href="https://www.flofootball.com/articles/7960976-the-real-hu-behind-the-history-of-the-hampton-howard-rivalry">long-standing rivalry</a> between Howard University and Hampton University, located in Hampton, Virginia, over which school is ‶<a href="https://hbcubuzz.com/2021/02/who-is-the-real-hu/.">the real HU.</a>” My research shows there might have once been a debate over which school is “The Mecca” as well.</p>
<p>When Booker T. Washington <a href="https://virginiahistory.org/learn/civil-rights-movement-virginia/hampton-institute-and-booker-t-washington">arrived at Hampton in 1872</a> – five years after Howard University was <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/today-in-history/november-20/">founded in 1867</a> – Hampton, Virginia, was known as the “<a href="https://dh.howard.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=booker_manu">Mecca of the ambitious colored youth of the dismantled South</a>,” according to a 1910 Howard manuscript titled “A Ride with Booker T. Washington.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Scores of Black students are standing in rows for a school assembly." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545831/original/file-20230831-23-764upu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545831/original/file-20230831-23-764upu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545831/original/file-20230831-23-764upu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545831/original/file-20230831-23-764upu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545831/original/file-20230831-23-764upu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545831/original/file-20230831-23-764upu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545831/original/file-20230831-23-764upu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Students attend an assembly at Hampton Institute in January 1899.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/school-assembly-in-hampton-institute-hampton-va-between-news-photo/1425873980?adppopup=true">Hulton Archive/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Hampton isn’t the only U.S. city to be known as a Black Mecca.</p>
<p>As noted in a <a href="https://archive.org/details/sim_crisis_1925-07_30_3/page/146/mode/2up?q=mecca">1925 edition of “The Crisis”</a> – the NAACP magazine <a href="https://modjourn.org/journal/crisis/#:%7E:text=Du%20Bois%20founded%20The%20Crisis,social%20injustice%20in%20U.S.%20history.">founded in 1910</a> by <a href="https://hutchinscenter.fas.harvard.edu/web-dubois">W.E.B. DuBois</a> – Washington, D.C., was “regarded as the Mecca of the American Negro, for here he is under the wing of the eagle and can’t be made the victim of hostile legislation or rules.”</p>
<p>Around the same time, <a href="https://nmaahc.si.edu/alain-locke">Alain Locke</a>, who taught English and philosophy at Howard in the early 1910s and started the school’s philosophy department, proclaimed Harlem as the “<a href="https://collections.library.yale.edu/catalog/17368696">Mecca of the new Negro</a>.” Locke is also known as the <a href="https://www.doaks.org/resources/cultural-philanthropy/alain-locke-collection-of-african-art">“dean of the Harlem Renaissance.”</a> </p>
<p>The point is this idea of a Black Mecca was constantly shifting and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/01/14/black-migration-south/">continues to shift to this day</a>.</p>
<h2>The Mecca of the future</h2>
<p>Despite archival records that show Howard was called The Mecca as early as 1909, other details have yet to be discovered. Perhaps under the leadership of President Vinson, a <a href="https://www.acls.org/digital-commission-sustaining-diverse-scholarship/">champion of digital scholarship</a>, Howard students and scholars can continue to research how Howard came to be known as The Mecca.</p>
<p>Doing so would be a fitting tribute to one of Howard’s most illustrious deans, Carter G. Woodson. </p>
<p>Hailed as the “<a href="https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/02/celebrating-black-history-months-founder/">father of Black history,</a>” Woodson launched <a href="https://guides.loc.gov/black-history-month-legal-resources/history-and-overview">Negro History Week</a> in 1926. That <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/history-of-black-history-month.html">paved the way</a> for what today is known as <a href="https://naacp.org/find-resources/history-explained/civil-rights-leaders/carter-g-woodson">Black History Month</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/212245/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jamaal Abdul-Alim has served as a volunteer adviser for the Howard University Chess Club. In addition to his role as an adjunct at the University of Maryland, he currently serves as education editor at The Conversation.</span></em></p>While it’s widely believed that Howard University came to be known as “The Mecca” in the 1960s, new evidence shows the nickname is more than half a century older than that.Jamaal Abdul-Alim, Lecturer in Journalism, University of MarylandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2008512023-03-15T13:37:56Z2023-03-15T13:37:56ZToyin Falola: 3 recent books that explain the work of Nigeria’s famous decolonial scholar<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514433/original/file-20230309-28-bgy994.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Toyin Falola has turned 70.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Image courtesy Olusegun Olopade</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://notevenpast.org/professor-toyin-falola-living-and-globalizing-the-humanities/">Toyin Falola</a>, distinguished <a href="https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/history/faculty/falolaoo">professor of history</a>, is one of Africa’s most accomplished intellectuals. Born Oloruntoyin Falola in 1953 in the Nigerian city of Ibadan, he grew up in a sprawling, polygamous household that practised Islam, Christianity and ancient Yoruba spirituality. </p>
<p>This confluence of multiple worldviews and religions reflects in his thinking and in his massive academic output. Falola has produced something like 200 books in all areas of the human and social sciences, and travels widely to deliver lectures at conferences and public events.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/nigerian-historian-and-thinker-toyin-falola-on-decolonising-the-academy-in-africa-184188">Nigerian historian and thinker Toyin Falola on decolonising the academy in Africa</a>
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<p>Africa and its diasporas (including Africans in the US, Brazil, Cuba and the Caribbean) are his overriding concern and sites of study. In Falola’s handling, Africa is endlessly fascinating and resourceful, both culturally and intellectually. </p>
<p>Since he is so productive, it’s difficult to offer a cohesive account of his multifaceted work. In the process of working on a book about Falola, I think perhaps the best way to understand his impact is to identify his core values and philosophies and how they recur across his recent output.</p>
<p>His 70th birthday has been celebrated with a renewed flurry of books. I’ll focus on just three of them here.</p>
<h2>1. African Spirituality, Politics, and Knowledge Systems</h2>
<p>Published in 2022, <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/african-spirituality-politics-and-knowledge-systems-9781350271944/">African Spirituality, Politics, and Knowledge Systems</a>: Sacred Words and Holy Realms was in part inspired by Falola’s interactions with a Nigerian political scientist, <a href="https://carleton.ca/africanstudies/people/samuel-ojo-oloruntoba/">Samuel Oloruntoba</a>. Falola used Oloruntoba, who engages in intense late night prayer sessions, as a sounding board in writing the book.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514471/original/file-20230309-26-id7yv9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A book cover in black, brown and yellow with an image of an African statue of a head." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514471/original/file-20230309-26-id7yv9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514471/original/file-20230309-26-id7yv9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514471/original/file-20230309-26-id7yv9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514471/original/file-20230309-26-id7yv9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514471/original/file-20230309-26-id7yv9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514471/original/file-20230309-26-id7yv9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514471/original/file-20230309-26-id7yv9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bloomsbury</span></span>
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<p>Here, Falola is interested in the spiritual power of the spoken word, a concept not only familiar to Christianity and other religions, but also to Nigeria’s <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Yoruba">Yoruba</a> <a href="https://web.ccsu.edu/afstudy/supdt99.htm">spirituality</a> – in this case ogede, a ritual form of incantation. The spoken word is seen as being imbued with life and power and therefore has the ability to transform lives.</p>
<p>While Falola explores African spiritual formations, in the book he also seeks links to global cultural practices. In the process he affirms our common humanity and the continuities across cultures. He draws links between Christian worship and Orisa spirituality, a religion that is polytheistic (worshipping many gods) and is practised in south-west Nigeria, parts of Benin and Togo. It was also spread across the world through the transatlantic slave trade.</p>
<p>In this book, Falola is refocusing our attention on the primal power of the spoken word as an agent of consciousness and transformation.</p>
<h2>2. Decolonizing African Studies</h2>
<p>Also in 2022, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/decolonizing-african-knowledge/1296996BE948B52843872FAA948447BE">Decolonizing African Studies</a> was released. This book is particularly relevant for the South African context. The <a href="https://theconversation.com/feesmustfall-the-poster-child-for-new-forms-of-struggle-in-south-africa-68773">#FeesMustFall</a> student protest movement that grew out of the University of Cape Town as part of an attack on the legacy of the arch-colonialist <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/cecil-john-rhodes">Cecil John Rhodes</a> became a nation-wide campaign. It sparked fervent debates on <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-decolonisation-131455">decolonisation</a> and the institutional legacies of <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid’s</a> white minority rule.</p>
<p>European colonialism had a <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/07/how-africas-colonial-history-affects-its-development/">devastating impact</a> on the African continent. Slavery, colonial rule and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/neocolonialism">neocolonialism</a>, which is a covert and often non-violent form of ongoing colonialism, had a similar impact on all African communities.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514474/original/file-20230309-20-bnvma.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A book cover with an illustration of a human profile made up of symbols and squiggles." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514474/original/file-20230309-20-bnvma.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514474/original/file-20230309-20-bnvma.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514474/original/file-20230309-20-bnvma.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514474/original/file-20230309-20-bnvma.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514474/original/file-20230309-20-bnvma.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514474/original/file-20230309-20-bnvma.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514474/original/file-20230309-20-bnvma.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Boydell & Brewer</span></span>
