“I’m not African. I’m American.”
Years after she met my father, my mother recalled a conversation they had at their first encounter.
“I hate to admit this, but I couldn’t find Sierra Leone on a map of the world.”
Edward’s eyes rolled upward and I feared he thought me an illiterate.
“Why Miss Kendrick, you know nothing about Africa!”
“Very little,” I said, sorry because this was where he came from. “I’ve never really thought about my ignorance in this regard.”
My mother went on to explain that she had learned “a few geographical aspects of Africa, and slave history,” but where she grew up, some American history was taught “in a derogatory light,” and she had been ashamed of her slave ancestry. Edward pointed out that others besides Africans had been enslaved. In Massachusetts, she said, “Negroes bear the weight of racial prejudice.” As she told her husband-to-be, “Learning about George Washington Carver and other famous Negroes was easier.”1
My parents met a few years after my mother, a newly minted graduate of Boston University, had taken her first job, as a music teacher at an elementary school in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Her experiences, up to that point, had been largely limited to encounters with other native New Englanders, both white Americans and other African Americans. One Sunday in 1950, a friend invited her to church to hear the main speaker—“an African man.” Introduced to him after the service, she found the smartly dressed man in a suit little different from the young men with whom she had grown up. He spoke perfect English, invited her to play tennis, and courted her. He also talked about his native Sierra Leone with great passion. When she went home she looked for his country on a map, without success.
In the 1950s black Americans knew little of Africa and its history. Representations of the continent were typically negative, and those of African descent distanced themselves from associating with it. As my mother wrote in her memoir years later, while living in Sierra Leone, “I was one of two Negroes in my high school class. And in my class at Boston University there had been only three colored women. Neither school curriculum nor course of studies related to the Negro experience—no Negro writers or poets were studied, no music by African or Negro composers. This lack of exposure coupled with the image of white society reflected in advertising, newspapers, literature, shaped me immeasurably, inculcated an image of white society that actually de-emphasized the value of American Negroes.”
My mother was an “American Negro,” the label used for black Americans at that time. When they came to the United States, men and women from Africa, like my father, also fell into this category. Edward and Amelia would later marry, and the sheltered girl from Worcester, Massachusetts, who “had never before ventured further south than Williamsburg, Virginia, nor further north than Maine,” would embark on a journey to Africa that would last several decades, producing seven children and a lifelong regard for the continent. In the nearly seventy years since my parents met, African Americans have gained more knowledge about Africa. Increasingly, some even identify with the continent as the land of their ancestors. Many more over the centuries have engaged with Africa in myriad ways.
Edward and Amelia Blyden, c. 1950.
(From Blyden family private photographs. Courtesy of Amelia Blyden.)
In 1989, the Reverend Jesse Jackson called on black Americans to embrace the label “African American.” The term had been in limited use among some black Americans, but as Isabel Wilkerson reported in the New York Times, it was now “gaining currency among many other blacks, who say its use is a sign that they are accepting their difficult past and resolving a long ambivalence toward Africa.” In calling for the change, Jackson noted, “This is deeper than just name recognition. . . . Black tells you about skin color and what side of town you live on. African-American evokes discussion of the world.” Others pushing for the change highlighted the connection to Africa the label signified. The continent loomed large in the decision to embrace the term. These calls for a greater connection to Africa also brought American blacks into solidarity with the growing anti-apartheid movement of the late 1980s in South Africa and “led to the search for a clearer group identity.”2
Yet not all black Americans readily accepted the label. The call for a name change sparked much discussion and debate. Some argued that they were Americans, not Africans. Prominent black Americans such as tennis player Arthur Ashe embraced the term but others, like comedian and actor Whoopi Goldberg, rejected the label, pleading,
Don’t call me an African American. Please. It divides us as a nation and as a people, and it kinda pisses me off. It diminishes everything I’ve accomplished and everything every other black person has accomplished on American soil. It means I’m not entitled to everything plain old regular Americans are entitled to. Every time you put something in front of the word “American,” it strips it of its meaning. The Bill of Rights is my Bill of Rights, same as anyone else’s. It’s my flag. It’s my Constitution. It doesn’t talk about SOME people. It talks about ALL people—black, white, orange, brown. You. Me . . . no, I am not an African American. I’m not from Africa. I’m from New York. My roots run a whole lot deeper than most of the people who don’t have anything in front of the word “American.” I can trace my family tree back to the Mayflower. We may not have been on it, but we were under it, and that counts too.3
Goldberg echoed sentiments expressed by the likes of Frederick Douglass, who, in 1894, dismissed calls by some of his contemporaries for closer ties to Africa, proclaiming: “All this native land talk . . . is nonsense. The native land of the American Negro is America. His bones, his muscles, his sinews, are all American. His ancestors for two hundred and seventy years have lived and labored and died, on American soil, and millions of his posterity have inherited Caucasian blood.”4
This opposition to the use of African American notwithstanding, the term gained currency and soon after Jackson’s call most major newspapers, national organizations, and local associations began using it. It is evident that “African American,” often used interchangeably with “black,” is here to stay, at least for now.
