Encountering Empire: African American Missionaries in Colonial Africa, 1900–1939 3515111174, 9783515111171

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Geschichte Franz Steiner Verlag

t r ansatl a nti sHistorische ch e h i s toStudien r i s ch e s t u d i en Transatlantische

Elisabeth Engel

Encountering Empire African American Missionaries in Colonial Africa, 1900–1939

Elisabeth Engel Encountering Empire

transatlantische historische studien Veröffentlichungen des Deutschen Historischen Instituts Washington, DC Herausgegeben von Hartmut Berghoff, Mischa Honeck, Jan C. Jansen und Britta Waldschmidt-Nelson Band 56

Elisabeth Engel

Encountering Empire African American Missionaries in Colonial Africa, 1900–1939

Franz Steiner Verlag

Umschlagabbildung: “C. S. Smith and His Adopted Family of Dwalla Children. [From a photograph taken at Bell Town, Cameroons.]” Source: Charles Spencer Smith, Glimpses of Africa: West and South West Coast Containing the Author’s Impression and Observations During a Voyage of Six Thousand Miles from Sierra Leone to St. Paul de Loanda, and Return Including the Rio del Ray and Cameroons Rivers, and the Congo River from Its Mouth to Matadi (Nashville, 1895), 179.

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek: Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über abrufbar. Dieses Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist unzulässig und strafbar. © Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2015 Umschlaggestaltung: r2 Röger & Röttenbacher, Leonberg Druck: AZ Druck und Datentechnik, Kempten Gedruckt auf säurefreiem, alterungsbeständigem Papier. Printed in Germany. ISBN 978-3-515-11117-1 (Print) ISBN 978-3-515-11119-5 (E-Book)

Contents

Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 List of Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 List of Illustrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 1 . 1 .1 . 1 .2 .

1 .3 .

Part I.

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Encountering Empire: An African American History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Perspectives on the Afro-colonial Contact Zone: Christian Missions, African American Transnationalism, and Colonial Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Reconceiving African American (Anti)colonialism: Method, Sources, and Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

17 17

26 40

Encountering Colonial Africa: African American Missionaries and the ‘Dark Continent’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

2 . 2 .1 . 2 .2 . 2 .3 . 2 .4 .

What’s in a Name: The AME Church and Missions to Africa . . . . . . . . . The Church of Allen and African Methodism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Missionary Traditions in the United States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Missionary Traditions in the AME Church . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Formation of AME Missionary Structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

3 .

Moving onto the Imperial Stage: Colonial Africa and the Self-fashioning of African American Missionaries . . . . . . . . . . 72

57 57 61 64 66

6

Contents

3 .1 . 3 .2 . 3 .3 .

4 . 4 .1 . 4 .2 . 4 .3 . 4 .4 .

Part II.

5 . 5 .1 . 5 .2 . 6 . 6 .1 . 6 .2 . 6 .3 . 7 . 7 .1 . 7 .2 . 7 .3 .

The Pioneers of Black Autoethnography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 “But to See Africa in Africa Is Another Thing”: Empiricism and Introspection on the Colonial Frontier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 “Views Fortified by Experience”: Passing on the System of Confession . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 African American Missionaries at Home: Colonial Africa and the Black Metropole . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . African American Missionaries at Home . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Manifest Black Male Domesticity: Institutional Reconfigurations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Managing Black Atlantic Missionary Connections at Home: The AME Church Missionary Department . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Coming Home to Harlem: The New Home of Missions in the Black American Community . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

102 102 114 122 128

Encountering the World: The ‘American Negro’ and the Ecumenical Missionary Movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 “For the Field Is the World”: The Formation of the Ecumenical Missionary Movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146 The Theory and Practice of Ecumenism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146 The IMC, Indigenization, and the Race Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 Moving onto the Ecumenical Stage: The AME Church and Ecumenism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . “A United Front”: The Formation of Black Ecumenism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . “God’s Last Reserve”: The AME Church’s Ecumenical Self-representation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The AME Church’s Ecumenical Africa Mission and the IMC . . . . . . . . . . . The ‘American Negro’ and Africa: Blackening the South Atlantic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Indigenizing Black Christianity in the South Atlantic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Search for Alternative Paths to Civilization: Black and White Missionaries View the ‘American Negro’ . . . . . . . . . . . . Paving the Way to Colonial Africa: The ‘American Negro’ Missionary, the IMC, and the British Empire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

159 159 164 169

174 174 179 183

Contents

Part III. Encountering the Colonial Subject: African American Missionaries and the ‘Natives’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 8 . 8 .1 . 8 .2 . 8 .3 . 8 .4 .

9 . 9 .1 . 9 .2 . 9 .3 . 9 .4 .

Meeting the ‘Native’: Black Missionary Self-fashioning in Colonial Everyday Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Native Question in Indirect-rule Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The AME Church and the Native Question . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Moving into Empire: The Construction of the Nonnative Black Missionary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Of ‘Natives’’ Sisters and Brothers: AME Missionaries and the ‘American Negro’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Moving into the Colonial System: AME Institutions in Colonial Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The African AME Church . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Postwar Debate About New Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gaining Ground: The ‘Native’ Worker and Colonial Education in Sierra Leone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Outlook of the Afro-colonial Liaison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Afro-colonial Encounters: An Entangled History of African Colonization and African American Emancipation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 .1 . Pan-Africanism, the Absence of Empire, and the Silencing of Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 .2 . The AME Church and Postcolonial Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 .3 . Beginning African American Postcoloniality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

197 197 200 202 216

229 229 234 242 256

10 .

11 . 12 .

262 262 267 271

Works Cited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297

7

Acknowledgments

I

found the topic for this book on some dreary afternoon in the library of the Department of Anglo-American History in Cologne. The phenomenon is familiar to all of us: we plan to quickly grab a specific book and while looking we get immersed in roaming the stacks, forgetting what it was that we initially were looking for, and we leave with a new spark set by all the other books we would probably never have known of otherwise. The contingency of the process has its own peculiar charm. It makes us people of vast reading, and sometimes, as in my case, forms a research question. That day, I left the library wondering about how African Americans reacted to the colonization of Africa. And while looking for answers, I turned from a student, who was vaguely interested in colonial history and profoundly invested in black American rap music, into a historian. This spark would not have materialized in these pages here if not for people along the way who kept it glowing. At first, there was Norbert Finzsch, who gave me a job at the department that required me to teach critical thinking rather than chronology, and thus taught me how to do historical research above all my own way. Lora Wildenthal, who visited the department at the time, helped me in terrific ways to get my question both straight and out. Hence, my first dissertation prospectus “African American Anticolonialism” was written. The title again suggests that I was looking for one thing and found another in the archives. For getting me under way to this insight I am greatly indebted to both of them. Once proposed, the project gathered generous support from several great institutions and advisors. I was fortunate enough to write the dissertation as a

10

Acknowledgments

fellow at the Graduate School of North American Studies of the John F. Kennedy Institute, Freie Universität Berlin, with a stipend of the German Research Foundation. Even more fortunate was having Michaela Hampf and Sebastian Conrad as my advisors. Their constant support and perfectly balanced mixture of sincere approval and thought-provoking criticism sustained me chapter after chapter. The graduate school, too, was an unparalleled environment that helped me to grow as a scholar and to distill arguments from my ideas. Thinking through the project in its seminars and colloquia, and with the peers of the JFK History Department, Frauke Brammer, Andreas Etges, Gudrun Löhrer, Ursula Lehmkuhl, and Simone Müller, I acquired the confidence and diligence to make it happen. Decisive steps in archival research were supported by the German Historical Institutes in Washington, DC, and London. I always tremendously enjoyed being their visiting fellow, as the institutes provided surroundings that combined essential archival work with the opportunity to instantly digest my findings. The project would hardly have advanced during the usually lonely research periods without the many conversations over coffee I had with Uta Balbier, Martin Klimke, and Benedikt Stuchtey. I thank them for their open ears, authentic interest, and the time they made for me and have continued to make ever since. A good portion of the work was put together during my time as a visiting PhD student at the History Department of Columbia University in New York. My advisors Christopher Brown and Samuel Roberts deeply impressed me with their unconditional readiness to read and shape the work in progress with their expertise. As did the really smart graduate students at the department, some of whom I proudly call friends now: David Marcus, Nick Juravich, Pollyanna Rhee, and Justin Reynolds. It is impossible to give a list of all the archivists who invested their knowhow in the project. I can only trust that they remember me for my impertinence and can tell that this book is their merit. I shall mention specifically Diana Lachatanere, curator at the Schomburg, who gave into my nagging by setting aside the archive’s policy to restrict unprocessed material, so that I could work with the AME Church Records at all. Consequently, Steven, the archivist in charge of organizing these fifty or so boxes, has to be credited for putting up with me after permission was granted. I would also like to say thank you to Randall Burkett at Emory, who so perfectly prepared my short visit there that I did not have to file a single request slip myself. Aslaku Berhanu at Temple University must not be omitted from this list. She drew my attention to uncataloged holdings and furnished me with one of my favorite findings: a film of the AME mission in South Africa from the late 1930s. An exercise in patience and redoubled determination was the effort of Alfred Moore. He helped me trace the AME mission in the confused collections of the National Archives of Sierra Leone that had just been moved during the immediately preceding wet season.