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<p>Indeed what these harmful encounters did to the African self was to effect a schism or disconnect within it, which has resulted in many forms of identity crisis – what the US sociologist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/W-E-B-Du-Bois">W.E.B. Dubois</a> called “<a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/double-consciousness/">double consciousness</a>” and other thinkers have called a form of alienation. Simply put, colonial belief systems, morals and culture were imposed on traditional African belief systems, causing this tension. </p>
<p>In this book, Falola attempts to heal the broken African self by bypassing colonial archival sources. Instead, he undertakes a form of intellectual therapy by engaging with “alternative archives created by memory, spoken words, images and photographs”, as the blurb of the British edition puts it. A key component is the use of autoethnography (ethnographic research drawing on the researcher’s own life story) for recovering traces of African memory lost in the colonial haze. In this book, oral narratives and personal viewpoints merge in creating an authentic African knowledge system.</p>
<h2>3. African Memoirs and Cultural Representations</h2>
<p>The most recent major book by Falola is <a href="https://anthempress.com/african-memoirs-and-cultural-representations-hb">African Memoirs and Cultural Representations</a>, released in 2023. In this work, Falola analyses the memoirs of grossly under-studied west African writers who worked largely in the traditional vein – that is, within the perspectives of precolonial west African thinking. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514476/original/file-20230309-20-k4b0hf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A book cover showing a photograph of a man in traditional African attire sitting and reading into a microphone from a large book." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514476/original/file-20230309-20-k4b0hf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514476/original/file-20230309-20-k4b0hf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514476/original/file-20230309-20-k4b0hf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514476/original/file-20230309-20-k4b0hf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514476/original/file-20230309-20-k4b0hf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514476/original/file-20230309-20-k4b0hf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514476/original/file-20230309-20-k4b0hf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Anthem Press</span></span>
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<p>In this manner, African perspectives, beliefs and norms are recuperated as a way of furthering a decolonial project. In addition, the book highlights the nature and purity of the African voice beyond the colonial framework. In other words, what it means to hear African voices outside the strictures or filters of colonial thought systems.</p>
<p>What these three books do is to outline Falola’s positions on a global decolonial project. He has also recently co-edited the <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-45759-4">Palgrave Handbook on Islam in Africa</a> and a multi-volume <a href="https://link.springer.com/referencework/10.1007/978-3-030-28099-4">book project</a> on women’s studies and female agency in Africa. Such is the scope of this African scholar.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-decolonisation-131455">Explainer: what is decolonisation?</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<p>Falola’s copious research outputs debunk the fallacy that Africa was without history, consciousness or mind. Such myths were promoted in the grand narratives of colonialism and the European imperial project. And more importantly, Falola’s work serves as a powerful antidote to the constant onslaughts of <a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/afropessimism">afropessimism</a> and probably by extension, <a href="https://thebrooklyninstitute.com/items/courses/new-york/what-is-afropessimism-politics-society-and-anti-blackness/">anti-blackness</a> in the contemporary age.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/200851/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sanya Osha receives funding from the Andrew M. Mellon Foundation but writes in his personal capacity.</span></em></p>With over 200 publications to his name, his three most recent books give a sense of why he is so famous as a historian.Sanya Osha, Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Humanities in Africa, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1754692022-02-07T16:14:02Z2022-02-07T16:14:02ZHow American singer, actor and civil rights activist Paul Robeson became a hero in China<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443482/original/file-20220131-124991-1ad6k13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=3%2C19%2C1274%2C657&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In 1941, Robeson recorded an album of Chinese fighting and folk songs with activist Liu Liangmo with the Chinese People’s Chorus — organized among members of the Chinese Hand Laundry Alliance in New York City’s Chinatown. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Gordon Parks for the U.S. Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information/Wikimedia/Keynote records)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Chinese broadcasters have aired shows featuring <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Paul-Robeson">Paul Robeson (1898-1976)</a>, one of the most popular African American <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/paul-robeson-about-the-actor/66/#:%7E:text=Paul%20Robeson%20was%20the%20epitome,erased%20him%20from%20popular%20history.">singers and actors of his era</a> and a well-known <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-paul-robeson-said-77742433/">civil rights activist</a>, several times in recent years.</p>
<p>China National Radio and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dv3YykCcg70&t=1516s">various channels</a> of the widely influential China Central TV showcased Robeson on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dv3YykCcg70&t=1516s">programs</a> in 2021, 2012 <a href="https://tv.cctv.com/2009/11/30/VIDE1372319800852972.shtml">and 2009</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dv3YykCcg70&t=1516s">narrating China’s resistence to foreign military aggressions</a>. This could seem like unusually frequent coverage related to an American who passed away decades ago. </p>
<p>My book, <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469664606/arise-africa-roar-china"><em>Arise, Africa! Roar, China! Black and Chinese Citizens of the World in the Twentieth Century</em></a>, unpacks the little-known yet important relationship between Paul Robeson and China, which continues to resonate powerfully today. </p>
<h2>New York City meeting</h2>
<p>Robeson is long remembered in China partly due to his contribution to popularizing the country’s future national anthem after the singer’s 1941 recording of an album of Chinese fighting and folk songs <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9JsXtKmmlU">with Liu Liangmo (ca. 1909-88)</a>, a prolific journalist, musician and Christian activist. </p>
<p>In November 1940, in New York City, Robeson received a phone call asking him to meet Liu, recently arrived from China. Liu’s accounts of his acquaintance with Robeson would be published in various Chinese-langauge periodicals.</p>
<p>Robeson met Liu within half an hour. When Robeson inquired about the mass singing movement that Liu had initiated in China, Liu related the backstory behind the new genre of Chinese fighting and folk songs he helped invent for war mobilization, singing some examples. </p>
<p>Liu noted Robeson’s favourite was the signature piece, “Chee Lai!” or “March of the Volunteers,” because, as Robeson explained, its lyric “arise, ye who refuse to be bond slaves!” expressed the determination of the world’s oppressed, including Chinese and Black people, to struggle for liberation. </p>
<p>In November 1941, Robeson, Liu and the Chinese People’s Chorus — which Liu had organized among members of the Chinese Hand Laundry Alliance in New York City’s Chinatown — recorded <em>Chee Lai! Songs of New China</em> for Keynote Records. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Keynote Records album, ‘Chee Lai! Songs of New China.’</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Solidarity album</h2>
<p>Liu’s liner notes for the album relay that he saw the collaboration as “a strong token of solidarity between the Chinese and the Negro People.” Robeson’s notes said: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Chee Lai! (Arise!) is on the lips of millions of Chinese today, a sort of unofficial anthem, I am told, typifying the unconquerable spirit of this people. It is a pleasure and a privilege to sing both this song of modern composition and the old folk songs to which a nation in struggle has put new words.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In December 1941, the <em>New York Times</em> lauded the album as one of the year’s best and noted that profits went to <a href="https://archives.nypl.org/mss/3078">the China Relief Fund</a>, chartered in the state of New York that same year by founding aid organizations.</p>
<p>Robeson reprised this song in his numerous concerts in North America and Europe, sometimes amid entangled racial and ideological controversies. </p>
<p>“Chee Lai!” was eventually adopted by Hollywood. Robeson’s version of the song was featured in MGM’s film <em>Dragon Seed</em> (1944), an adaptation of <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1938/summary/">Nobel laureate Pearl S. Buck’s</a> <a href="https://openroadmedia.com/ebook/dragon-seed/9781453263518">bestselling novel on China’s resistance against Japan</a>, starring Katherine Hepburn. </p>
<p>The U.S. Army Air Force Orchestra played the tune at the start and end of a film produced by the U.S. state department, <em>Why We Fight: The Battle of China</em> (1944), directed by the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Frank-Capra">Oscar-winning Frank Capra</a>. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/m4Ebv-FzP60?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">U.S. State Department film, ‘Why We Fight.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘March of the Volunteers’</h2>
<p>Robeson’s long-term alliances with sojourning leftist Chinese artists such as Liu, <a href="http://bdcconline.net/en/stories/lin-yutang">writer and philosopher Lin Yutang</a> and “The King of Beijing Opera,” <a href="https://theconversation.com/chinese-american-actresses-soo-yong-and-anna-may-wong-contrasting-struggles-for-recognition-in-hollywood-159174">Mei Lanfang</a> — along with American supporters like <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Agnes-Smedley">Agnes Smedley, the American journalist</a> based in Shanghai in the 1930s — led to his mutual embrace with the Chinese Communist Party and the People’s Republic of China (PRC). </p>
<p>Chinese news sources reported that to celebrate the announcement of the <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/chinese-rev#:%7E:text=On%20October%201%2C%201949%2C%20Chinese,Republic%20of%20China%20(PRC).&text=The%20%E2%80%9Cfall%E2%80%9D%20of%20mainland%20China,Communists%20entering%20Beijing%20in%201949.">PRC’s establishment on Oct. 1, 1949</a>, Robeson sang “Chee Lai!” on the streets of Harlem. </p>
<p>Robeson famously telegrammed Mao Zedong to congratulate the new regime: “We celebrate the birth of the People’s Republic of China, because it is a great force in the struggles for world peace and human freedom.” The contents of the telegram were immediately published in <em>The People’s Daily</em>, the mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party.</p>
<h2>Robeson as role model</h2>
<p>Liu wrote an article, “People’s Singer Robeson,” that was widely circulated across China and Chinatowns in the United States between 1949 and 1950. After promoting the causes of China to the American public, particularly African Americans, for nearly a decade, Liu had just returned to China to serve as a high-level cultural official. </p>