The debates over the 1989 name change were not the first of their kind. From the moment women and men of African descent were brought to the United States, what they called themselves would be a contested issue. Enslaved men and women, who were from a variety of communities and varying ethnicities, arrived with no notion of “Africa.” They used their family, lineage, or clan names to claim an identity. In the United States they would become “African.” But before that they were Igbos, Congo, Mandingo, Cromantee, and “Guinea Coast negroes,” as recorded in the records of people involved in the slave trade. What they called themselves is largely lost to history. Africa was the landmass from which they had been taken, and it was a place outsiders had named.5
In the Americas, enslaved Africans were sometimes labeled by place of origin/capture or by ethnicity, but mainly by phenotype or the perceived color of their skin—black, or Negro. In 1619 John Rolfe’s account of the “20 and odd Negroes” first brought to the fledgling Virginia colony referred to men and women probably taken from the region of the Kingdom of Kongo. While it is difficult to re-create how enslaved Africans referred to themselves, the most commonly used description in colonial America was “Negro,” although slave owners often used terms associated with African geographical regions, such as Guinea, Congo, and Angola, or with ethnicities, such as Mandingo, Bambara, and Joloka. As slavery became entrenched, a process of perpetual enslavement and racialization of Africans resulted in emphasis on their color. In other words, their dark skin served to mark them as enslaved. The term Negro embraced both enslaved and free Africans in the United States, enduring into the era of emancipation and even into the twentieth century. In the late 1960s the term fell into disuse. Despite its persistence from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, black Americans, particularly those who were literate and educated, chose other labels to describe themselves.
As black Americans became literate in European languages and began to write about their experiences and histories, they chose how they would identify themselves in a variety of ways. Blacks in the North, petitioning for various rights and concessions in Northern states, frequently referred to themselves as “Africans.” Enslaved at the age of seven, Phillis Wheatley grew up in the household of a Boston family, where she learned to read and write. She became one of black America’s first poets. Her poem “On Being Brought from Africa to America” reflects on her life as a Christian woman and articulates her gratitude for what America had given her:
’Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there’s a God, that there’s a Saviour too.6
Yet even as Wheatley rejoiced in her adoption of the Christian religion, she embraced the label African. Another poem, “To S.M., a Young African Painter, on Seeing His Works,” celebrated a young black artist. Though choosing not to identify with Africa and glad for the “mercy” that had brought her to the United States, Wheatley nonetheless recognized her African ancestry.