Acknowledgments

For familiarizing me with the peculiar challenge of researching African history, I thank the members of the African Network in Global History and Andreas Eckart. Their reasoning that African history is worth doing precisely because of its wildcards struck me as a choice bit of advice. Last but not least, I thank Dennis C. Dickerson, Johnny Barbour, and George F. Flowers of the AME Church, who generously offered me guidance to locate most of the material on which this study is based, as well as their permission to use photographs. All this was support beyond professional reason. As always, research is not all it takes to get a book written. A great many extra pairs of eyes were indispensable. Nicholas Grant and Justin Reynolds were with me in the textual production. They were so knowledgeable in their comments and suggestions that I sometimes felt they understood my argument better than I did myself. Ana Isabel Keilson greatly enhanced their efforts by putting up with the no less significant challenge of refining the wording of my points. More often than not, I had readers who stood by my side in the darker hours. Eva Bischoff, Olaf Stieglitz, and Till van Rahden were inexhaustible sources of advice and every imaginable form of moral support. The same is true of my grad school fellows, who became friends in the process: Boris, Christoph, Emily, Ida, Julia, Katharina, Mahmood, and Tomasz. In addition, there were people who had less to do with the project itself than with me while I was working on it. Jana, Júlio, Juli, and Hanno must be credited for remaining the best companions I could imagine from start to finish. For getting on the phone at unspeakable hours to assure me of their faith in me, I thank David Juliano and my family Michael, Christine, and Reinhard. The book inherits the power of their love. After its long evolution, the project ended almost where it began: the GHI in Washington. I am greatly indebted to my new colleagues here for having provided an incredibly supportive environment for putting the finishing touches on the book. Britta Waldschmidt-Nelson offered just the right dose of pragmatism, and the reviewers and editors of the THS series gave much needed incentives to get done with the revisions. Every single word of the present manuscript is a testimony of Casey Sutcliffe’s proficient and tireless editing. Although she helped me understand that there is no such thing as perfection, I do not hesitate to say as much about her work. Elisabeth Engel

11

List of Abbreviations

ABCFM ACS AME AMEZ ANC ASNLH FCC FMCNA FCNC IMC NAACP NCBWA NUL UNIA WHFMS WPMMS YMCA

American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions American Colonization Society African Methodist Episcopal Church African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church African National Congress Association for the Study of Negro Life and History Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America Foreign Missions Conference of North America Fraternal Council of Negro Churches International Missionary Council National Association for the Advancement of Colored People National Congress of British West Africa National Urban League Universal Negro Improvement Association Women’s Home and Foreign Missionary Society of the AME Church Women’s Parent Mite Missionary Society of the AME Church Young Men’s Christian Association

List of Illustrations

Figure 1. “C. S. Smith and His Adopted Family of Dwalla Children. [From a photograph taken at Bell Town, Cameroons.]” Source: Charles Spencer Smith, Glimpses of Africa: West and South West Coast Containing the Author’s Impression and Observations During a Voyage of Six Thousand Miles from Sierra Leone to St. Paul de Loanda, and Return Including the Rio del Ray and Cameroons Rivers, and the Congo River from Its Mouth to Matadi (Nashville, 1895), 179. Schomburg Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. Courtesy of Dr. Johnny Barbour, president/publisher AME Church Sunday School Union, Nashville, TN. Figure 1.2. “The Political Divisions of Africa.” Source: Smith, Glimpses, 28. Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. Courtesy of Dr. Johnny Barbour, president/publisher AME Church Sunday School Union, Nashville, TN. Figure 1.3. “A Mandanile Bride.” Source: Smith, Glimpses, 80. Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. Courtesy of Dr. Johnny Barbour, president/publisher AME Church Sunday School Union, Nashville, TN. Figure 1.4. “Prince Manga Bell and Favorite Wives.” Source: Smith, Glimpses, 175. Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox

List of Illustrations

and Tilden Foundations. Courtesy of Dr. Johnny Barbour, president/publisher AME Church Sunday School Union, Nashville, TN. Figure 1.5. “Map of the West and South-West Coast of Africa Showing Points Touched at by C. S. Smith During His Voyage from Freetown to St. Paul de Loanda, 1894.” Source: Smith, Glimpses, 146. Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. Courtesy of Dr. Johnny Barbour, president/publisher AME Church Sunday School Union, Nashville, TN. Figure 1.6. Official Logo of the Men’s Missionary League. Source: Voice of Missions (August 1920): 17. The Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary, Columbia University in the City of New York. Courtesy of Dr. George F. Flowers, executive director of the AME Church Department of Global Witness and Ministry (Mission), Charleston, SC. Figure 1.7. “Mission Headquarters.” Source: Voice of Missions (April 1931): cover page. The Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary, Columbia University in the City of New York. Courtesy of Dr. George F. Flowers, executive director of the AME Church Department of Global Witness and Ministry (Mission), Charleston, SC. Figure 2. “Bishop Gregg delivering his address, August 8th, on Christian Brotherhood which was interpreted by Dr. P. Stolpman, General Secretary of the German C. E. Union.” Source: Voice of Missions (May 1931): 6. The Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary, Columbia University in the City of New York. Courtesy of Dr. George F. Flowers, executive director of the AME Church Department of Global Witness and Ministry (Mission), Charleston, SC. Figure 3. “Miss Lydia Moroe, 2nd Year Normal, and Miss Victoria Teffo, 1st Year Industrial, at Wilberforce Institutte [sic]. Note the Hair Style and Uniforms – Are They Proud?” Source: Voice of Missions (August 1939): 9. The Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary, Columbia University in the City of New York. Courtesy of Dr. George F. Flowers, executive director of the AME Church Department of Global Witness and Ministry (Mission), Charleston, SC. Figure 3.1. “Bishop W. H. Heard Using the De Luxe Mode of Travel in Liberia.” Source: Voice of Missions (February 1931): 14. The Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary, Columbia University in the City of New York. Courtesy of Dr. George F. Flowers, executive director of the AME Church Department of Global Witness and Ministry (Mission), Charleston, SC. Figure 3.2. “The Old” and “the New” Africa. Source: Voice of Missions (June 1931): cover page. The Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary, Columbia University in the City of New York. Courtesy of Dr. George F. Flow-

15

16

List of Illustrations

ers, executive director of the AME Church Department of Global Witness and Ministry (Mission), Charleston, SC. Figure 3.3. “Moore Memorial Chapel and Day School, Sierra Leone, West Africa.” Source: Voice of Missions (August 1920): 3. The Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary, Columbia University in the City of New York. Courtesy of Dr. George F. Flowers, executive director of the AME Church Department of Global Witness and Ministry (Mission), Charleston, SC. Figure 3.4. “Rev. George Decker, Rev. J. R. Frederick, Prof. H. M. Steady, Mr. George Boyle, C. S. Smith. [From a photograph taken at Free Town, Sierra Leone.]” Source: Smith, Glimpses, 20. Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. Courtesy of Dr. Johnny Barbour, president/publisher AME Church Sunday School Union, Nashville, TN.

1. Introduction

1.1. Encountering Empire: An African American History

I

n 1927, Hastings K. Banda (c. 1898–1997), the African leader of the movement for independence in British Nyasaland and later president of its successor state Malawi, noticed an increase in his personal correspondence. “I am getting letters …” he wrote, “telling of the keen interest the people take in the AME Church.”1 Two years later, Alexander G. Fraser (1873–1962), a renowned Scottish educator of the Church Missionary Society, observed a similar trend in the Gold Coast. “Then come the growing party,” he wrote to his friends, “the African Episcopal Methodists, or Zionists.”2 Both remarks echoed earlier concerns of South African administrations. In 1904, British officials began to confer about “a Church … purely under Native management and control,” known as the Ethiopian movement, which they deemed connected to “the work of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.”3 In response, they enacted new immigration regulations for African Americans.4 But there were also favorable Letter Hastings K. Banda to E. H. Coit, December 24, 1927. SCRBC, AME CR, box 43, folder “Corr. A-B, 1927.” 2 Circular, Alexander G. Fraser to friends, May 23, 1929. Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies, Rhodes House, Oxford, Wraith Papers (MSS.Afr.s.1563), file 11, 3. 3 Memorandum on the Ethiopian Movement and the Attitude Toward It by the Several S. A.-Govts, 1904. TNA, DO 119/522, no. D 42/1, 1–2. 4 According to its own accounts, the AME Church had been granted admission under the British colonial government, while the dominion government, formed in 1910, issued the Immigration Restriction Act of the Union of South Africa (no. 22, 1913) and a general ministerial order prohibiting the entry of colored persons. Both provided ample scope for excluding AME missionaries. For the act, see Office of the International Missionary Council, Treaties, Acts and Regulations Relating to Missionary Freedom (London, 1923), 27. For AME staff immigration, see Charles Spencer Smith, A History of the African Methodist Episcopal Church … (Philadelphia, 1

18

Introduction

reactions. The Colonial Office in London registered AME mission schools among those awarded government grants by local education departments with increasing regularity.5 The membership and attendance lists of major European and American missionary organizations concerned with Africa named AME Church members to a growing extent.6 Some of those interested in spreading Christianity to the modern world hoped that the AME Church prefigured “a really African church.”7 And newspapers of various colonies occasionally drew public attention to AME officials’ “brilliant career[s]” and “wise words.”8 The fragments above testify to the encounter that is the subject of this study: the arrival of an African American church in Africa, Britain’s last empire.9 Retrieved from the repositories of Western imperialism, these fragments suggest that this encounter involved a broad range of territories and institutions.10 The AME Church appeared in correspondences of colonizers and their opponents, colonial border controls and funding schemes, educational and missionary statistics, Christian demographics, and public perceptions in an area stretching from Cape Town to the hinterlands of Freetown.11 Despite their vast outreach, the paths that the AME missionaries took on the imperial stage in Africa did not reflect a linear expansion. They tell of ideological inconsistencies, contingent convergences, and systematic exclusion. African American missionaries had moved into core arenas of colonial power – British adminis1922), 331–36; and Lillie M. Johnson, “Missionary-Government Relations in British and Portuguese Colonies,” in Black Americans and the Missionary Movement in Africa, ed. Sylvia M. Jacobs (Westport, 1982), 203. 5 See, for instance, Nyasaland Protectorate, Report of the Education Department, May 1926–Dec. 1927. CO 525/125/15. 20; Annual General Report for Sierra Leone for 1927. CO 267/626/18. 24– 25; and Gold Coast Colony, Report on the Education Department for the Year 1935–1936. CO 96/733/23. 19. All TNA. 6 One particularly relevant example, which will be discussed in detail in Part II, was the AME Church’s participation in the first international missionary conference focusing on Africa, organized by the International Missionary Council (IMC), in 1926. See Edwin W. Smith, The Christian Mission in Africa: A Study Based on the Proceedings of the International Conference at Le Zoute, Belgium, September 14th to 21st, 1926 (London, 1926), 100–101. 7 William David Schermerhorn, The Christian Mission in the Modern World (New York, 1933), 247. 8 “The Rev. S.B.A Campbell, M. A., B. D., Ph.D.: A Brilliant Career,” Sierra Leone Guardian, February 7, 1930, 11; and “Wise Words by the Black Bishop,” South African Outlook, June 1, 1922, 127. 9 Roy Lewis and Yvonne Foy, The British in Africa (London, 1971), 1. 10 Using the archives of Western imperialism, of course, generates a number of problems in it itself, which will be addressed in Section 1.3. 11 According to an IMC survey of 1938, AME missions existed in Liberia, Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast, and the Union of South Africa, including the Basutoland and Swaziland Protectorates. In its own accounts, the AME Church reported additional activities in Bechuanaland, Southern and Northern Rhodesia, and Nyasaland. Joseph I. Parker, ed., Interpretative Statistical Survey of the World Mission of the Christian Church … (New York, 1938), 67 and 70; and Artishia W. Jordan, The African Methodist Episcopal Church in Africa (New York, 1964), 140–43.