<p>Liu’s article helped alter the narrative about Robeson within China from that of an “exotic entertainer” to a heroic role model for socialist citizens there. In the years leading up to the founding of the PRC, the representation of Black people in the media was dominated by coverage of Jazz musicians in nightclubs of treaty ports, who were dismissed as “foreign musical instrumental devils” — a view which
echoed with long-held <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/28/racist-africans-stereotypes-tv-colonial">stereotypes of the “primitive” African</a>.</p>
<p>Liu’s article focused on Robeson as an internationalist who “embodied the perfect marriage between art and politics.” It was subsequently followed by a body of printed materials about Robeson — such as stories in state-owned newspapers, biographies, collections of his songs and even a cartoon series for children —<br>
that stressed his heroism and model status.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Black and white comic showing Paul Robeson speaking at a microphone." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443472/original/file-20220131-27-qx3ua1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443472/original/file-20220131-27-qx3ua1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=666&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443472/original/file-20220131-27-qx3ua1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=666&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443472/original/file-20220131-27-qx3ua1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=666&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443472/original/file-20220131-27-qx3ua1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=838&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443472/original/file-20220131-27-qx3ua1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=838&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443472/original/file-20220131-27-qx3ua1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=838&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A sample 1949 page from the children’s cartoon series, ‘Today’s Hero: Black Singer Robeson.’ The caption on the top left reads: ‘He gets along very well with Chinese friends in the United States.’ Robeson says, ‘I salute the democratic revolution in China.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Yunxiang Gao/Xin ertong banyuekan 23, 2)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Film, meanwhile, also contributed to Robeson’s popularity as a hero in China. While the newly created communist nation generally rejected Hollywood and European films, a 1939 British film <em><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0031828/">The Proud Valley</a></em>, starring Robeson, was brought to Chinese audiences around 1956 and was well received. The film showcased the popular singing and performance of a muscular Robeson playing an American miner in Wales struggling with local miners in a labour dispute. </p>
<p><a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781466841505/w-e-b-du-bois-1919-1963">African American writer, sociologist and civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois</a>, who was later welcomed in <a href="https://medium.com/fairbank-center/arise-africa-roar-china-black-and-chinese-citizens-of-the-world-in-the-twentieth-century-b9839359b467">China in 1959</a>, wrote in the publication <em>Crisis</em> in 1930 about how “some white folk are frightened of the naked manhood of Paul Robeson.” For Chinese audiences, Robeson provided an inspiring model of masculinity.</p>
<h2>Enduring legacy</h2>
<p>Robeson’s version of “Chee Lai!” was played in the Grand Hall of the People’s Congress in Beijing during Nie Er Music Week in 2009. Nie Er was the <a href="https://uhpress.hawaii.edu/title/composing-for-the-revolution-nie-er-and-chinas-sonic-nationalism">talented musician who composed “Chee Lai!”</a>.</p>
<p>Various state organs including China Society for People’s Friendship Studies and <em>China Daily</em> organized a tribute <a href="https://thesanghakommune.org/2017/05/26/beijing-110th-celebration-of-paul-robesons-birthday-in-photographs-2008/">on April 9, 2008, marking Robeson’s birthday</a>.</p>
<p>Robeson continues to be remembered as a loyal friend to China. He is celebrated for globalizing China’s national anthem, for his songs that set hearts stirring, for his contributions to the Chinese nation’s liberation — and to the friendship between peoples of China and the United States, <a href="https://medium.com/fairbank-center/black-power-in-china-maos-support-for-african-american-racial-struggle-as-class-struggle-7673f2a6abb">particularly African Americans</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/175469/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gao Yunxiang does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In China, Robeson continues to be remembered as a loyal friend celebrated for popularizing what became China’s national anthem and building solidarity between peoples of China and African Americans.Gao Yunxiang, Professor, Department of History, Toronto Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1701682021-10-18T18:33:14Z2021-10-18T18:33:14ZAs a patriot and Black man, Colin Powell embodied the ‘two-ness’ of the African American experience<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427041/original/file-20211018-20-8qfg2x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C4%2C3099%2C2063&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A complex legacy.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/ObitPowell/d8c0b643cb3e4277ae88f7fdfcb0edb8/photo?Query=colin%20powell&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=674&currentItemNo=15">AP Photo/Vincent Michel</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Colin Powell knew where he fit in American history.</p>
<p>The former secretary of state – <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/18/us/politics/colin-powell-dead.html">who died</a> on Oct. 18, 2021, at 84 as a result of COVID-19 complications – was a pioneer: the first Black national security advisor in U.S. history, the first Black chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and also the first Black man to become secretary of state.</p>
<p>But his “<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/133242/my-american-journey-by-colin-powell-with-joseph-e-persico/">American journey</a>” – as he described it in the title of an autobiography – is more than the story of one man. His death is a moment to think about the history of Black American men and women in the military and the place of African Americans in government. </p>
<p>But more profoundly, it also speaks to what it means to be an American, and the tensions that Colin Powell – as a patriot and a Black man – faced throughout his life and career. </p>
<p>I’m a <a href="https://www.brandeis.edu/facultyguide/person.html?emplid=7f443ffde35747ba69faca210faff07145fab78c">scholar of African American studies</a> who is currently writing a book on the great civil rights intellectual W.E.B. DuBois. When I heard of Powell’s passing, I was immediately reminded of what DuBois referred to as the “<a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/double-consciousness/">double-consciousness</a>” of the African American experience.</p>
<p>As DuBois put it <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1897/08/strivings-of-the-negro-people/305446/">in an 1897 article</a> and later in his classic 1903 book “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1897/08/strivings-of-the-negro-people/305446/">The Souls of Black Folk</a>,” this “peculiar sensation” is unique to African Americans: “One feels his two-ness – an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”</p>
<p>This concept profoundly describes Colin Powell as a soldier, a career military man and a politician.</p>
<h2>What it means to serve</h2>
<p>On the surface, Colin Powell’s life would seem to refute DuBois’ formulation. He stood as someone that many people could point to as an example of how it is possible to be both Black and a full American, something DuBois viewed as an enduring tension. There is a narrative that Powell <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3843957">used the military to transcend race</a> and become one of the most powerful men in the country. In that sense, he was the ultimate American success story.</p>
<p>But there is a danger to that narrative. Colin Powell’s story was exceptional, but he was no avatar of a color-blind, post-racial America.</p>
<p>The U.S. Army has long been seen as a route for Black Americans, especially young Black men, out of poverty. Many chose to turn their service into a career. </p>
<p>By the time Powell, the <a href="https://bronx.news12.com/bronx-raised-colin-powell-leaves-behind-a-legacy-in-nyc">Bronx-raised</a> son of Jamaican immigrants, joined the U.S. Army, there was already a proud history of African Americans in the U.S. military – from the “<a href="https://nmaahc.si.edu/blog-post/proud-legacy-buffalo-soldiers">Buffalo Soldiers” who served in the American West, the Caribbean and South Pacific</a> after the U.S. Civil War to the <a href="https://www.tuskegee.edu/support-tu/tuskegee-airmen">Tuskegee Airmen</a> of World War II.</p>
<p>Powell was part of that military history. He joined in 1958, a decade after <a href="https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=84">desegregation of the Armed Forces</a> in 1948.</p>
<p>But the military was – <a href="https://apnews.com/article/us-military-racism-discrimination-4e840e0acc7ef07fd635a312d9375413">and still is</a> – an institution characterized by structural racism. That was true when Powell joined the Army, and it is true today.</p>
<p>As such, Powell would have had to wrestle with his blackness and what it meant in the military: What did it mean to serve a country that doesn’t serve you?</p>
<p>As a military man during the Vietnam War, Powell also stood apart from many Black political leaders <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/beyond-vietnam">who condemned U.S. action</a> in Southeast Asia. </p>
<p>While Muhammad Ali <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/04/28/muhammad-ali-50-years-ago-today-was-told-to-step-forward-he-refused/">was asking why</a> he should “put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on Brown people” at a time when “so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights,” Powell was making his way up the military ranks.</p>
<p>It helps explain why despite Powell’s undoubted achievements, his legacy as a Black leader is complicated. His identity – being of Jamaican heritage – posed questions about what it means to be an African American. His life in the military prompted some to ask why he would serve a country that has historically been hostile to nonwhite people in the U.S. and around the world. The veteran activist and singer Harry Belafonte likened Powell in 2002 to a “house slave” in one <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2002/oct/11/news">particularly contentious remark</a> questioning his loyalty to the U.S. system.</p>
<p>Powell acknowledged the realities of racism in the U.S., while at the same time believed it should never serve as an obstacle nor cause Black people to question their American-ness. In a <a href="http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/blackspeech/cpowell.html">May 14, 1994 commencement speech at Howard University</a>, Powell told graduates to take pride in their Black heritage, but to use it as “a foundation stone we can build on, and not a place to withdraw into.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Colin Powell, seated behind a microphone and 'United States' nameplate speaks to the United Nations Security Council." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427043/original/file-20211018-15-1smds7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427043/original/file-20211018-15-1smds7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427043/original/file-20211018-15-1smds7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427043/original/file-20211018-15-1smds7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427043/original/file-20211018-15-1smds7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427043/original/file-20211018-15-1smds7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427043/original/file-20211018-15-1smds7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Colin Powell addresses the United Nations Security Council.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/Obit-Powell/66a341e1e4e2487fbfe7ea59c2ac4fda/photo?Query=colin%20powell%20united%20nations&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=12&currentItemNo=4">AP Photo/Elise Amendola</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And then there are his political affiliations. He was Ronald Reagan’s national security advisor and George H. W. Bush’s chairman of the joint chiefs of staff at a time when the domestic policies of both presidents were devastating Black America, through <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/history-mass-incarceration">mass incarceration of Black men and women</a> and <a href="https://www.irp.wisc.edu/publications/focus/pdfs/foc52b.pdf">economic policies</a> that stripped services in lower-income areas.</p>