In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries black Americans used the terms Negro, African, and occasionally black to describe themselves. In the South those enslaved on plantations often had little choice in what they would be called—they had identities ascribed to them. Privately, within the confines of slave quarters among other Africans, they no doubt chose their own labels. In those spaces they would almost certainly have assumed the names they were given at birth. In the North those who spoke and wrote publicly proudly embraced the label of African whether describing themselves or their institutions. Thus, in the eighteenth century Venture Smith’s A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture, a Native of Africa: But Resident above Sixty Years in the United States of America used the term Africa to indicate his heritage.7
Throughout the antebellum period, black Americans, fearing discrimination, found Africa looming in their imaginations. They constructed it as a homeland where the racial oppression they faced did not exist. Even those with fading memories and ties to the continent often embraced that heritage. As they sought inclusion and assimilation in the United States, many found that their African ancestry precluded incorporation into the larger society and looked for other ways to signify their place in the United States. In the wake of efforts by the American Colonization Society (ACS) to encourage free blacks to emigrate to Liberia in 1820, the term African was abandoned by many in favor of colored. As one scholar has noted, “Displays of African culture fell into disrepute.”8 So it was that in 1835 William Whipper, a black Philadelphian, recommended that “colored” and “African” be abandoned, and that Americans of African ancestry try to assimilate more fully into American society.9 Though he received some support for abandoning the use of racial designations, the use of “colored” persisted. Other terms, such as Anglo African and black, were used occasionally, even into the middle of the nineteenth century. In 1859 the Weekly Anglo-African newspaper and an accompanying magazine were published by Robert and Thomas Hamilton to be a “press of our own.”10
In the nineteenth century those who championed repatriation to Africa continued to highlight their African background. Even those who rejected the idea of a “return” identified with or embraced the term African. By the nineteenth century black Americans, now several generations removed from Africa, gradually dropped that label from their institutions. Late in the nineteenth century some embraced the “Afro American” label, as seen in the titles of organizations such as the National Afro American League and the Baltimore Afro American. An early twentieth-century campaign resulted in the word negro being capitalized by the 1930s. “Negro” continued to be used into the twentieth century.
W. E. B. Du Bois, whose life spanned almost a century and who, throughout his life, encountered different labels describing black Americans, responded to a letter from a young high school student in 1928. Roland A. Barton objected to the use of “Negro,” believing it “a white man’s word to make us feel inferior.” He wondered why even “natives of Africa” were called Negroes. Du Bois assured the young man that a name change would not alter the condition of blacks in America: “If men despise Negroes,” he wrote, “they will not despise them less if Negroes are called ‘colored’ or ‘Afro Americans.’” Rather, he suggested that the conditions for blacks must be changed: “First, to let the world know what there is fine and genuine about the Negro race. And secondly, to see that there is nothing about that race which is worth contempt; your contempt, my contempt; or the contempt of the wide, wide world.”11 Negro became the most accepted term until the 1960s when, at the height of the Black Power movement, young Americans of African descent embraced the term black.
In 1967 the historian Lerone Bennett, writing in Ebony magazine, widely read by black Americans, asked whether “Negro” should be abandoned in favor of “Afro-American.” Bennett explained the long history of name changes in black history to the magazine’s readers, dating the rejection of “African” to the colonization era. As white Americans, seeking to solve the free black problem, championed emigration, the “tentative efforts of Americans of African descent to define themselves in African terms” failed as blacks abandoned the term in favor of “colored” or “free persons of color.” As in 1989, the suggestion of a name change caused “bitter national controversy.” Those who advocated the change argued that Negro “perpetuates the master-slave mentality,” and that changing the name would “short circuit the stereotyped thinking patterns that undergird the system of racism in America.” Indeed, in the late 1960s many organizations adopted the label Afro-American. The Negro Teachers Association of New York City, founded in 1964, became the African-American Teachers Association. Black newspapers soon stopped using “Negro” because, as one editor argued, “We are descendants of Africans and because we are Americans.” Young black nationalists preferred the term black for “black brothers and sisters who are emancipating themselves.”12
Those who argued against the change made the point that using “Afro-American” would not change the power structure, urging that black Americans concentrate on more pressing concerns: “A Negro by any other name, they say, would be as black and as beautiful—and as segregated. The times, they add, are too crucial for Negroes to dissipate their energy in fratricidal strife over names.”13 In other words, as Du Bois had observed, addressing the marginalized condition of black Americans was more critical than what they were called. Yet others believed the two things were integrally related, and that it was important to understand the context, history, and politics of what they called themselves.