Encountering Empire: An African American History

trations, Christian organizations, and public perception – in conflicting ways and with indeterminate outcomes. The American part of this story is different. In the United States, the AME Church was known best as the first autonomous institution founded, funded, and maintained by black Americans, thus constituting a landmark in the history of African American emancipation. Since its beginnings in 1816, the church enjoyed a large membership among the nation’s most destitute and desperate, generous support from the uplifted, and close attention from refined intellectuals.12 W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963), a central voice of black America throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, called the AME Church the “greatest Negro organization in the world.”13 Others praised AME founder Richard Allen (1760–1831) as an “Apostle of Freedom,” the leader of the “Independent Church Movement,” and the prime architect of not just a church but a “nation within a nation.”14 Such voices have remained dominant up to the present. Scholars in the United States have focused on analyzing the AME Church’s enduring centrality to African Americans’ social and intellectual life, often stressing its preeminent role in the formation of a black race consciousness that guided the African American struggle for emancipation from slavery to civil rights.15 The first account of the AME Church is in Richard Allen, The Life, Experience, and Gospel Labours of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen … (1833; repr. New York, 1960). 13 W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches (Chicago, 1903), accessed September 16, 2014, http://docsouth.unc.edu/church/duboissouls/dubois.html#dubois88, 197. 14 Charles H. Wesley, Richard Allen: Apostle of Freedom (Washington, DC, 1935); Carter G. Woodson, The History of the Negro Church, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC, 1921), 71; and E. Franklin Frazier, The Negro Church in America/C. Eric Lincoln, The Black Church Since Frazier, rev. ed. (New York, 1974), 35. 15 There is ample literature on the history of the AME Church in the United States. The following list is sorted by topic and date of publication. The most recent account by the AME Church is Howard D. Gregg, History of the A. M. E. Church: The Black Church in Action (Nashville, 1980). For scholarly accounts often focusing on specific periods, see George A. Singleton, The Romance of African Methodism: A Study of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (New York, 1952); Carol V. R. George, Segregated Sabbaths: Richard Allen and the Emergence of Independent Black Churches, 1760–1840 (New York, 1973); Clarence E. Walker, A Rock in a Weary Land: The African Methodist Episcopal Church During the Civil War and Reconstruction (Baton Rouge, 1982); Will B. Gravely, “African Methodism and the Rise of Black Denominationalism,” in Perspectives on American Methodism: Interpretive Essays, ed. Russell E. Richey, Kenneth E. Rowe, and Jean Miller Schmidt, 108–26 (Nashville, 1993); Robert Gregg, Sparks from the Anvil of Oppression: Philadelphia’s African Methodists and Southern Migrants, 1890–1940 (Philadelphia, 1993); Lawrence S. Little, “Ideology, Culture, and the Realities of Racism in the AME Foreign Agenda Toward Events and Issues in Britain and France, 1885–1905,” Western Journal of Black Studies 22 (1998): 128–40; Lawrence S. Little, Disciples of Liberty: The African Methodist Episcopal Church in the Age of Imperialism, 1884–1916 (Knoxville, 2000); and Larry Eugene Rivers and Canter Brown, Jr., Laborers in the Vineyard of the Lord: The Beginnings of the AME Church in Florida, 1865–1895 (Gainesville, 2001). For works on individuals, see Calvin S. Morris, Reverdy C. Ransom: Black Advocate of the Social Gospel (Lanham, 1990); Stephen Ward Angell, Bishop Henry McNeal Turner and African-American Religion in the South (Knoxville, 1992); Annetta L. Go12

19

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Introduction

The role of AME missionaries’ encounters with Africans and their colonizers has not received much attention in this previous narrative of black self-determination. What AME people did overseas is considered marginalia, at best, and negligible, at worst. This study makes the case that the histories of the AME Church in the United States and its mission in African colonies must not be regarded as divided histories.16 It undertakes to demonstrate that the AME Church, through its missions, shaped and connected black communities on each side of the Atlantic and thus was an integral part of the much broader transatlantic entanglements that emerged in the wake of African colonization. In order to weave the outwardly distinct histories of the AME Church back together, I reconstruct the paths African American missionaries took from the United States onto the imperial stage in Africa. By focusing on their work, intellectual endeavors, and contacts, we will see that AME people were not disconnected posts sitting on either side of the Atlantic, but were agents who provided and defined a variety of links between African Americans and Africans in the period of late European colonialism. Studying how AME missionaries made this connection will open up a new perspective on a number of well-known relations, namely, between African Americans and their presumed homeland in Africa, between white dominance and black resistance, and between race and power – the prime rule of colonial difference and black identity. Briefly put, this perspective will prompt us to think through all of these relations as shaped by the colonial encounter of African Americans, thus foregrounding a novel aspect of the history of black transnationalism. Tracing African American missionaries’ colonial encounters in mez-Jefferson, The Sage of Tawawa: Reverdy Cassius Ransom, 1861–1959 (Kent, 2002); Albert G. Miller, Elevating the Race: Theophilus G. Steward, Black Theology, and the Making of an African American Civil Society, 1865–1924 (Knoxville, 2003); Richard S. Newman, Freedom’s Prophet: Bishop Richard Allen, the AME Church and the Black Founding Fathers (New York, 2008); and Nelson T. Strobert, Daniel Alexander Payne: The Venerable Preceptor of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (Lanham, 2012). For studies on gender, see Jualynne E. Dodson, Engendering Church: Women, Power, and the AME Church (Lanham, 2002); Julius H. Bailey, Around the Family Altar: Domesticity in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, 1865–1900 (Gainesville, 2005); and Julius H. Bailey, “Masculinizing the Pulpit: The Black Preacher in the Nineteenth-century AME Church,” in Fathers, Preachers, Rebels, Men: Black Masculinity in U. S. History and Literature, 1820–1945, ed. Timothy R. Buckner and Peter Caster, 80–101 (Columbus, 2011). A number of studies discuss AME print culture. See Gilbert Anthony Williams, The Christian Recorder, Newspaper of the African Methodist Episcopal Church: History of a Forum for Ideas, 1854–1902 (Jefferson, 1996); Stephen W. Angell and Anthony B. Pinn, eds., Social Protest Thought in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, 1862–1939 (Knoxville, 2000); and Julius H. Bailey, Race Patriotism: Protest and Print Culture in the AME Church (Knoxville, 2012). 16 My argument aligns, instead, with scholarship that understands “divided histories” as “entangled histories.” This scholarship considers the separation of certain entities and their respective histories as the result of their interactions. Sebastian Conrad and Shalini Randeria, “Geteilte Geschichten – Europa in einer postkolonialen Welt,” in Jenseits des Eurozentrismus: Postkoloniale Perspektiven in den Geschichts- und Kulturwissenschaften, ed. Sebastian Conrad and Shalini Randeria (Frankfurt am Main, 2002), 17.

Encountering Empire: An African American History

Africa, I argue, reveals intersections and interactions between African American emancipation and African colonization in the twentieth century that cannot solely be explained as results of the transatlantic slave trade of the previous centuries. It emphasizes instead how the colonization of Africa itself connected the continent not only to European metropoles, but also to the presumably long disparate lifeworld of African Americans in the United States. In the historical literature, African American missionaries have not yet been considered part of the colonial encounter. They are primarily analyzed as agents who were ‘naturally’ committed to Africa. According to standard accounts, black missionary activities peaked in Africa in the late nineteenth century, when North American mission boards increasingly hired blacks because of their presumed racial fitness to withstand tropical climates. During certain periods of time, African Americans comprised the majority of mission staff in Liberia and Sierra Leone and, to a lesser extent, in Angola, Congo, and South Africa. Some black missionaries even pioneered initiatives that aimed at proselytizing Africans. Major milestones were the labors of the freed slave Lott Carey in Liberia in the first half of the nineteenth century and of William H. Sheppard in the Congo in the latter half.17 The twentieth century, by contrast, has been described by historians as an interruption of interracial cooperation in missions. The era was, as W. E. B. Du Bois famously put it, the era of a color line that “belt[ed] the world.”18 Jim Crowism, lynching, and hostility toward blacks in the United States coincided with European powers’ anxieties about Africans’ anticolonial upheaval, while African Americans voiced their discontent increasingly in anticolonial terms, claiming “Africa for the Africans” during the interwar years.19 In this time, most North American mission boards refrained from hiring African Americans. Once the ‘civilizing’ of Africa was restored to the status of white men’s business, standard accounts have it, black American missionaries “were to pass into history.”20 The approach of this study is different. It explores African American missionaries in colonial Africa in order to argue that pan-African resistance was not the sole response African Americans had to late European colonization initiatives. Although the AME mission in Africa was numerically small, a brief look at colonial government records suggests that it flourished most conspicu“Lott Carey,” Western Recorder, November 8, 1925, accessed February 22, 2013, http://ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/126862607?accountid=10226; and William H. Sheppard, Pioneers in Congo (Louisville, 1925). 18 W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Color Line Belts the World,” Collier’s Weekly (October 1906): 30, repr. in W. E. B. Du Bois: A Reader, ed. David Levering Lewis (New York, 1995), 42. 19 Marcus Garvey, “Africa for the Africans,” 1923, repr. in The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey: Or, Africa for the Africans, comp. by Amy Jacques Garvey, centennial ed. (Dover, 1986), 68. 20 William Seraile, “Black American Missionaries in Africa, 1821–1925,” Social Studies 63 (1972): 201. 17