<p>That was before one of the most consequential and controversial moments in Powell’s political life. </p>
<p>In February 2003, Powell <a href="https://theintercept.com/2018/02/06/lie-after-lie-what-colin-powell-knew-about-iraq-fifteen-years-ago-and-what-he-told-the-un/">argued before the United Nations Security Council</a> for military action against Iraq – a speech that erroneously claimed that Saddam Hussein had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction. He hadn’t, and the war that Powell helped steer the U.S. into scars his legacy.</p>
<h2>A complicated existence</h2>
<p>Powell’s two-ness, to use the DuBois phrase, manifested later in his decision in 2008 to endorse Barack Obama as presidential candidate over his fellow Republican and military man, John McCain.</p>
<p>In Obama, Powell saw “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/19/colin.powell/">a transformational figure</a>” in America and on the world stage.</p>
<p>[<em>Understand key political developments, each week.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/politics-weekly-74/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=politics-understand">Subscribe to The Conversation’s politics newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>In endorsing Obama, Powell chose the historic significance of the U.S. having its first Black president over loyalty and service to his friend and political party. </p>
<p>His drift from Republicanism furthered after Donald Trump seized the reins of the party. He became <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/colin-powell-calls-trump-liar-says-he-skirts-constitution-will-n1227016">increasingly vocal in opposing Trump</a>, who saw Powell – as did many of Trump’s supporters – as something of a traitor.</p>
<p>That view ignores the history.</p>
<p>Powell was a patriot who embodied DuBois’ “two warring ideals in one dark body.” For Powell to have reached the heights he did required dogged strength and perhaps far greater effort to hold it together than his white predecessors. </p>
<p>In America, being Black and a patriot is – as DuBois hinted at more an a century ago, and as Powell’s life attests to – a very complicated, even painful, affair.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/170168/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chad Williams does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A scholar of African American studies explores how the former secretary of state, who died at 84, dealt with what WEB DuBois described as the ‘double-consciousness’ of being Black and American.Chad Williams, Samuel J. and Augusta Spector Professor of History and African and African American Studies, Brandeis UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1516802021-01-28T14:11:29Z2021-01-28T14:11:29ZHip hop and Pan Africanism: from Blitz the Ambassador to Beyoncé<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373944/original/file-20201209-19-4bf5nl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Zambia-born, Botswana-raised hip hop artist Sampa the Great.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Marc Grimwade/WireImage</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Hip hop is many things. Most recently is has become more of <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/korihale/2019/02/06/goldman-sachs-bets-on-hip-hop-and-millennials-for-music-revival/?sh=2b3ab2a46f17">commodity</a>, a commercial venture, but it has always been and remains a global culture that represents local realities. It speaks about where one is from – through rap lyrics, DJing, graffiti or breakdancing – by incorporating local slang, references, neighbourhood tales, sounds and styles.</p>
<p>Hip hop <a href="https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/blog/how-the-burning-of-the-bronx-led-to-the-birth-of-hip-hop/">emerged</a> in the 1970s in the South Bronx, in New York City in the US, among young, working class African Americans as well as Caribbean and Latino immigrants. </p>
<p>Hip hop culture’s connection to African musical and social traditions would be well <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780739193297/Hip-Hop-and-Social-Change-in-Africa-Ni-Wakati">documented</a>, including in my <a href="https://www.ohioswallow.com/book/Hip-Hop+in+Africa">book</a> <em>Hip Hop in Africa: Prophets of the City and Dustyfoot Philosophers</em>. </p>
<p>In its roots and manifestations, I argue, hip hop has also proven to be a powerful vehicle for spreading and shaping Pan Africanism.</p>
<h2>Moving beyond borders</h2>
<p>Pan Africanism is an acknowledgement of the social, cultural and historical bonds that unite people of African descent. It’s an understanding of shared struggles and, as a result, shared destinies. It’s also an understanding of the importance of dismantling the divisions among African people in order to work towards greater social, cultural and political solidarity. </p>
<p>My <a href="https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007%2F978-3-319-77030-7_134-1">work</a> has focused on hip hop as a soundtrack for the transnationalisation – the spreading beyond national borders – of African communities and identities. </p>
<p>This includes the increased and diversified migration of Africans to countries around the world. Today, an increasing number of Africans have lived in more than two countries. There have also been increased migrations to Africa from the African diaspora – people of African descent who are spread across the world. Some of these diaspora migrants are also Africans migrating to countries in Africa other than their own. </p>
<p>One artist whose work is both an articulation of these transnational trends and of an advancing Pan Africanism is Ghanaian-born, New York-based hip hop star <a href="https://www.npr.org/2013/11/27/247481464/blitz-the-ambassador-fighting-against-invisibility">Blitz the Ambassador</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373947/original/file-20201209-16-mctlq1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man plays African drums and sings into a microphone, behind him a row of trumpeters and saxophonists." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373947/original/file-20201209-16-mctlq1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373947/original/file-20201209-16-mctlq1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373947/original/file-20201209-16-mctlq1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373947/original/file-20201209-16-mctlq1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373947/original/file-20201209-16-mctlq1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373947/original/file-20201209-16-mctlq1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373947/original/file-20201209-16-mctlq1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Blitz the Ambassador in New York in 2013.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jack Vartoogian/Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We see this throughout his entire catalogue, from songs like <em><a href="https://blitzemmetstill.bandcamp.com">Emmet Still</a></em> and <em>Sankofa</em> on his 2005 album <em>Double Consciousness</em> to <em><a href="https://youtu.be/zyQNUGMBhLY">Hello Africa</a></em> on his 2016 release <a href="https://jakartarecords-label.bandcamp.com/album/diasporadical"><em>Diasporadical</em></a>. </p>
<p>In <em><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmqvguxPvu4">Hello Africa</a></em> he raps: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Just touched down, Ecowas passport. Internationally known, I give ’em what they ask for. From Accra city all the way outta Marrakech…</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He proceeds to take us on a journey across Africa in a way that acknowledges his identity as an African belonging to the continent, and also his transnational relationship with the continent. He throws in different languages – Arabic, Swahili, Kinyarwanda, Wolof – as he moves through different cities.</p>
<h2>The new Pan Africanism</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/pan-africanism">Pan Africanism</a> is not a new idea, or movement. Its roots are pre-colonial. There continues to be serious investment in a Pan African agenda set by intellectuals like <a href="https://www.lincoln.edu/departments/langston-hughes-memorial-library/kwame-nkrumah-digital-information-site">Kwame Nkrumah</a> of Ghana, <a href="https://www.pambazuka.org/pan-africanism/nyerere-nationalism-and-pan-africanism">Julius Nyerere</a> of Tanzania, <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/james-clr/biograph.htm">C.L.R. James</a> of Trinidad and <a href="https://www.naacp.org/naacp-history-w-e-b-dubois/">W.E.B. DuBois</a> of the US.</p>
<p>While we see growth in hip hop’s Pan African voice through artists like Blitz the Ambassador, we do also see movement away from a United States of Africa under a socialist state as a primary goal of Pan Africanists. What then are some of the primary objectives of Pan Africanism today? African music, especially hip hop, has always given us clues.</p>
<p>Hip hop is an important <a href="https://www.ohioswallow.com/book/Hip-Hop+in+Africa">catalyst</a> for Pan Africanism today. We are seeing a major cultural shift through collaborations between African and African diaspora artists, as well as the inclusion of Pan African elements in their music. </p>
<p>Some of these songs are significant in bringing together artists known for making social statements, such as <em>Opps</em> (2018) with Vince Staples (US) and Yugen Blakrok (South Africa) for the <em>Black Panther</em> <a href="https://www.vulture.com/2018/02/a-guide-to-black-panther-soundtracks-south-african-artists.html">soundtrack</a>. There are many more, like the remix to <em><a href="https://sampathegreat.bandcamp.com/album/time-s-up-remix-feat-junglepussy-3">Times Up</a></em> (2020) with Sampa the Great and Junglepussy.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/H2lvgKDpiSA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Sampa the Great’s work embodies Pan Africanism today.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Zambia-born, Botswana-raised hip hop artist Sampa The Great spends her time between Australia and Botswana. Her album <em><a href="https://sampathegreat.bandcamp.com/album/the-return">The Return</a></em> (2019) was an important work that received much <a href="https://www.metacritic.com/music/the-return/sampa-the-great">praise</a>. From it, the songs <em><a href="https://youtu.be/H2lvgKDpiSA">Final Form</a></em> and <em><a href="https://youtu.be/dDubhAKSeB0">Energy</a></em> are representations of hip hop’s Pan African voice. </p>
<p>In the songs’ music videos, for example, we see dance styles found in diaspora and African communities. We see facial paint designs like those seen in South Africa and masks like those found in Mali. In <a href="http://pilerats.com/music/rap/sampa-the-great-energy/"><em>Energy</em></a> she features British-Sierra Leonean artist <a href="https://www.radicalartreview.org/post/black-visual-frequency-interview-with-nadeem-din-gabisi">Nadeem Din-Gabisi</a> performing poetry in <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-west-africas-pidgins-deserve-full-recognition-as-official-languages-101844">Pidgin English</a>.</p>