The many letters to the editor responding to Bennett’s publication showed the diversity of opinion among black Americans regarding their preference. Some linked the terminology to larger world issues, while others saw no need for a substitution that would not engender significant change in their social, political, and economic condition. Similar debates and controversy followed Jackson’s call. High-profile and ordinary black Americans alike weighed in. As in previous years, some disdained the attempts of black leaders to speak for them; others categorically declared they were too far removed from their African past to embrace the label African American. Still others argued that the label robbed them of their contribution to the United States.
In the late 1960s, at the height of the Black Power movement, and during periods of strong nationalist sentiments, black Americans took pride in identifying with their ancestry. As African nations gained independence from European colonizers, some African Americans chose to highlight their links to Africa. Likewise, in the late 1980s, some felt they were entitled to identify themselves however they wanted. The illustrious historian Mary Frances Berry perhaps best articulated the potential of using “African American” for building self-esteem, simply observing, “It’s not going to make things worse.”14
While “African American” is now widely accepted and used interchangeably with “black” by most Americans of African descent, the debate has resurfaced in the twenty-first century as black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean settle in the United States. The issue has become complicated as continental Africans struggle with how to categorize themselves in a racial hierarchy that has historically relegated people of African descent to the bottom rungs. Some feel they are the “real” African Americans, but others eschew using the term because of its connection to slavery.
Recently, the actor Morgan Freeman, who since 1989 has asserted that he would not use the term African American, has reiterated, “I’m not African. I’m American.” Freeman, who has eschewed the use of the term black, categorically claims his Americanness. Yet the actor was one of several black Americans who took part in a TV series hosted by Henry Louis Gates Jr. that traced his genealogical roots to Niger. Freeman, like many before him, recognizes and accepts his ancestry, but insists on his American roots and the contributions his ancestors made to building the United States. Charging those who persist in using the term African American with political correctness, he rejects attempts to foist the label on him.15
One label that has endured through the centuries has been “black.” Although it describes little and does not specify a cultural or ethnic identity, it has the ability to encompass or embrace people of African descent under one big umbrella and allies them with other people “of color.” Thus blacks descended from enslaved ancestors in the United States or the Caribbean as well as voluntary migrants from the continent have adopted this designation. Furthermore, the history of blacks in the United States has shown that regardless of what citizens with African ancestry choose to call themselves, they still face virulent racism, discrimination, and prejudice. In 1939 the sociologist Ira Reid explained: “Negro immigrants . . . do not possess many of the outward manifestations of the stranger that are common to European immigrants.”16 In other words, black immigrants are not easily identifiable as alien to American culture as other immigrant groups might be. Frequently mistaken for native-born black Americans, they are subject to the same treatment.
Black is a term many have embraced because it has helped to empower African-descended people in America. It has been appropriated at various times as a form of protest, a source of pride, and as an all-encompassing description for people of African descent worldwide. W. E. B. Du Bois used it in the title of his Souls of Black Folk, which examined the experiences of blacks in Africa and the United States. Richard Wright titled his travelogue about newly independent Ghana Black Power, presumably to indicate the triumph of the new African-led nation. More recently, the Black Lives Matter movement, founded by three black queer women—Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi—has highlighted the utility of using the term Black (capitalized) to incorporate a wider, more global constituency: “We see ourselves as part of the global Black family, and we are aware of the different ways we are impacted or privileged as Black people who exist in different parts of the world.” They have theorized about what it means to be black in the twenty-first century, recognizing that “African American” is too limited to encompass the various diaspora identities in the United States. Black continues to be used in the United States today as a descriptor for the country’s population of African descent. In the long run, this label, frequently used in history to denigrate African-descended men and women, might endure.17
Despite disagreements and individual preferences, “African American” is now the most widely used label for phenotypically black citizens in the United States. Most organizations and groups and media outlets use it, as does the Census of the United States. As women and men of African descent immigrate to the United States, they might choose, as recent African immigrants have, to mark themselves as Nigerian Americans, Ghanaian Americans, or Sierra Leonean Americans. Some first-generation African immigrants use the phrase “Africans in America” to describe themselves. Regardless of what label they adopt, however, the larger society will persist in using “African American” to describe all those deemed black, until such time as a call for a change is made.