21

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Introduction

ously once the colonial contest for Africa moved forward, especially in British West and South Africa. AME missionaries differed from their black predecessors in the Christian mission because they acted on behalf of an independent African American church, a condition that meant at once greater doctrinal liberty and greater financial constraints.21 They also differed from most African American agitators of the time. Because the liberation of Africa was not their prime aim, AME missionaries established a much wider variety of transatlantic contacts than their militant contemporaries. By leaving the beaten paths of the relationship between African Americans and Africans, they did not pass into history. They rather slipped from the grasp of historians who equate twentiethcentury black transnationalism with anticolonialism.22 Inquiring into the relationship between black missionaries and colonial Africa necessarily means asking how the color line – the organizing principle of race and power in the twentieth century – not only divided people, but also conditioned their transatlantic contacts. In order to discriminate the history of these contacts from that of the imagined pan-African compound of black people, I suggest using the phrase ‘Afro-colonial encounter.’ Borrowed from postcolonial scholarship, the concept of the colonial encounter serves to emphasize that African American missionaries entered environments characterized by highly asymmetrical colonial and racial power relations;23 at the same time, it does not deny that this entrance always had an interactive and often improvised dimension, easily ignored in accounts of pan-Africanism.24 Encountering Africa meant encountering colonizers and their subordinates, explorers and contemners, redeemers and liberators; it meant establishing a variety of contacts, ranging from ephemeral glimpses and clumsy interactions, to institutionalized relationships and interlocking understandings and practices.25 African American missionaries, I argue, acted in a multiplicity of power Other independent black churches active in Africa were the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (1876), the National Baptist Convention (1880), and the Lott Carey Baptist Foreign Mission Convention (1897). Llewellyn L. Berry, A Century of Missions of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, 1840–1940 (New York, 1942), 223–29. 22 On African American anticolonialism, see, for instance, Penny M. von Eschen, Race Against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937–1957 (Ithaca, 1997); and Rupert Lewis, Marcus Garvey: Anti-colonial Champion (Trenton, 1988). 23 A detailed discussion of postcolonial studies lies beyond the scope of this work. For a good introduction, see Robert J. C. Young, Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction (Malden, 2001). 24 Pan-Africanism is usually associated with the series of Pan-African Congresses held between 1900 and 1945. The congresses aimed to forge alliances among colonized and oppressed people in the black world. George Shepperson suggests distinguishing the Pan-African Congress movement as a political formation from pan-Africanism (intentionally lower case), by which he means the variety of cultural movements that engaged with ideas of Africa. In this study, I will use the lower-case spelling as an umbrella term that encompasses pan-African politics and culture. George Shepperson, “Pan-Africanism and ‘Pan-Africanism’: Some Historical Notes,” Phylon 23 (1962): 346. 25 My concept of a contact perspective specifically builds on Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: 21

Encountering Empire: An African American History

relations that surrounded the African continent. The impact that resulted from their encounters thus cannot be studied in a way that limits them to any one type of project, be it evangelical, pan-African, or anticolonial. Finally, I analyze black missionaries’ encounters to trace the sites and spaces of their interactions, rather than their impact in a predefined territory, such as the British Empire. While the AME mission focused on British colonies, AME missionaries often began to engage with the continent by reading books, visiting expositions or participating in religious or political events that concerned the representation and colonization of Africa; these encounters took place in the streets of Harlem, the convention halls of international missionary organizations in Berlin, and the offices of colonial administrators in London. In other words, a significant portion of black missionaries’ contact with colonial Africa did not happen on the continent, but in a contact zone defined by their engagement with representations of Africa. Such representations concerned the othering of blacks in colonial discourse as much as the dictate of racial identity in African American and African discourses on pan-Africanism.26 Engaging with others’ representations of Africa and often also with others’ representations of the descendants of Africa, black American missionaries typically fashioned themselves in relation to tensions, contradictions, and possibilities of empowerment not adequately expressed by ideas of resistance to, or collaboration with, imperial initiatives.27 I therefore examine the self-fashioning of black missionaries as a form of autoethnography. Like Mary Louise Pratt, I understand autoethnographies as the self-descriptions others developed of themselves in response to, or in dialogue with, the terms of the colonizers and the colonized.28 In the context of this study, this means analyzing AME missionaries’ self-descriptions as resulting from the encounter between colonial others and black American selves. Their mutual engagements and representations define an idiosyncratic contact zone: they guide us beyond the color line and its rules of colonial difference and racial solidarity, and into the fragile margins of empire where such rules were only just negotiated. By looking at how African American missionaries encountered empire, this study complements prior research that has focused on Africa as a fantasy constructed by African Americans.29 Prioritizing the ways in which African Travel Writing and Transculturation (London, 1992), 7. 26 For literature on the ways in which African Americans and Africans imagined each other, see Yekutiel Gershoni, Africans on African Americans: The Creation and Uses of an African-American Myth (Basingstoke, 1997); and Robert Trent Vinson, The Americans Are Coming! Dreams of African American Liberation in Segregationist South Africa (Athens, 2012). 27 Cf. Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler, “Between Metropole and Colony: Rethinking a Research Agenda,” in Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World, ed. Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler (Berkeley, 1997), 6. 28 Mary Louise Pratt, “Arts of the Contact Zone,” Profession 91 (1991): 35. 29 Images of Africa are a major, yet controversial, focus in the current historiography. A good

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Introduction

Americans imagined Africa has long been deemed plausible by scholars because “very few American Negroes since the Civil War have had any face-toface contact with Africans.”30 More recently, advocates of transnational perspectives have noted the absence of empire and the silencing of Africa as the results of such historiographical methods.31 They consider these lacunae to be expressions of the “automatic notion that somehow [blacks] were always striving for U. S. nationality” and of “mechanics of diasporic deafness and exclusion.”32 Whether the neglect of empire and Africa in the historiography of African Americans originates in parochial research or diasporic exceptionalism, it obscures a dispersion that remains central to our understanding of the history of black emancipation to the present: the African American struggle for self-determination has not been confined to the United States, but it has also been an undertaking of those who chose to leave the country.33 To become a missionary in Africa was one way to make this choice. It was a means of seeking self-determination in the colonial empires of Africa as opposed to an ancient African homeland. Time Frame

The temporal outlines of this study coincide with what is called the “interwar years” in conventional periodization. Whether we look at colonial Africa, the United States, or Europe, the sequence of two world wars bookending the crisis of world capitalism is often described as an era of global transition. Black Americans became African Americans by retrieving their African heritage as “a usable past.”34 The United States became a modern world power. Europe, once the colonial metropole, disaggregated into nation-states. And colonized people adopted nationalist ideology as a way to promote self-determination in a newly emerging, international society. Historical scholarship thus considers

account on the African American Africa image is Clare Corbould, Becoming African Americans: Black Public Life in Harlem, 1919–1939 (Cambridge, MA, 2009); for a critique of this focus, see Tunde Adeleke, The Case Against Afrocentrism (Jackson, 2009). 30 St. Clair Drake, “Negro Americans and the Africa Interest,” in The American Negro Reference Book, ed. John P. Davis (Englewood Cliffs, 1966), 664. 31 Spearheading these interventions are Amy Kaplan and Donald E. Pease, eds., Cultures of United States Imperialism (Durham, 1993); and Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge, UK, 1993). 32 Gerald Horne, “Toward a Transnational Research Agenda for African American History in the 21st Century,” Journal for African American History 91 (2006): 291; and Laura Chrisman, “Black Transnationalisms Revisited,” Postcolonial Studies 9 (2006): 223. See also Laura Chrisman, “Rethinking Black Atlanticism,” The Black Scholar 30 (2000): 12–17. 33 Cf. Horne, “Transnational Research Agenda,” 291. 34 Cf. Corbould, Becoming, 57–87.

Encountering Empire: An African American History

the interwar years as a period that marked the end of the long nineteenth century.35 This study makes use of this periodization as a backdrop to the analysis without taking the idea of a global transition as its main trajectory. The years between 1900 and 1939 neither frame nor explain the phenomenon of African American missionaries in Africa. Rather, they witnessed the reappearance of black mission work in two circum-Atlantic transformations: the emergence of indigenization as an approach to the Christianization of Africa in the Western missionary movement, and the establishment in British African colonies of indirect rule, a form of government based on existing tribal structures and traditions. For African American missionaries, these developments constituted a crucial modification of twentieth century relations of race and colonial power. Indigenization and indirect rule opened up new ground for black missionaries to engage with the evangelization and colonization of Africa while also triggering several other developments, including the consolidation of the color line, the rise of anticolonial movements, the rapid demographic growth of African Christianity, and the formation of a hub of Africa-centered subjectivity and agitation among blacks in the United States. From this point of departure, the study chronicles the development of the AME Church’s missionary enterprise based on shifting contacts between African and African American church members, international missionary organizations, and British colonial administrations. While the circuits of these groups tended to overlap during the 1920s and 1930s, their confluence was never balanced or linear. Certain structures of interaction were inherited from the nineteenth century, while others were disrupted or irreversibly transformed by war and depression. To foreground such contacts as an explanatory factor in the formation of the black American mission, this study looks at several contemporaneous types and sites of interaction. Zooming into black missionaries’ contact zones will require us to include the opening decades of the twentieth century, although the interwar era was the period when the encounter between black missionaries and the British Empire in Africa gained a new intensity and quality. This liaison ended after the Second World War, when decolonization began to erode the conditions of the contacts that are the focus of this study.

For the United States, see Lisa McGirr, “The Interwar Years,” in American History Now, ed. Eric Foner and Lisa McGirr, 125–50 (Philadelphia, 2011); and Jürgen Osterhammel and Niels P. Petersson, Globalization: A Short History, trans. Dona Geyer (Princeton, 2003), 99–108; for literature on the colonies, see Erez Manela, The Wilsonian Moment: Self-determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism (Oxford, 2007); and Sönke Kunkel and Christoph Meyer, eds., Aufbruch ins postkoloniale Zeitalter: Globalisierung und die außereuropäische Welt in den 1920er und 1930er Jahren (Frankfurt am Main, 2012). 35

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Introduction

1.2. Perspectives on the Afro-colonial Contact Zone: Christian Missions, African American Transnationalism, and Colonial Africa Historiography of Christian Missions

This study is informed by research that approaches the history of foreign missions as a history of exchange and transculturation. While this literature draws on world evangelization as an inherent idea of missions, it departs from what is often seen as its concomitant effect: the assimilation of the world to Western and usually white concepts of Christianity. Instead, it uses the genuinely global vision of Christianity to underscore the imponderability of missionary practices. In this view, missionary work developed in tandem with processes of “globalization,” the term increasingly used by scholars to emphasize the complex and uneven intertwining of cultural, political, economic, and social processes that shaped the modern world.36 For much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, missionary globalization followed the routes of Western colonialism.37 The close linkage resulted from the effort to make a Christian way of life the building block of the civilizing mission that Western colonial powers claimed they were pursuing. Indeed, missionary work in colonial territories involved more than proselytizing. It usually encompassed the exploration of unknown territories, the erection of churches, schools, and hospitals, and the establishment of infrastructures for communication and transportation.38 At the same time, as scholars of colonialism and postcolonialism emphasize, missionaries were not necessarily agents of empire. In their studies, they show that Western evangelists also were outspoken critics of imperial enterprises and, more importantly, protagonists in the processes of translation that designated the entanglement between colo-