<h2>Collaborations</h2>
<p>We’ve seen important collaborations between hip hop artists across Africa and in the diaspora that go back to the early 1990s. But we see an increase after 2010. When African artists started using social media and file sharing they were able to increase their collaborations. </p>
<p>In 2011, Senegalese hip hop pioneer <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2008/feb/15/worldmusic.urban">Didier Awadi</a> released the major collaborative project, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/album/1fWlrQsVTwZo9avHCeZDzF?autoplay=true">Présidents d'Afrique</a> (Presidents of Africa) featuring collaborations with artists from Burkina Faso, DRC, Kenya, Mozambique, South Africa, France and the US. It also sampled speeches from past leaders like Aimé Césaire, Nyerere, Nkrumah, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King.</p>
<p>And the growing presence of Africans in important positions in the US entertainment industry has meant these collaborations are beginning to happen in more mainstream platforms. </p>
<p>Two big budget projects that have attracted significant attention are the US film <em>Black Panther</em> (2018) and US pop star Beyoncé’s <em>Black is King</em> visual album (2020). </p>
<p>There are many important <a href="https://culture-review.co.za/black-america-is-king?fbclid=IwAR2aBSKryCvXuX1blBwJz7sFhViOestuSHNLtexPM6Npyzs4EQ6b6v3WTgU">criticisms</a> of these projects. Major labels prefer proven (profitable) formulas over artist innovation. There is a tendency towards a homogenisation – a lumping together – of Africa and a marginalisation of African artists’ voices. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/nLm8MMmkqeQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Beyoncé is criticised for her representations of Africa.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But we also need to understand that both projects are products of the transnationalisation of African communities and identities. They exist in part because of the increased mobility of African communities around the world. We also must recognise their impact on helping to cultivate Pan African identities. </p>
<p>In <em>Black is King</em>, we see the prominent influence of West African culture. The project was the product of the creative vision of Beyoncé, Ghanaian creative director <a href="https://www.essence.com/entertainment/only-essence/black-is-king-director-kwasi-fordjour/">Kwasi Fordjour</a> and Ghanaian creatives Blitz Bazawule (Blitz the Ambassador) and <a href="https://www.emmanueladjei.com">Emmanuel Adjei</a>. Also on the project were Nigerian creative directors <a href="https://www.okayafrica.com/ibra-ake-mission-show-african-creatives-value-ownership-childish-gambino/">Ibra Ake</a> and <a href="https://100women.okayafrica.com/editorial/jennnkiru">Jenn Nkiru</a>. </p>
<h2>Pan Africanism is hip hop</h2>
<p>There will be more of these projects produced. There will also continue to be these projects produced on smaller budgets. But imagine if Sampa the Great’s <em>Final Form</em> had a <em>Black is King</em> budget? Would there be criticism of this artist if she incorrectly used a particular African symbol?</p>
<p>Songs like <em>Final Form</em> and <em>Hello Africa</em> are celebrations of Blackness, in global spaces. This Pan Africanism is recognition that African peoples are transnational and multicultural. It is an understanding that African peoples must stand together. It is also a call to understand and respect the differences in our struggles and to resist the temptation of imposing “universal” models of liberation. Pan Africanism is also feminist, anti-homophobic and anti-imperialist. </p>
<p>The importance of African music and hip hop is that it also clues us in on what is going on with Pan Africanism. Pan Africanism is not a movement that faded away or only lives on among a small minority. It is dynamic, and has adjusted to new realities.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/151680/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Msia Kibona Clark does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The increased migration of Africans and the global growth of hip hop culture has seen a dynamic new generation of Pan Africanism emerge.Msia Kibona Clark, Associate professor, Howard UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1508252020-12-14T13:20:34Z2020-12-14T13:20:34ZW.E.B. Du Bois embraced science to fight racism as editor of NAACP’s magazine The Crisis<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373656/original/file-20201208-21-huflu9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C17%2C2243%2C1613&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">W.E.B. Du Bois in his office at The Crisis in New York City, 1925.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-i0421">W. E. B. Du Bois Papers (MS 312). Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The NAACP – the most prominent interracial civil rights organization in American history – published the first issue of The Crisis, <a href="https://www.thecrisismagazine.com">its official magazine</a>, 110 years ago, in 1910. For almost two and a half decades, sociologist and civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois served as its editor, famously using this platform to dismantle scientific racism. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373621/original/file-20201208-20-w8p2rq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Yellowed print ad for The Crisis with photo of a young Black child and text." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373621/original/file-20201208-20-w8p2rq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373621/original/file-20201208-20-w8p2rq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=853&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373621/original/file-20201208-20-w8p2rq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=853&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373621/original/file-20201208-20-w8p2rq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=853&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373621/original/file-20201208-20-w8p2rq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1072&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373621/original/file-20201208-20-w8p2rq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1072&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373621/original/file-20201208-20-w8p2rq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1072&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An advertisement for The Crisis, circa March 1925.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-b170-i549">W.E.B. Du Bois Papers (MS 312). Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At the time, many widely respected <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/211280">intellectuals gave credence to beliefs</a> that empirical evidence exists to justify a “natural” white superiority. Tearing down scientific racism was thus a necessary project for The Crisis. Under Du Bois’ leadership, the magazine laid bare the irrationality of scientific racism. </p>
<p>Less remembered, however, is how it also sought to help its readers understand and engage with contemporary science. </p>
<p>In nearly every issue, the magazine reported on scientific developments, recommended scientific works or featured articles on natural sciences. Du Bois’ time as editor of The Crisis was just as much about critically embracing careful, systematic, empirical science as it was about skewering the popular view that Blacks (and other nonwhites) were naturally inferior. </p>
<p>Sociologists <a href="https://as.vanderbilt.edu/sociology/bio/?who=patrick-greiner">Patrick Greiner</a> and <a href="https://faculty.utah.edu/u0847751-BRETT_CLARK/hm/index.hml">Brett Clark</a> <a href="https://arts-sciences.buffalo.edu/sociology/faculty/faculty-directory/besek-jordan.html">and I</a> recently pored through the magnificent <a href="https://credo.library.umass.edu/view/collection/mums312">W.E.B. Du Bois Papers</a> at the Special Collections and University Archives at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1468795X20938624">We found that Du Bois not only drew from natural sciences</a>, but thought deeply about the ways in which The Crisis should and should not do so. He would even go so far as to critique allies for using science in ways he thought inappropriate.</p>
<h2>Case in point: Defending Darwin</h2>
<p>On Feb. 18, 1932, the Harlem pastor Adam Clayton Powell wrote to Du Bois, asking him to publish his recent address at a NAACP mass meeting in an upcoming issue of The Crisis.</p>
<p>A week later, <a href="http://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-b192-i371">Du Bois responded</a> that while he’d read Powell’s address “with great interest,” he could not publish it as written. Why? It got biologist Charles Darwin and his theory of natural selection very wrong. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373628/original/file-20201208-23-1ibsv7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="excerpt of typewritten letter on yellowed paper" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373628/original/file-20201208-23-1ibsv7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373628/original/file-20201208-23-1ibsv7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=286&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373628/original/file-20201208-23-1ibsv7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=286&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373628/original/file-20201208-23-1ibsv7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=286&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373628/original/file-20201208-23-1ibsv7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373628/original/file-20201208-23-1ibsv7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373628/original/file-20201208-23-1ibsv7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An excerpt of Du Bois’ letter of Feb. 25, 1925 to Adam Clayton Powell.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-b192-i371">W.E.B. Du Bois Papers (MS 312). Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Darwin, explained Du Bois, did not try to demonstrate “who ought to survive,” as Powell’s address assumed. Rather, Darwin’s work is “simply a scientific statement” that had been twisted to support eugenicist and other pseudo-scientific doctrines. </p>
<p>This short reply to the powerful pastor contains so much. It shows that Du Bois demanded a nuanced appreciation of Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Further, he insisted Darwin should not be held liable for the racist ideologues who misappropriated his work, cloaking their demagoguery in scientific objectivity. Darwin’s work is of clear value, but one must always remain aware that, like with all science, politics shaped its reception.</p>
<p>For Du Bois, how one understands and uses science were not minor issues. </p>
<h2>Science in The Crisis</h2>
<p>In the first section of <a href="https://modjourn.org/issue/bdr507789/">the first issue of The Crisis</a>, there is an archaeological report. It describes how “exploration of the African continent is yet in its infancy and will doubtless yield surprising results in establishing the advanced state of development attained by the black races in early times.” </p>