It is clear that a large part of the discussion surrounding what men and women of African descent call themselves is tied to their condition and historical moments. Changes in what members of this group call themselves are not arbitrary—they emerge out of specific situations in history. How Africa does or does not figure in these debates is often contingent on how marginalized members of the black population are (or feel), how white Americans perceive them, whether they believe that the path to assimilation is open to them and, more generally, whether identification with Africa helps or hinders them. For many African Americans, the descriptor they use is not seen to affect their place or status in American society. The embrace of a term that highlights their African heritage is more about pride in that ancestry than anything else. For others, highlighting their African roots is seen as a deliberate attempt to separate and serves to further marginalize them in the United States.
This book, as it explores African American links to Africa, will engage the question of how African American ideas, attitudes, perceptions, and opinions about Africa connect to what they called themselves historically. While not a textbook in the traditional sense, it tries to appeal to students, teachers, and general readers interested in the subject. The long relationship African Americans have had with the continent of their ancestors cannot be tackled in a single work. This book, therefore, cannot be exhaustive in its examination of African American engagement with Africa. Rather than being comprehensive in its coverage, it serves as an introduction and a gateway into the sometimes thorny connection between African Americans and Africa. I hope it will encourage those interested to delve more fully into aspects of these ties.
Because of the book’s interpretive nature, much is left out, and the decision to include some historical moments and figures and not others may raise questions. Many people, ideas, and themes are omitted or neglected in this book. Why, some might ask, is James Baldwin not mentioned? Or Lorraine Hansberry, Madame C. J. Walker, Nannie Burroughs, and a host of other black Americans with thoughts on their ties to Africa? Why, they might wonder, is someone like Malcolm X mentioned only briefly? All these individuals (and there are many more) engaged with Africa in some way. Others will surely ask, “What of the Negritude movement? Why have you privileged the Anglophone world?” My response is that I could not do it all. What I have included is a reflection of what I know and what I believe best illustrates the ties between African Americans and Africa.
The book will consistently use the terms black American and African American to refer to the enslaved men and women brought forcibly to the United States, while designating those from the continent who came voluntarily as continental Africans or indigenous Africans. In an attempt to avoid objectifying the millions of men and women who were forcibly brought to the United States I avoid, as much as possible, using the term slaves, preferring the term enslaved Africans to denote the involuntary nature of their condition. Throughout this book the humanity of African and African-descended people will be foregrounded, as I attempt to present them as people with social lives and histories, both before and after their enslavement.18
The following chapters will illustrate the many ways African-descended men and women chose to engage and identify with, influence, and impact Africa over the centuries. Often prompted by changes occurring in the United States itself, the relationship with Africa has had ebbs and flows. The book makes a distinction among “identification,” “engagement,” and “interest” in Africa.
African Americans have never been a monolithic group. While some identified strongly with their African heritage, others recognized it as a discarded part of their past. Members of the latter group have, arguably, nevertheless always engaged with Africa in a variety of ways or been involved with issues relevant to that background. Engagement implies recognition of ties to the continent and an interest in seeing Africa’s uplift. Involvement implies an active attempt to connect with Africa, while identification could run the gamut from recognizing one’s African ancestry to fully embracing Africa as one’s only homeland. Through the centuries some would express interest in the continent and its people even when they had no desire to engage with or become involved with it. Over the years many African Americans have influenced and impacted Africa and its people in a variety of ways. The long, tangled, and problematic relationship black Americans have had with the nation to which they were brought has bound them in various ways to Africa, whether in the seventeenth century or the twenty-first.