See, for instance, Dana L. Robert, “The First Globalization: The Internationalization of the Protestant Missionary Movement Between the World Wars,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 26 (2002): 50–66; Brian Stanley, “Twentieth-century World Christianity: A Perspective from the History of Missions,” in Christianity Reborn: The Global Expansion of Evangelicalism in the Twentieth Century, ed. Donald M. Lewis, 52–83 (Grand Rapids, 2004); Sebastian Conrad and Rebekka Habermas, eds., “Mission und kulturelle Globalisierung,” special issue, Geschichte und Gesellschaft 36 (2010); and Klaus Koschorke, ed., Phases of Globalization in the History of Christianity (Wiesbaden, 2012). 37 As Frederick Cooper cautions us, globalization must not be understood as a general increase in worldwide connections and mobility. Colonialism, in particular, consisted of a number of enclosed networks that were again crosscut by other networks of exchange and socioeconomic interaction. As such, he argues, its globalizing effects were rather a “reorganization of space” that involved both “the forging and unforging of linkages.” Frederick Cooper, Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History (Berkeley, 2005), 105. 38 For a standard account, see Norman Etherington, ed., Missions and Empire (Oxford, 2005). 36

Perspectives on the Afro-colonial Contact Zone

nies and metropoles.39 While their reports contributed to construct images of otherness for audiences at home, missionaries’ day-to-day interactions called into question the binaries and boundaries they helped to create between self and other, heathen and Christian, civilized and backward, home and foreign, as well as via related categories of difference, such as nationality, race, class, sexuality, and gender.40 Because of this aspect of their work, missionaries have also attracted scholarly attention beyond the “metropole-colony axis.”41 There are studies that try to use them as a lens to look at the globalization of knowledge, the formation of global religious communities, and even new kinds of empire.42 As Ian Tyrrell argues, the set of “transnational networks of cultural communication, exchange and power” that characterized missions could well be a blueprint for studying forms of expansion and dominance that diverge from national and imperial borders.43 Concepts of translation and entanglement complicate ideas of unidirectional transfers. On translation, see Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton, 2000), 19. On entanglement, see Conrad and Randeria, “Geteilte Geschichten,” 17–22. Scholarship that draws on these concepts is, for instance, Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff, “Christianity and Colonialism in South Africa,” American Ethnologist 13 (1986): 1–22; Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution, Vol. 2, The Dialectics of Modernity on a South African Frontier, 2nd ed. (Chicago, 1997); Elizabeth Elbourne, Blood Ground: Colonialism, Missions, and the Contest for Christianity in the Cape Colony and Britain, 1799–1853 (Montreal, 2002); Catherine Hall, Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination, 1830–1867 (Oxford, 2002); and Andrew Porter, Religion Versus Empire: British Protestant Missionaries and Overseas Expansion, 1700–1914 (Manchester, 2004). 40 The groundbreaking work on the discursive othering of the colonized is Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 3rd ed. (London, 2003). Important studies on the construction of difference through categories of nationality and sexuality are Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton, 1993); and Ann Laura Stoler, Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault’s History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things (Durham, 1995). 41 Cooper and Stoler, “Metropole and Colony,” 28. 42 Ulrich van der Heyden and Andreas Feldtkeller, eds., Missionsgeschichte als Geschichte der Globalisierung von Wissen: Transkulturelle Wissensaneignung und -vermittlung durch christliche Missionare in Afrika und Asien im 17., 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 2012); Helge Wendt, “Mission transnational, trans-kolonial, global: Missionsgeschichtsschreibung als Beziehungsgeschichte,” Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Religions- und Kulturgeschichte 105 (2011): 95–116; and Helge Wendt, Die missionarische Gesellschaft: Mikrostrukturen einer kolonialen Globalisierung (Stuttgart, 2011). 43 Ian Tyrrell, “Women, Missions, and Empire: New Approaches to American Cultural Expansion,” in Competing Kingdoms: Women, Mission, Nation, and the American Protestant Empire, 1812–1960, ed. Barbara Reeves-Ellington, Kathryn Kish Sklar, and Connie Shemo (Durham, 2010), 43. A comprehensive version of this argument is also found in Tyrrell’s Reforming the World: The Creation of America’s Moral Empire (Princeton, 2010). In U. S. history, empire is increasingly discussed as a concept that frames the interplay between international relations and domestic culture. See Amy Kaplan, “‘Left Alone with America’: The Absence of Empire in the Study of American Culture,” in Cultures, ed. Kaplan and Pease, 3–21; and James T. Campbell, “The Americanization of South Africa,” in Race, Nation, and Empire in American History, ed. James T. Campbell, Matthew Pratt Guterl, and Robert G. Lee, 130–53 (Chapel Hill, 2007). 39

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Introduction

Historiography of African American Missionaries

While the uneasy coupling of missions and empire is a recurrent topic in the historiography, the relationship between African American missions and empire has hardly been studied. At first, this neglect seems to be due to a simple empirical problem. As Wilber Christian Harr shows in his study The Negro as an American Protestant Missionary in Africa, blacks were frequently hired by white mission boards and then dismissed as unsuccessful “according to the standards of their sending societies or the standards of governments.” In addition, Harr’s study indicates that the genre of Western missiology tends to omit racial identifications in its surveys altogether. For Harr, this convention suggests racial tensions because it allowed church historiographers to hide African American “representatives of American Protestant missionary societies.”44 Notwithstanding this concealment, denominational records on foreign missions de facto tell the history of African American missionary activities.45 Harr’s observation has proven consequential for historical research inside and outside of church historiography. To date, racially biased representations of African American missionaries have shaped the field’s methodological difficulties and polemics. On the one hand, a large body of historical literature on North American and European missions in Africa does not specifically consider black American personnel.46 Adrian Hastings, a major scholar of African Christianity, boils down such views that slide over African American missionaries as “never very numerous” and “mostly too immersed in the Westernizing orientation of the main American missions to offer any distinctive message.”47 On the other hand, a growing number of African American scholars aim to contest this assumption by digging for concealed source material. According to Sylvia M. Jacobs, the leading advocate of such research, the challenge lies as much in the missionary archives as in developing new analytical tools and Wilber Christian Harr, “The Negro as an American Protestant Missionary in Africa” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1945), 43 and 59. 45 These are usually multi-volume works, such as Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History of the Expansion of Christianity, 7 vols. (New York, 1937–1945). There are, however, very few statistics on African American missionaries. Drawing on registered church memberships, Robert Gordon estimates between 1820 and 1980, out of thirty thousand American missionaries about six hundred were black. For independent black churches, he counts roughly eighty sponsored missionaries in Africa and thirty Africans in the United States between 1877 and 1900. Robert Gordon, “Black Man’s Burden,” in African-American Experience in World Mission: A Call Beyond Community, ed. Vaughn J. Walston and Robert J. Stevens, 55–60, 2nd ed. (Pasadena, 2009). For AME Church accounts of missionaries, see Smith, History; Berry, Century of Missions; and Jordan, African Methodist Episcopal Church in Africa. 46 See, for instance, William R. Hutchison, Errand to the World: American Protestant Thought and Foreign Missions (Chicago, 1987); and more recently Robert Jewett and Ole Wangerin, Mission and Menace: Four Centuries of American Religious Zeal (Minneapolis, 2008). 47 Adrian Hastings, The Church in Africa, 1450–1950 (Oxford, 1994), 418. 44

Perspectives on the Afro-colonial Contact Zone

paradigms that help to study the African American missionary experience as a subject in its own right.48 Since the 1970s, a number of scholars have followed Harr’s and Jacobs’s call.49 Diverging from the methods of missiology, they detail instead African Americans’ missionary activities, biographies, and various institutional affiliations.50 Rather than adopt Hastings’s notion of a Westernizing orientation, they assert the singularity of the case as a new frame of reference: the ancient relationship African Americans had to Africa and the relatively unique experience of evangelizing people overseas who were racially similar. Pursuing these trajectories, historians have gathered anecdotal and numerical evidence that adds up to a black Atlantic missionary movement peaking between 1880 and 1920. This research powerfully defies both the neglect of missiologists and the scholarly notion of blacks’ Westernization by dovetailing the history of African American missions with a different, namely, African American, narrative. According to this, African American missionaries made a “significant contribution to a growing awareness of pan-Africanism among ordinary black people in the United States well before the rise of Garveyism and the Harlem Renaissance” – the two most important Africa-centered movements of the inSylvia M. Jacobs, “Black Americans and the Missionary Movement in Africa: A Bibliography,” in Black Americans, ed. Jacobs, 232. 49 For monographs, see St. Clair Drake, The Redemption of Africa and Black Religion (Chicago, 1970); Randall K. Burkett, Garveyism as a Religious Movement: The Institutionalization of a Black Civil Religion (Metuchen, 1978); Walter L. Williams, Black Americans and the Evangelization of Africa, 1877–1900 (Madison, 1982); J. Mutero Chirenje, Ethiopianism and Afro-Americans in Southern Africa, 1883–1916 (Baton Rouge, 1987); Sandy D. Martin, Black Baptists and African Missions: The Origins of a Movement, 1880–1915 (Macon, 1989); Pagan Kennedy, Black Livingstone: A True Tale of Adventure in the Nineteenth-century Congo (New York, 2002); and William S. Phipps, William Sheppard: Congo’s African American Livingstone (Louisville, 2002); for essay collections, see Jacobs, ed., Black Americans; and David W. Wills and Richard Newman, eds., Black Apostles at Home and Abroad: Afro-Americans and the Christian Mission from the Revolution to Reconstruction (Boston, 1982); for articles, see Seraile, “Black American Missionaries”; William H. Becker, “The Black Church: Manhood and Mission,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 40 (1972): 316–33; Katja Füllberg-Stolberg, “African Americans in Africa: Black Missionaries and the ‘Congo Atrocities,’ 1890–1910,” in Black Imagination and the Middle Passage, ed. Maria Diedrich, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Carl Pedersen, 215–27 (New York, 1999); Kenneth C. Barnes, “‘On the Shore Beyond the Sea’: Black Missionaries from Arkansas in Africa During the 1890s,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 61 (2002): 329–56; Sylvia M. Jacobs, “Three African American Women Missionaries in the Congo, 1887–1899: The Confluence of Race, Culture, Identity and Nationality,” in Competing Kingdoms, ed. Reeves-Ellington, Sklar, and Shemo, 318–41; and Mark Ellingsen, “Changes in African American Mission: Rediscovering African Roots,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 36 (2012): 136–42. 50 Perhaps the most ambitious project in this regard is Sylvia M. Jacobs’s effort to compile a bibliographical dictionary on African American missionaries covering the years 1820 to 1970. The project was not completed before her death in 2013 and awaits publication. For details on the planned volumes, see Jacobs’s obituary, accessed February 25, 2013, http://myemail.constantcontact.com/ASALH-Mourns-the-Loss-of-Dr--Sylvia-M--Jacobs.html?soid=1101668597064&aid= A0rlHOgf79 s. 48