<p>According to the latest archaeology, in other words, African heritage is something to be proud of. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373640/original/file-20201208-18-1w0t65r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Subheading 'SCIENCE' above a column of text." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373640/original/file-20201208-18-1w0t65r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373640/original/file-20201208-18-1w0t65r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=210&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373640/original/file-20201208-18-1w0t65r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=210&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373640/original/file-20201208-18-1w0t65r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=210&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373640/original/file-20201208-18-1w0t65r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=264&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373640/original/file-20201208-18-1w0t65r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=264&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373640/original/file-20201208-18-1w0t65r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=264&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">On page 6 of the inaugural issue of The Crisis, a subheading for ‘SCIENCE.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://modjourn.org/issue/bdr507789/">The Crisis. Vol. 1, No. 1; 1910. The Modernist Journals Project. Brown and Tulsa Universities, ongoing. www.modjourn.org</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Later in that issue, under the subheading “Science,” it is noted that a paper was read before the British Association for the Advancement of Science concluding that “all earlier human races were probably colored.” This same section notes a recent study providing evidence that, in a direct rebuke to scientific racism, “mere brain weight is no indication of mentality.”</p>
<p>In the second issue of The Crisis, the famed Columbia University anthropologist Franz Boas explained that there is no physical anthropological evidence “<a href="https://modjourn.org/issue/bdr507810/">showing inferiority of the Negro race</a>.” Later issues would highlight early African metallurgy and critique racist intelligence tests. Another would <a href="https://modjourn.org/issue/bdr507921/">recommend a work by Peter Kropotkin</a>, the great Russian anarchist and zoologist, which suggested that natural selection is more about cooperation among species than any fight for survival between them.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373652/original/file-20201208-20-8ogeie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Article headlined 'Is the Negro Inferior?'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373652/original/file-20201208-20-8ogeie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373652/original/file-20201208-20-8ogeie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=255&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373652/original/file-20201208-20-8ogeie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=255&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373652/original/file-20201208-20-8ogeie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=255&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373652/original/file-20201208-20-8ogeie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373652/original/file-20201208-20-8ogeie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373652/original/file-20201208-20-8ogeie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Crisis published articles by prestigious scholars who drew on science to refute racism.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://books.google.com/books?id=AVgEAAAAMBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false">The Crisis, Nov. 1932</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Crisis published this sort of work throughout Du Bois’ time as editor. The reason why is clear. Du Bois knew that a proper understanding of science does not lead to biological essentialism – the idea that biology limits who you are and what you can do. It leads to the exact opposite conclusion, that every population has the ability to make their own meaning and determine themselves as they see fit. The only constraints are social processes like colonialism and racism. Science, for Du Bois, was in this way necessary and liberating.</p>
<h2>Science for an emancipated politics</h2>
<p>Today’s political moment is different than Du Bois’, though there are some parallels. One is that a political life free of exploitation and enhanced by participatory democracy remains out of reach for many. Disenfranchisement still exists in many forms. As the Black Lives Matter movement and others have shown, racism is a big reason why.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373659/original/file-20201208-22-1wfq5kt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="W.E.B. Du Bois in his office, ca. 1948" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373659/original/file-20201208-22-1wfq5kt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373659/original/file-20201208-22-1wfq5kt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=688&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373659/original/file-20201208-22-1wfq5kt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=688&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373659/original/file-20201208-22-1wfq5kt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=688&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373659/original/file-20201208-22-1wfq5kt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=864&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373659/original/file-20201208-22-1wfq5kt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=864&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373659/original/file-20201208-22-1wfq5kt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=864&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">W.E.B. Du Bois in his office, ca. 1948, holding the first issue of The Crisis.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-i0463">W.E.B. Du Bois Papers (MS 312). Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While only a piece of the puzzle, Du Bois’ insistence on critically embracing a careful, systematic and empirical view of science can be an important part of that struggle for an emancipated politics. A critical embrace of science can help people better tackle pressing issues like environmental justice, health care disparities and more. </p>
<p>To critically embrace science is to, as Du Bois did in the pages of The Crisis, remain unwavering in the fact that any scientific theory promoting racial and other forms of injustice is categorically wrong.</p>
<p>He demonstrated how to reject racist science without rejecting the ways that science can help people better understand our relationships with the world. In particular, engaging science shows how our relationships with each other are not determined by nature, but are under our own control.</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/150825/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jordan Besek does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As editor of the magazine for 24 years, Du Bois featured articles about biology, evolution, archaeology in Africa and more to refute the rampant scientific racism of the early 20th century.Jordan Besek, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University at BuffaloLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1298672020-01-24T13:37:52Z2020-01-24T13:37:52ZWhen lesbians led the women’s suffrage movement<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311449/original/file-20200122-117962-1tr1v3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A suffrage parade.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2014700130/">Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 1911, a team of three women with <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3704629">“lesbian-like” relationships</a> – Jane Addams, Sophonisba Breckinridge and Anna Howard Shaw – took control of the suffrage movement, leading the nation’s largest feminist organization. They promoted a diverse and inclusive women’s rights movement.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/82kcs3yk9780252042676.html">My research</a> suggests that the personal lives of these suffrage leaders shaped their political agendas. Rather than emphasizing differences of gender, race, ethnicity and class, they advanced equal rights for all Americans.</p>
<p><a href="https://academic.oup.com/jah/article-abstract/52/4/855/764984">Suffrage scholarship</a> has long acknowledged a shift “from justice to expediency” – from an emphasis on natural rights to an emphasis on gender distinctions – in the movement at the turn of the century. </p>
<p>The 1848 <a href="https://www.nps.gov/wori/learn/historyculture/declaration-of-sentiments.htm">Declaration of Sentiments</a>, a founding document of the suffrage struggle, proudly insisted that “all men and women are created equal.” </p>
<p>However, by the early 20th century, many of the movement’s new adherents emphasized women’s differences from men. To gain support, they argued that female voters would engage in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_housekeeping">“social housekeeping”</a> and “clean up” corrupt politics. </p>
<p>Some suffragists, including women’s rights pioneer <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/28/opinion/sunday/suffrage-movement-racism-black-women.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article">Elizabeth Cady Stanton</a>, also increasingly emphasized racial, class and ethnic differences. After the Civil War, when the <a href="https://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199772636.001.0001/acprof-9780199772636">15th Amendment</a> enfranchised Black men but ignored all women, white suffrage leaders <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/02/opinion/sunday/women-voting-19th-amendment-white-supremacy.html">excluded African American women</a> from the movement. </p>
<p>By the 1890s, some had begun to advocate <a href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/mss41210.mss41210-002_00551_00562/?st=gallery">“educated suffrage,”</a> code for literacy requirements that would extend voting rights to educated, white, middle-class women, but prevent many African Americans, immigrants and working-class citizens from casting ballots.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311203/original/file-20200121-117943-1xbhx6p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311203/original/file-20200121-117943-1xbhx6p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311203/original/file-20200121-117943-1xbhx6p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311203/original/file-20200121-117943-1xbhx6p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311203/original/file-20200121-117943-1xbhx6p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311203/original/file-20200121-117943-1xbhx6p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=556&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311203/original/file-20200121-117943-1xbhx6p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=556&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311203/original/file-20200121-117943-1xbhx6p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=556&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jane Addams.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2014687739/">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A new leadership team</h2>
<p>At the 1911 meeting of the <a href="http://www.crusadeforthevote.org/nawsa-united">National American Woman Suffrage Association</a> (NAWSA), the membership elected <a href="https://www.louisewknight.com/spirit-in-action.html">Jane Addams</a> as first vice president and <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/82kcs3yk9780252042676.html">Sophonisba Breckinridge</a> as second vice president. </p>
<p>The new officers joined a leadership team headed by <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/34men9yt9780252038150.html">Anna Howard Shaw</a>, an ordained minister who served as NAWSA’s president from 1904 to 1915. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311205/original/file-20200121-117943-vs9hvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311205/original/file-20200121-117943-vs9hvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311205/original/file-20200121-117943-vs9hvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=828&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311205/original/file-20200121-117943-vs9hvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=828&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311205/original/file-20200121-117943-vs9hvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=828&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311205/original/file-20200121-117943-vs9hvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1040&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311205/original/file-20200121-117943-vs9hvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1040&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311205/original/file-20200121-117943-vs9hvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1040&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Anna Shaw.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2016820860/">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For the next year, women who loved other women held the top three positions in the nation’s largest feminist organization. </p>
<p>None of these women publicly claimed a lesbian identity. Nonetheless, like other leaders in <a href="https://www.hmhbooks.com/shop/books/To-Believe-in-Women/9780618056972">women’s rights, higher education and social reform</a>, all three women had significant same-sex relationships. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/34men9yt9780252038150.html">Shaw</a> relied on her companion and secretary, Lucy E. Anthony – suffrage pioneer Susan B. Anthony’s niece – to assist her in guiding the woman suffrage movement. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Education-Addams-Politics-Culture-America/dp/0812237471">Addams</a>, head of the Chicago settlement house <a href="https://www.history.com/news/the-humble-chicago-house-that-started-a-movement">Hull House</a>, enjoyed a long and loving relationship with philanthropist Mary Rozet Smith, who supported her both emotionally and financially. As Addams’ nephew <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=SXM_zMK3u4YC&q=making+life+easier#v=snippet&q=making%20life%20easier&f=false">explained</a>, Smith dedicated herself to “making life easier for Jane Addams. That was her career.” </p>
<p>And, as <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/82kcs3yk9780252042676.html">my biography of Breckinridge</a> demonstrates, her intimate relationship with Edith Abbott, dean of the <a href="https://ssa.uchicago.edu/history">University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration</a>, helped her <a href="https://livestream.com/UC-SSA/20191017-SSA-PHD-Jabour">pioneer the social work profession</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/same-sex-couples-have-been-in-american-politics-way-longer-than-the-buttigiegs-have-been-married-116568">promote social welfare policy</a>.</p>
<h2>Promoting conventional femininity</h2>
<p>Opponents of woman suffrage used <a href="https://aha.confex.com/aha/2020/webprogram/Paper27349.html">images of suffragists as unattractive man-haters</a> to discredit the movement. </p>
<p>To counter such stereotypes, suffrage leaders promoted a public image of conventional femininity. Shaw, who previously sported short hair, grew her hair long and wore it in a conservative chignon. </p>
<p>“I learned that no woman in public life can afford to make herself conspicuous by any eccentricity of dress or appearance,” <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/354/354-h/354-h.htm">she noted</a>, because negative attention “injures the cause she represents.” </p>
<p>Suffrage leaders also emphasized women’s roles as wives and mothers. Addams and Breckinridge were founding members of the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2163477?seq=1">Woman’s City Club of Chicago</a>, which produced a popular <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=3XsEAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA2144#v=onepage&q&f=false">pro-suffrage graphic</a> that illustrated the connections between domestic life and local government. NAWSA adopted the image as its own, featuring it on <a href="https://images.socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/items/show/78">suffrage posters</a>. </p>
<p>To avoid criticism and gain support, NAWSA’s leaders upheld conventional femininity. But this was not the whole story.</p>
<h2>Demanding equality for all</h2>
<p>In a <a href="https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85066387/1910-06-23/ed-1/seq-6/">1910 speech</a>, Breckinridge predicted that the time was coming “when man and woman would stand on the same industrial plane and their wages would be equalized by an equal social condition.”</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311232/original/file-20200121-117927-16xgi79.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311232/original/file-20200121-117927-16xgi79.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311232/original/file-20200121-117927-16xgi79.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=824&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311232/original/file-20200121-117927-16xgi79.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=824&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311232/original/file-20200121-117927-16xgi79.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=824&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311232/original/file-20200121-117927-16xgi79.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1036&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311232/original/file-20200121-117927-16xgi79.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1036&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311232/original/file-20200121-117927-16xgi79.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1036&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sophonisba Breckinridge.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2014687516/">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Breckinridge’s lesbian-like lifestyle helps explain her stance on gender equality. As a single, self-supporting woman, she understood that many women, like herself, could not rely on men for financial security. </p>
<p>Thus, at the same time that she promoted equal voting rights, she also championed <a href="https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/G/bo3624520.html">financial support for single mothers</a> and <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691176161/a-class-by-herself">maximum hour and minimum wage legislation for women workers</a>.</p>
<p>As members of the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20173756?seq=1">Immigrants’ Protective League</a> and the <a href="https://www.naacp.org/nations-premier-civil-rights-organization/">National Association for the Advancement of Colored People</a>, both Breckinridge and Addams rejected exclusionary strategies. </p>
<p>Addams protested <a href="http://digital.janeaddams.ramapo.edu/items/show/3958">proposed literacy tests</a> for immigrants. Breckinridge coauthored a <a href="https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/011926613">report advocating education</a>, rather than employment, for working class youth.</p>
<p>The new lesbian leadership team also welcomed African American participation in the movement. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/phylon1960.53.2.3?seq=1">W. E. B. Du Bois</a>, editor of the NAACP publication The <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/25079051?seq=1">Crisis</a>, had publicly <a href="https://library.brown.edu/pdfs/1308149903968629.pdf">criticized NAWSA’s racism</a>, warning that the movement’s mission was becoming “Votes for White Women Only.” He also published numerous <a href="http://suffrageandthemedia.org/source/race-gender-fight-vote-web-du-bois-suffrage/">editorials and articles</a> in <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2645943?seq=1">support of woman suffrage</a>. </p>
<p>Breckinridge advocated <a href="https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/drs:460406564$1i">inviting Du Bois to speak</a> at the suffrage organization’s 1912 meeting. <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.rslfe1&view=1up&seq=5">His participation</a> signaled NAWSA’s growing commitment to racial equality.</p>
<p>In 1911, NAWSA had <a href="https://library.brown.edu/pdfs/1307980563609254.pdf">refused to allow a resolution</a> linking woman suffrage with African American rights to be presented at its annual meeting. In 1912, however, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/24494512?seq=1">NAWSA published</a> Du Bois’s speech, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/W-B-Bois-Speaks-1890-1919/dp/0873481259">“Disfranchisement,”</a> which did just that, advocating a <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.rslfe1&view=1up&seq=15">“Democracy of Sex and Color.”</a> </p>
<p>This lesbian leadership team lasted for only a year. But while it operated, these leaders made the suffrage movement more diverse and inclusive.</p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of an article originally published on January 24, 2020.</em></p>
<p>[ <em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/129867/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anya Jabour receives funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.</span></em></p>In 1911, lesbians led the nation’s largest feminist organization. They promoted a diverse and inclusive women’s rights movement.Anya Jabour, Regents Professor of History, University of MontanaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1101482019-01-31T11:42:15Z2019-01-31T11:42:15ZHow Howard Thurman met Gandhi and brought nonviolence to the civil rights movement<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/256435/original/file-20190130-103164-pswg2g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Howard Thurman's image on Howard University chapel's stained glass window.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Howard_University_-_Andrew_Rankin_Memorial_Chapel_-_stained_glass_window_with_three_deans_including_Howard_Thurman.JPG">Fourandsixty from Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Director Martin Doblmeier’s 2019 documentary, <a href="https://www.tpt.org/backs-against-the-wall-the-howard-thurman-story/">“Backs Against the Wall: The Howard Thurman Story,”</a> highlighted Thurman’s important role in the civil rights struggle as a key mentor to <a href="https://www.thehistorymakers.org/biography/vernon-e-jordan-jr">many</a> <a href="https://www.thehistorymakers.org/biography/marian-wright-edelman-40">leaders</a> <a href="https://www.thehistorymakers.org/biography/reverend-jesse-l-jackson">of the movement</a>, including <a href="https://theconversation.com/meet-the-theologian-who-helped-mlk-see-the-value-of-nonviolence-89938">Martin Luther King Jr.</a>, <a href="https://www.biography.com/people/james-farmer-21349629">among</a> <a href="https://www.thehistorymakers.org/biography/reverend-dr-otis-moss-jr">others</a>.</p>
<p>I have been a <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/They_Looked_for_a_City.html?id=_hhtQgAACAAJ">scholar of Howard Thurman and Martin Luther King Jr.</a> for over 30 years and I serve as the editor of Thurman’s papers. Thurman’s influence on King Jr. was critical in shaping the civil rights struggle as a nonviolent movement. Thurman was deeply influenced by how Gandhi used nonviolence in India’s struggle for independence from British rule. </p>
<h2>Visit to India</h2>
<p>Born in 1899, <a href="http://www.bu.edu/htpp/the-papers/">Howard Washington Thurman</a> was raised by his formerly enslaved grandmother. He grew up to be an ordained Baptist minister and a leading religious figure of 20th-century America.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/256190/original/file-20190129-39344-1ap5kng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/256190/original/file-20190129-39344-1ap5kng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256190/original/file-20190129-39344-1ap5kng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256190/original/file-20190129-39344-1ap5kng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256190/original/file-20190129-39344-1ap5kng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256190/original/file-20190129-39344-1ap5kng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256190/original/file-20190129-39344-1ap5kng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Journey of the delegation in South Asia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Marc Korpus</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1936 Thurman led a <a href="https://www.beaconbroadside.com/broadside/2014/10/when-howard-thurman-met-mahatma-gandhi-nonviolence-and-the-civil-rights-movement.html">four-member delegation</a> to India, Burma (Myanmar), and Ceylon (Sri Lanka), known as the “pilgrimage of friendship.” It was during this visit that he would meet Mahatma Gandhi, who at the time was leading a nonviolent struggle of independence from British rule.</p>