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terwar years.51 That the impact of black American missionaries in Africa remains “somewhat illusive” and that black religious movements seem to have been simply replaced by a secular pan-Africanism in the twentieth century have been approved as acceptable corollaries.52 The question of whether black missionaries are framed as a Westernizing or pan-African force is significant for the longstanding and ongoing struggles for black recognition within American academia.53 In fact, digging up black history – including that of missionaries – was a strategy African Americans themselves developed in the 1920s and 1930s to contest the imperial dictum that Africa had no history and that blacks had no human qualities.54 Analyzing the role of African American missionaries primarily in the context of pan-Africanism nonetheless presents problems. First, the pan-African frame is questionable from a historical point of view. Critics of pan-Africanism refer to turn-of-the-century black evangelism to show how little solidarity the idea of shared African roots engendered.55 Instead of affirming unity, African American Christians often considered themselves to be superior and to have the duty to civilize Africa. By taking on the “black man’s burden,” they took on an imperialist gesturing toward the continent and helped to ground notions of masculinity, elitism, and middle class values in the idea of racial uplift.56 Tunde David Killingray, “The Black Atlantic Missionary Movement and Africa, 1780s–1920s,” Journal of Religion in Africa 33 (2003): 23. 52 Sylvia M. Jacobs, “The Impact of Black American Missionaries in Africa,” in Black Americans, ed. Jacobs, 225. For studies that suggest that the influence of African American missionaries lay primarily in paving the way for political movements, see George Shepperson, “Notes on Negro American Influences on the Emergence of African Nationalism,” Journal of African History 1 (1960): 299–312; and Milfred C. Fierce, The Pan-African Idea in the United States, 1900–1919: African-American Interest in Africa and Interaction with West Africa (New York, 1993). 53 Most of the partisan literature on African American missions emerged during the revival of African diaspora studies and the culture wars of the 1980s. Joseph E. Harris, ed., introduction to Global Dimensions of the African Diaspora, 3–14 (Washington, DC, 1982). 54 Corbould, Becoming, 57–87; on the formation and development of black history, see August Meier and Elliot M. Rudwick, Black History and the Historical Profession, 1915–1980 (Urbana, 1986). 55 Cf. Elias Farajajé-Jones, In Search of Zion: The Spiritual Significance of Africa in Black Religious Movements (Bern, 1990), 41–43. 56 The phrase is appropriated from Rudyard Kipling’s poem the “White Man’s Burden: The United States and the Philippine Islands” (1899). It was modified to the “Black Man’s Burden” by numerous black authors. Among them was the AME churchman H. T. Johnson, who published a poem by the modified title in the AME Church’s Voice of Missions in April 1899. Scholars have extensively discussed the nexus of imperialism, black religious manhood, and racial uplift. Examples include Michele Mitchell, “‘The Black Man’s Burden’: African Americans, Imperialism, and Notions of Racial Manhood, 1890–1910,” International Review of Social History 44 (1999): 77–99; John G. Turner, “A ‘Black-white’ Missionary on the Imperial Stage: William H. Sheppard and Middle-class Black Manhood,” Journal of Southern Religion 9 (2006), accessed March 5, 2013, http://jsr.fsu.edu/Volume9/Turner.htm; Kevin Gaines, “Black Americans’ Racial Uplift Ideology as ‘Civilizing Mission’: Pauline E. Hopkins on Race and Imperialism,” in Cultures, ed. 51

Perspectives on the Afro-colonial Contact Zone

Adeleke, for instance, termed black evangelists “unAfrican Americans.”57 Second, the pan-African paradigm poses a methodological problem. It tends to overestimate black-nationalist ideology over what was at stake in practice. As James T. Campbell’s seminal study on the AME Church in South Africa has shown, a prior challenge often lay in handling a situation in which African Americans and Africans “confronted one another as ‘Others.’”58 In addition, as Jay Riley Case submits, black American evangelism was absorbed by and reshaped within local conditions in unpredictable ways. Its outcome in Africa was never simply an importation of the Christian or pan-African doctrines that formed its background in the United States.59 That the existing critique of the pan-African frame in the historical literature draws attention to shortcomings, however, does not step beyond the pitfalls of the field’s initial polemic. Accounting for “unAfrican” attitudes and “unpredictable” local particularities when studying the history of African American missions is important and useful for distinguishing black missions as an object of investigation from the ongoing political project of constructing a black identity through partisan historiography.60 Both critical interventions, however, leave intact the assumption that the black mission faded with the rise of politicized, secular movements for black solidarity in the mid-twentieth century – rather than begin to trace where black religious agents traversed, cut across, or swam against contemporary preoccupations with race and the pan-African movement.61 The aim of this study is to foreground the coupling of black missions and empire. I build on the existing literature to make explicit how African Americans were involved in colonialism, regardless of whether or not this involvement forged pan-African alliances or dismantled them. Like all missionaries, I argue, blacks developed ideas of home and foreign, self and other, and civiKaplan and Pease, 433–55; and Kevin Gaines, Uplifting the Race: Black Leadership, Politics, and Culture in the Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill, 1996). 57 Tunde Adeleke, UnAfrican Americans: Nineteenth-century Black Nationalists and the Civilizing Mission (Lexington, 1998). 58 James T. Campbell, Songs of Zion: The African Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States and South Africa (New York, 1995), xiii. 59 On the AME Church in South Africa, see Jay Riley Case, An Unpredictable Gospel: American Evangelicals and World Christianity, 1812–1920 (New York, 2012), 183–206; Walton R. Johnson, Worship and Freedom: A Black American Church in Zambia (New York, 1977); and Roderick J. Macdonald, “Reverend Hanock Msokera Phiri and the Establishment in Nyasaland of the African Methodist Episcopal Church,” African Historical Studies 3 (1970): 75–87. 60 I borrow these terms from Adeleke, UnAfrican Americans; and Case, Unpredictable Gospel. I in no way intend to belittle ongoing efforts to redefine blackness as a positive marker of identity and political agenda. See, for instance, E. Patrick Johnson, Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity (Durham, 2003); and Algernon Austin, Achieving Blackness: Race, Black Nationalism, and Afrocentrism in the Twentieth Century (New York, 2006). 61 Cf. Campbell, Songs, 296.

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lized and backward to represent their colonial encounters, and they produced and circulated knowledge, formed transnational communities, and maintained networks of exchange between African colonies and black metropoles in the United States.62 While such lines of inquiry have not yet become a subject of research in their own right, they are related to scholarship on transnational blackness, a growing field within African American history that engages with questions of race, nationalism, and imperialism.63 In order to clarify the lacunae in research and the method this study aims to address, I will briefly discuss the absence of empire in the historiography of African American transnationalism. Historiography of African American Transnationalism

The subject of black missionaries in colonial Africa in the first half of the twentieth century intersects with African diaspora studies and black Atlantic studies, two fields that share an interest in historicizing the relationship between African Americans and Africa as transnational while pushing for very different understandings of what transnational means.64 The field of African diaspora studies takes as its starting point the forced displacement of blacks in America. It assumes that the middle passage, the transport of African slaves to American shores, intermitted their relations to both Africa and European empires. What made the diaspora “African” was its continued consciousness of the distant homeland: the presence of Africa in I draw the term “black metropole” from Claude McKay’s Harlem: Negro Metropolis (New York, 1940). McKay uses it to underscore the rise and visibility of black urban culture during the Great Migration. 63 In U. S. scholarship, transnational history largely encompasses studies that focus on the movements of people, ideas, and institutions within, beyond, across, and outside the nation-state. Groundbreaking studies here include Ian Tyrrell, “American Exceptionalism in an Age of International History,” American Historical Review 96 (1991): 1031–55; David Thelen, “The Nation and Beyond: Transnational Perspectives on United States History,” Journal of American History 86 (1999): 965–75; and Thomas Bender, A Nation Among Nations: America’s Place in World History (New York, 2006). For a comprehensive overview, see Akira Iriye and Pierre-Yves Saunier, eds., The Palgrave Dictionary of Transnational History (Basingstoke, 2009). In the historiography of African Americans, transnational history tends to focus on the international dimensions of political agitation. See, for instance, Manning Marable and Vanessa Agard-Jones, eds., Transnational Blackness: Navigating the Global Color Line (New York, 2008). Useful challenges to the notion that transnational blackness involves agitation include Sabine Müller, “Blackness und Transnationalismus: One Plus One? Überlegungen zu einer exemplarischen Herausforderung zeitgenössischer Historiographie,” Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften 17 (2006): 10–50; and Vilashini Cooppan, “W(h)ither Post-colonial Studies? Towards the Transnational Study of Race and Nation,” in Postcolonial Theory and Criticism, ed. Laura Chrisman and Benita Parry, 1–35 (Woodbridge, 2000). 64 For a concise and very useful discussion, see Douglas B. Chambers, “The Black Atlantic: Theory, Method, and Practice,” in The Atlantic World, 1450–2000, ed. Toyin Falola and Kevin D. Roberts, 151–73 (Bloomington, 2008). 62

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America consisted in the “myths, rationalizations, and theories” that displaced people developed to make sense of their fate, as well as the political rhetoric – of ebony kinship, negritude, pan-Africanism, and black nationalism – they used to contest their oppression.65 Critics attempted to challenge this victimizing narrative with concepts of creolization. To this end, they retrieved African influences in African American cultural systems.66 While such scholarship enriches the field with analyses of how African heritages were creatively appropriated and thus account for the essential newness of African American societies in the New World, it does not capture blacks who left the United States.67 African diaspora studies therefore continue to suppose that black Americans lost their “contact with Africans” and an “existence without resistance,” and that African American transnationalism designates the imaginations of blacks, who stayed in racist America.68 The field of black Atlantic studies, in contrast, conceives of the formation of an African diaspora as a distinct episode within the long history of cross-Atlantic connections. As historians of colonial America, European merchant empires, and continental African societies have shown, some nine million blacks – and only three million Europeans – crossed the Atlantic to the Americas between 1580 and 1820 so that, in this period, much of the Atlantic world was black.69 Starting with this chronology, blacks have been analyzed not only as cargo but as agents in the making of Atlantic slavery, trade, and cultural exchange. Scholars have churned up blacks’ peripatetic life stories and, with them, a black Atlantic microhistory that is at odds with macrostructural assumptions about the correspondence between ascribed race, cultural coordinates, economic roles, and spaces of action.70 Africans, such studies have contended, did not arrive as cultural strangers in the New World.71 As Ira Berlin On the ambiguous “presence/absence” of Africa, see Stuart Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” in Colonial Discourse and Postcolonial Theory: A Reader, ed. Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman (New York, 1994), 398. Quote from Elliot P. Skinner, “The Dialectic Between Diasporas and Homelands,” in Global Dimensions, ed. Harris, 19. For a very good overview of black transnational thought, see Robin D. Kelly, “‘But a Local Phase of a World Problem’: Black History’s Global Vision, 1883–1950,” Journal of American History 86 (1999): 1045–77; for a classic account, see Robert G. Weisbord, Ebony Kinship: Africa, Africans, and the Afro-American (Westport, 1973). 66 The groundbreaking work on creolization is Sidney W. Mintz and Richard Price, The Birth of African-American Culture: An Anthropological Perspective (Boston, 1992). 67 Okon Edet Uya, “Conceptualizing Afro-American/African Relations: Implications for African Diaspora Studies,” in Global Dimensions, ed. Harris, 77. 68 Drake, “Negro Americans,” 664; and Oruno D. Lara, “African Diaspora: Conceptual Framework, Problems and Methodological Approaches,” in Global Dimensions, ed. Harris, 60. 69 Chambers, “Black Atlantic,” 155–56. 70 Lara Putnam, “To Study the Fragments/Whole: Microhistory and the Atlantic World,” Journal of Social History 39 (2006): 617. 71 John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400–1800, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, UK, 1998), 211. 65