<p>The delegation had been sponsored by the Student Christian Movement in India who wanted to explore the political connections between the oppression of blacks in the United States and the freedom struggles of the people of India. </p>
<p>The general secretary of the Indian Student Christian Movement, <a href="https://library.columbia.edu/content/dam/libraryweb/locations/burke/fa/mrl/ldpd_4492546.pdf">A. Ralla Ram</a>, had argued for inviting a “Negro” delegation. <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Papers_of_Howard_Washington_Thurman.html?id=rc6VZwEACAAJ">He said</a> that “since Christianity in India is the ‘oppressor’s’ religion, there would be a unique value in having representatives of another oppressed group speak on the validity and contribution of Christianity.”</p>
<p>Between October 1935 to April 1936, Thurman gave at least 135 lectures in over 50 cities, to a variety of audiences and important Indian leaders, including the Bengali poet and Nobel laureate, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Rabindranath-Tagore-Uma-Das-Gupta/dp/0195669800/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1548792576&sr=8-6&keywords=tagore+biography">Rabindranath Tagore</a>, who also played a key role in India’s independence movement.</p>
<p>Throughout the journey, the issue of segregation within the Christian church and its inability to address <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/titles/5906.html">color consciousness</a>, a social and political system based upon discrimination against blacks and other nonwhite people, was raised by many of the people he met. </p>
<h2>Thurman and Gandhi</h2>
<p>The delegation met with Gandhi towards the end of their tour in <a href="http://gandhiseries.blogspot.com/2011/10/gandhi-bardoli-protest-and-satyagraha.html">Bardoli, a small town in India’s western state of Gujarat</a>. </p>
<p>Gandhi, an admirer of <a href="https://blackpast.org/aah/washington-booker-t-1856-1915">Booker T. Washington</a>, the prominent African-American educator, was no stranger to the struggles of African-Americans. He had been in <a href="https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article-abstract/98/2/570/133494?redirectedFrom=fulltext">correspondence with prominent black leaders</a> before the meeting with the delegation.</p>
<p>As early as May 1, 1929, Gandhi had written <a href="https://minervasperch.wordpress.com/2018/12/15/mahatma-gandhi-message-to-the-american-negro-1929/">a “Message to the American Negro”</a> addressed to W.E.B. DuBois to be published in <a href="https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=crisisnaacp">“The Crisis</a>.” Founded in 1910 by DuBois, “The Crisis” was the official publication of <a href="https://www.naacp.org/">the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People</a>.</p>
<p>Gandhi’s message stated,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Let not the 12 million Negroes be ashamed of the fact that they are the grandchildren of slaves. There is no dishonour in being slaves. There is dishonour in being slave-owners. But let us not think of honour or dishonour in connection with the past. Let us realise that the future is with those who would be truthful, pure and loving.”</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Understanding the idea of nonviolence</h2>
<p>In a <a href="https://www.beaconbroadside.com/broadside/2014/10/when-howard-thurman-met-mahatma-gandhi-nonviolence-and-the-civil-rights-movement.html">conversation lasting about three hours</a>, published in <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Papers_of_Howard_Washington_Thurman.html?id=rc6VZwEACAAJ">The Papers of Howard Washington Thurman</a>, Gandhi engaged his guests with questions about racial segregation, lynching, African-American history, and religion. Gandhi was puzzled as to why African-Americans adopted the <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Slave_Religion.html?id=G3CkQgAACAAJ">religion of their masters, Christianity</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/256459/original/file-20190130-108338-18lwz7m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/256459/original/file-20190130-108338-18lwz7m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256459/original/file-20190130-108338-18lwz7m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256459/original/file-20190130-108338-18lwz7m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256459/original/file-20190130-108338-18lwz7m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256459/original/file-20190130-108338-18lwz7m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256459/original/file-20190130-108338-18lwz7m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gandhi, spinning cotton, in a photo from 1931.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-International-News-India-INDIA-/7ff0a6c899e5da11af9f0014c2589dfb/40/0">AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>He reasoned that at least in religions like Islam, all were considered equal. Gandhi declared, “For the moment a slave accepts Islam he obtains equality with his master, and there are several instances of this in history.” <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/44209369?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">But he did not think that was true for Christianity</a>. Thurman asked what was the greatest obstacle to Christianity in India. Gandhi replied that Christianity as practiced and identified with Western culture and colonialism was the greatest enemy to Jesus Christ in India. </p>
<p>The delegation used the limited time that was left to interrogate Gandhi on matters of <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0392192116666470">“ahimsa,”</a> or nonviolence, and his perspective on the struggle of African-Americans in the United States. </p>
<p>According to <a href="https://www.hindustantimes.com/columns/gandhi-made-india-mahadev-desai-made-gandhi/story-pzU3tEGwLPjKtCwmPFcNjK.html">Mahadev Desai</a>, Gandhi’s personal secretary, Thurman was fascinated with the discussion on the redemptive power of ahimsa in a life committed to the practice of nonviolent resistance. </p>
<p>Gandhi explained that though ahimsa is technically defined as “non-injury” or “nonviolence,” it is not a negative force, rather it is a force “more positive than electricity and more powerful than even ether.”</p>
<p>In its most practical terms, it is love that is “self-acting,” but even more – and when embodied by a single individual, it bears a force more powerful than hate and violence and can transform the world. </p>
<p>Towards the end of the meeting, Gandhi proclaimed, “It may be through the Negroes that the unadulterated message of nonviolence will be delivered to the world.”</p>
<h2>Search for an American Gandhi</h2>
<p>Indeed, Gandhi’s views would leave a deep impression on Thurman’s own interpretation of nonviolence. They would later be influential in developing Martin Luther King Jr.’s philosophy of nonviolent resistance. It would go on to shape the thinking of a generation of civil rights activists.</p>
<p>In his book, <a href="https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.260684/2015.260684.Jesus-And_djvu.txt">“Jesus and the Disinherited,”</a> Thurman addresses the negative forces of fear, deception and hatred as forms of violence that ensnare and entrap the oppressed. But he also counsels that through love and the willingness to nonviolently engage the adversary, the committed individual creates the possibility of community. </p>
<p>As he explains, the act of love as redemptive suffering is not contingent on the other’s response. Love, rather, is unsolicited and self-giving. It transcends merit and demerit. It simply loves. </p>
<p>A growing number of African-American leaders closely followed Gandhi’s campaigns of “<a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/satyagraha-philosophy">satyagraha</a>,” or what he termed as nonresistance to evil against British colonialism. Black newspapers and magazines announced the need for <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300205619/breaking-white-supremacy">an “American Gandhi.”</a></p>
<p>Upon his return, some African-American leaders thought that Howard Thurman would fulfill that role. In 1942, for example, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0807000469">Peter Dana of the Pittsburgh Courier, wrote</a> that Thurman “was one of the few black men in the country around whom a great, conscious movement of Negroes could be built, not unlike the great Indian independence movement.”</p>
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<h2>King, love and nonviolence</h2>
<p>Thurman, however, chose a less direct path as an interpreter of nonviolence and a resource for activists who were on the front lines of the struggle. <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/With_Head_and_Heart.html?id=Z5_07RsCWWsC">As he wrote</a>,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“It was my conviction and determination that the church would be a resource for activists – a mission fundamentally perceived. To me it was important that the individual who was in the thick of the struggle for social change would be able to find renewal and fresh courage in the spiritual resources of the church. There must be provided a place, a moment, when a person could declare, I choose.”</p>
</blockquote>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/256192/original/file-20190129-108367-12svphf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/256192/original/file-20190129-108367-12svphf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256192/original/file-20190129-108367-12svphf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256192/original/file-20190129-108367-12svphf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256192/original/file-20190129-108367-12svphf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256192/original/file-20190129-108367-12svphf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256192/original/file-20190129-108367-12svphf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., speaking at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Atlanta.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-Associated-Press-Domestic-News-Georgia-U-/db147adc924c43559a8e188a82e2ddff/4/0">AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Indeed, leaders like Martin Luther King did choose to live out the gospel of peace, justice and love that Thurman so eloquently proclaimed in writing and the spoken word, even though it came with an exacting price. </p>
<p>In his last letter to Martin Luther King, dated May 13, 1966, Thurman expressed his regret for the time that had elapsed since he and King last spoke. He ended the short note with a rather <a href="http://findingaids.auctr.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/172824">foreboding quote</a> from the American naturalist and essayist <a href="http://www.eiseley.org/">Loren Eiseley</a>, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Those as hunts treasure must go alone, at night, and when they find it they have to leave a little of their blood behind them.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>King, like Gandhi, fell to an assassin’s bullet.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/110148/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Walter E. Fluker consulted with Journey Films in the production of the film documentary, "Backs Against the Wall: The Howard Thurman Story". </span></em></p>Howard Thurman, a mentor to MLK, first met Gandhi during a visit to India in 1936. He came to understand nonviolence as a force more powerful than hate that had the power to transform the world.Walter E. Fluker, Professor of Ethical Leadership, Boston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.