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argues, they descended from a generation of Atlantic creoles who inherited the knowledge, experience, and practices of the momentous encounter of multiple African traders, slaveholders, and tribesmen, European intruders, and eventually Americans. Against the backdrop of this broader Atlantic world, black Atlantic studies understands as a successor generation the presence of “Africans” in America. The conscious identification of the black diaspora with Africa is seen as having supplanted Atlantic creolization and thus as marking a stage at which the transatlantic movements of African people dropped from the equation.72 Along a similar line, a growing body of studies reconstructs the black Atlantic as a transformative site of black cultural production. This field of research is less interested in the structural interdependencies between Europe, Africa, and America than in the connections that culturally diverse and internationally dispersed Atlantic Africans maintained from the slave trade onwards.73 Scholars of this black Atlantic discuss the enduring formation of Afro-diasporic exchange as the cornerstone of a black tradition of reflecting upon slavery, colonialism, and racism – the drawbacks of Western civilization.74 As Paul Gilroy has shown in his landmark book, The Black Atlantic, this tradition draws upon imaginations of the middle passage, the various projects for redemptive return to an African homeland, as well as the ongoing circulation of ideas, activists, and cultural artifacts, such as tracts, books, gramophone records, or choirs. Broadly speaking, any physical crossing of the Atlantic bears the potential of shaping black cultural productions, so that these productions, traveling along the same routes, are persistently and irreversible transformed.75 A crucial claim Ira Berlin, “From Creole to African: Atlantic Creoles and the Origins of African-American Society in Mainland North America,” William and Mary Quarterly 53 (1996): 254–55; cf. James Sidbury, Becoming African in America: Race and Nation in the Early Black Atlantic (Oxford, 2007). 73 See, for instance, Alan Rice, Radical Narratives of the Black Atlantic (London, 2003); Laurent Dubois and Julius Scott, eds., Origins of the Black Atlantic (New York, 2010); Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and William L. Andrews, eds., Pioneers of the Black Atlantic: Five Slave Narratives from the Enlightenment, 1772–1815 (Washington, DC, 2010); Yogita Goyal, Romance, Diaspora, and Black Atlantic Literature (Cambridge, UK, 2010); Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Tradition and the Black Atlantic: Critical Theory in the African Diaspora (New York, 2010); and Paul Gilroy, Darker than Blue: On the Moral Economies of Black Atlantic Culture (Cambridge, MA, 2010). Scholarship in the field is increasingly opening up to ideas of the global. See, Andreas Eckert, “Bringing the ‘Black Atlantic’ into Global History: The Project of Pan-Africanism,” in Competing Visions of World Order: Global Moments and Movements, 1880s–1930s, ed. Sebastian Conrad and Dominic Sachsenmaier (New York, 2007); and Annalisa Oboe and Anna Scacchi, eds., Recharting the Black Atlantic: Modern Cultures, Local Communities, Global Connections (New York, 2008). 74 Christian religion, in particular, provided impulses for critical reflection. For a concise overview, see Albert J. Raboteau, Canaan Land: A Religious History of African Americans (Oxford, 2001); for black Atlantic dimensions, see Cedrick May, Evangelism and Resistance in the Black Atlantic, 1760–1835 (Athens, 2008); and James A. Noel, Black Religion and the Imagination of Matter in the Atlantic World (New York, 2009). 75 Gilroy suggests that, precisely by understanding ships voyaging between Europe, Africa, and 72

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relating to the idea of a black Atlantic tradition is that the discontent that Atlantic Africans articulated about the West was much less polemical than many of their black-nationalist ideologies suggest. According to Gilroy, the works of leading pan-Africanists, such as Du Bois, were marked by a desire “to transcend both the structures of the nation-state and the constraints of ethnicity and national particularity.” In this view, African American transnationalism was not solely a strategic and oppositional response to black oppression in the United States but a counterculture of Western modernity that characterized the Atlantic world from the slave trade onwards.76 This cursory survey indicates that the historiography of African American transnationalism has moved from U. S.-centered to Atlantic perspectives, and has shifted its focus from black nationalism to transculturalism. My analysis follows both of these trajectories in order to set aside the pan-African frame that dominates the existing literature on African American missionaries. With Gilroy, I frame the AME Church’s missionary enterprise as a ‘black Atlantic missionary tradition.’ AME missionaries were a highly diverse group of itinerants from the United States, South and West Africa. Some had been converted to Christianity, some were trained at mission schools, and some sought refuge from white assaults; many found career opportunities within the AME Church on both sides of the Atlantic. Instead of subscribing to a shared political agenda, this group was confronted with a peculiar set of questions about where home was located, about what African meant, about what they wanted to achieve together, and about what specific opportunities had opened up for Africans in the United States and African Americans in colonial Africa – questions that arose on the move and in moments of encounter. In part, black missionaries addressed these questions in the periodicals, travelogues, and diaries they carried with them so that these writings demarcated the horizons and the traditions of their critical reflection.77 A perspective on these transformative exchange processes thus highlights the flow of people and their cultural productions as the driving forces in the formation of the Atlantic AME community and complicates, by doing so, the notion that African American mission work was unidirectional. Drawing upon black Atlantic studies, this study also uses the life stories of individual missionaries to trace a “larger, but hidden or unknown, structure” the Americas as constituting a “living micro-cultural, micro-political system in motion,” we can see the site from which black cultural transformations took off. Gilroy, Black Atlantic, 4. This view is supported by Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, Many-headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic (Boston, 2000). 76 Gilroy, Black Atlantic, 19. 77 As Ciprian Burlacioiu has shown, the circulation of pieces of printed matter sometimes was more important in the formation of African congregations than missionaries. Ciprian Burlacioiu, “Transatlantische Vernetzungen indigener christlicher Eliten am Beispiel der African Orthodox Church, 1920–1930,” in Missionsgeschichte, ed. van der Heyden and Feldtkeller, 97–109.

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of the twentieth-century Atlantic world.78 It can hardly be claimed that missionary travels, understandings and practices of Christianity, as well as ideas about Africa, were exclusive topics of the black Atlantic missionary tradition. They marked, instead, its points of intersection with other social spaces and structures of knowledge that typically involved groups far smaller and regions far larger than the AME community.79 Within the AME Church, for instance, missionaries were few in numbers and often frowned upon as somewhat unrelated to the church’s original purpose of self-determination. The influence of this group, however, made itself felt in various ways within American, European, and African societies, as well as within the Western missionary movement. While the spatial outlines of this study are intentionally broad, I will not present a complete picture of the Atlantic world in the twentieth century. I conceptualize the black Atlantic missionary tradition instead as a microevent within those colonial entanglements that have to be acknowledged in its formation in order to challenge the priority of pan-African frameworks in the historiography of African American missions to Africa. Finally, my analysis of the formation of a black Atlantic missionary tradition does not abandon what Gilroy calls the “essentialist understanding of ethnic and national difference” that divides people into impermeable and incommensurable social and historical locations.80 Being on the move did not make obsolete the very real racial and national boundaries that formed such movement’s contexts. A missionary black Atlanticism neither celebrated cosmopolitanism nor denigrated race as a false consciousness. Nor did it end political imaginations of the homeland Africa. With Gilroy’s wariness of a “methodological nationalism” in mind, an angle on the pan-African project is still useful for localizing the effects of black mission work. When African American missionaries returned to the United States, they also re-entered the contexts of African American identity politics. It is in such moments that black missionaries’ transformed perspectives, desires, self-perceptions, and understandings of race and Africa come into view. AME missionaries staged their experience of Africa in writings and speeches, lifestyles, and codes of behavior (often related to notions of home and gender) for the African American community. Expounding misconceptions of Africa, for instance, was as much a sign of missionaries’ personal transformation as a strategic feature of performing the new missionary role in U. S. contexts of pan-African agitation. The black Atlantic missionary tradition, thus, did not merely sit alongside the strategic essentialism of the diaspora but itself constituted a facet of the African American quest Matti Peltonen, “Clues, Margins, and Monads: The Micro-macro Link in Historical Research,” History and Theory 40 (2001): 349. 79 Putnam, “Fragments/Whole,” 620. 80 Paul Gilroy, Small Acts: Thoughts on the Politics of Black Culture (London, 1993), 65. 78

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for national and international influence. I the following, I suggest calling this facet in AME mission work a ‘counterculture of pan-Africanism.’ 81 Historiography on African American Missionaries and Colonial Africa

While combining diaspora and black Atlantic perspectives sets up a framework for understanding African American missionary work beyond pan-Africanism, both fields have a blind spot concerning an aspect that is crucial to this study: colonial Africa. Most scholars would agree that Gilroy made an overdue intervention against the predominance of black-nationalist frameworks. Few, however, challenge colonial presuppositions. Arguments about the internality of blacks to Western modernity, for instance, serve to present fissures in its monologic façade rather than calling Western constructions of modernity itself into question.82 The problem becomes evident if one considers that research on the black Atlantic tends to focus on African Americans, as opposed to people who were – according to Gilroy’s logic – not internal to the West. This neglect concerns Africans, specifically. As recent research on African modernity, the third world, and the global South shows, Africans were far more pronounced regarding their understandings of development, anticolonial nationalism, and black solidarity than what African Americans were able or willing to summon.83 W. E. B. Du Bois, as Laura Chrisman exemplified, did not acknowledge South African black nationalism despite his preoccupation with pan-Africanist ideologies and despite his personal friendship with Sol Plaatje, the founder of the South African Native National Congress.84 The silencing of Africans, it seems, was part of the African American approach to black transnationalism. Recent and important literature on black attempts to influence domestic and international politics includes Charles F. Peterson, Du Bois, Fanon, Cabral: The Margins of Elite Anti-colonial Leadership (Lanham, 2007); Michelle Rief, “Thinking Locally, Acting Globally: The International Agenda of African American Clubwomen, 1880–1940,” Journal of African American History 89 (2004): 203–22; Carol Anderson, Eyes off the Prize: The United Nations and the African American Struggle for Human Rights, 1944–1955 (Cambridge, UK, 2003); Thomas Borstelmann, The Cold War and the Color Line: American Race Relations in the Global Arena (Cambridge, MA, 2001); James H. Meriwether, Proudly We Can Be Africans: Black Americans and Africa, 1935–1961 (Chapel Hill, 2002); Brenda Gayle Plummer, ed., Window on Freedom: Race, Civil Rights, and Foreign Affairs, 1945–1988 (Chapel Hill, 2003); Mary L. Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton, 2000); and Michael L. Krenn, ed., The African American Voice in U. S. Foreign Policy Since World War II (New York, 1998). 82 “Relocating Modernization and Technology,” introduction to Beyond the Black Atlantic: Relocating Modernization and Technology, ed. Walter Goebel and Saskia Schabio (London, 2006), 3. 83 See, for instance, Vijay Prashad, The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World (New York, 2007); Olúfémi Táíwò, How Colonialism Preempted Modernity in Africa (Bloomington, 2010); Andrew Zimmerman, Alabama in Africa: Booker T. Washington, the German Empire, and the Globalization of the New South (Princeton, 2010); and Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff, Theory from the South: Or, How Euro-America Is Evolving Toward Africa (Boulder, 2012). 84 Laura Chrisman, “Du Bois in Transnational Perspective: The Loud Silencing of Black South 81

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In the context of this study, postcolonial criticism of the black Atlantic provides an important starting point for elucidating how African Methodism moved to “the center of one of the most dynamic popular movements” in Africa, as Campbell found out.85 Viewed against the backdrop of Chrisman’s reminder that black transnationalism involved criticism, conflicts, and, at worst, denial, this move appears to be due less to the popularity of African Americans than to the unpopularity of Europeans among colonized Africans.86 In the late nineteenth century, South African ministers, such as Nehemiah Tile and James M. Dwane, seceded from Western mission churches, prompted others to break away as well, and launched the independent African church movement of which the AME Church eventually became part. Tile and Dwane, however, were not drawn to African American role models. They envisioned building an African church around the idea of Ethiopia, the African state that was mentioned in the bible and that was not colonized.87 Historians are beginning to consider such schisms as the start of a transformation that challenged not only Western ideas of Christianity but also assumed an antistructural agency that was at the core of an African modernity.88 African Americans thereby often provided Africans with a repertoire of possible forms of affiliation, of protest strategies, and of ways of articulating solidarity and asserting political violence. During the 1920s and 1930s, the imagery of an “‘American Negro’ modernity,” of Marcus Garvey as the “true Moses,” or of the African American quest for human dignity and respectability frequently served to sharpen South African dreams of liberation. Among others, we find it harnessed to the proletarian radicalism of Clements Kadalie’s (1896–1951) Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union or Alfred B. Xuma’s (1893–1962) African National Congress (ANC).89 At the same time, these examples remind us that African American transnationalism required Africans who were ready to listen, and that, by extension, Africa,” Current Writing 16 (2004): 18–30. 85 Campbell, Songs, viii. 86 Chrisman, “Black Transnationalisms”; and Chrisman, “Rethinking.” On religious transnationalism, see Tony Martin, “Some Reflections on Evangelical Pan-Africanism or Black Missionaries, White Missionaries and the Struggle for African Souls, 1890–1930,” in The Pan-African Connection: From Slavery to Garvey and Beyond, 31–46, 2nd ed. (Dover, 1984). 87 Steven Paas, The Faith Moves South: A History of the Church in Africa (Zomba, 2006), 143. For other South African clergy and their secession, see Chirenje, Ethiopianism, 18–20. 88 Ogbu U. Kalu, “Ethiopianism and the Roots of Modern African Christianity,” in The Cambridge History of Christianity, Vol. 8, World Christianities c.1815–c.1914, ed. Sheridan Gilley and Brian Stanley (Cambridge, UK, 2005), 586. 89 Iris Berger, “An African American ‘Mother of the Nation’: Maddie Hall Xuma in South Africa, 1940–1963,” Journal of Southern African Studies 27 (2001): 549; Vinson, Americans Are Coming, 77; and Frederick Cooper, “Race, Ideology and the Perils of Comparative History,” American Historical Review 101 (1996): 1129. One example is Helen Bradford, A Taste of Freedom: The ICU in Rural South Africa, 1924–1930 (New Haven, 1987).

Perspectives on the Afro-colonial Contact Zone

Atlantic crossings were no one-way street. Nationalist-minded African clergy, such as John Chilembwe (1871–1915), Edward W. Blyden (1832–1912), and Hastings K. Banda, frequently visited the United States in their search for models to jump-start the social and spiritual regeneration of Africa. Many of them seemed to find answers, or at least inspiration, in Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Alabama.90 But the African interest in Washington’s philosophy of black vocational training always also involved its critical revision, transformation, and at times dismissal. Blyden, for instance, found the model inappropriate for introduction into West Africa and favored Islam over Christianity as a means for black regeneration.91 Like him, Africans interested in African Americans did not automatically assert a shared antithesis to Western racism and colonialism, or a “smooth and untroubled marriage” between black independent church movements.92 As Andrew E. Barnes notes, conversations in the Christian black Atlantic rather brought into focus how Africans themselves understood their religion, their education, and the social and spiritual development of Africa. Such critical black transnationalisms are crucial to framing this study in colonial Africa. There, AME missionaries faced the challenge of both adapting African American ideas of the AME Church to local contexts and establishing persistent conversations among the Atlantic community of church affiliates. In addition, AME missionaries got involved with a number of local issues that lay out of sight to the black American community altogether. They had to define, for instance, their relationship to African colleagues and colonial officials, as well as to the lifestyles and structures of indirect-rule society. Finally, the AME Africa mission came into its own at a time when the black Atlantic framed by the slave trade was beginning to disappear, when it was becoming obvious that a wholesale migration of African Americans to Africa would not materialize, and when Africans became interested in African American ideas.93 AccountAndrew E. Barnes, “Tuskegee and the Christian Black Atlantic” (paper presented at the Yale Edinburgh Conference on the Missionary Movement and Non-Western Christianity, Edinburgh, June 28, 2012), 1. 91 Edward W. Blyden, Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race (London, 1887). Other examples of African schools, presumably built upon the model of Tuskegee, are John L. Dube’s Ohlange Institute and John Chilembwe’s Providence Industrial Mission. Most studies of the Tuskegee model in Africa focus on German Togo. See Kendahl Radcliffe, “We Shall Make Farmers of Them Yet: Tuskegee’s Uplift Ideology in German Togoland,” in Germany and the Black Diaspora: Points of Contact, 1250–1914, ed. Mischa Honeck, Martin Klimke, and Anne Kuhlmann, 187–212 (New York, 2013); Sven Beckert, “From Tuskegee to Togo: The Problem of Freedom in the Empire of Cotton,” Journal of American History 92 (2005): 498–526; Andrew Zimmerman, “A German Alabama in Africa: The Tuskegee Expedition to German Togo and the Transnational Origins of West African Cotton Growers,” American Historical Review 110 (2005): 1362–98; and Fierce, Pan-African Idea, 171–97. 92 Case, Unpredictable Gospel, 185. 93 Barnes, “Christian Black Atlantic,” 9. 90

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ing for the critical black transnationalism among AME members thus has the potential to guide us toward the “unsuspected social networks and flows of information” in which they operated and from which their black Atlantic missionary tradition took off. After all, it was in colonial Africa that they engaged with conflicts and contradictions that were more complex than the accounts of black Atlanticism and the struggles of race against empire suggest.94 In an effort to synthesize and expand the scope of diaspora and black Atlantic studies and critical black transnationalism, I will refer to my approach as a ‘contact perspective.’ A contact perspective, I argue, can both undermine the dualism between pan-African and black Atlantic paradigms, as well as place the consolidation of black Atlantic missionary relationships into a broader context in which neither Africa nor colonialism is excluded. By situating black America and colonial Africa in “the same analytic field,” this perspective enables us to consider a new way in which black Americans have been internal to the West: in the twentieth century, African American missionaries’ transnationalism could involve their self-determined passage into Africa, Europe’s last empire.95 1.3. Reconceiving African American (Anti)colonialism: Method, Sources, and Structure

My claim that there is an absence of empire in the historiography of African Americans is based on methodological premises aside from those that offer critiques of the preoccupations of diaspora and black Atlantic studies. Using a contact perspective means writing a history from below. With cultural and postcolonial studies, I understand this method as exploring modes of colonial power from the perspective of colonial subjects. While this approach often focuses on the “epistemic violence” of colonialism, which was destructive of non-Western ways of perceiving the world, the example of African American missionaries presents us with a different problem.96 These actors were not colonized. They entered into colonial environments voluntarily and usually without anticolonial aspirations. As ‘noncolonial’ and ‘nonanticolonial’ subjects, black missionaries are neither silenced by the archives of colonialism nor merged in the records of pan-African anticolonialism.97 African American missionaries

Putnam, “Fragments/Whole,” 618; and von Eschen, Race Against Empire. Cooper, Colonialism, 171. 96 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak,” in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, 271–313 (Urbana, 1988). 97 On silencing archives, see Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston, 1995). 94 95

Reconceiving African American (Anti)colonialism

are instead simply not considered sources in the study of each. Their dual absence forms the methodological starting point of my analysis. Method

The neglect of African American missionaries in colonial and anticolonial history can be described as a result of the historiographical convention of describing colonialism as a negative structure. As David Scott argues, the scholarly preoccupation with an image of colonialism that foregrounds its brutal, violent, racist, and oppressive character is necessarily inclined to focus on the resistance, agency, or anticolonial “counter-power” of the colonized.98 Frederick Cooper views this preoccupation as “risk[ing] anachronism.” Retrospectively, researchers cast subjects as being on a search for ideas of a racial identity or a nation, because such ideas eventually formed influential responses to the negative structures of colonialism. They have, however, little regard for the activities of subjects to whom such ideas may have been unthinkable, unavailable, or undesirable at the time, and therefore tend to neglect the other paths these subjects actually took.99 The paths that African American missionaries took in colonial Africa present us with such a case. They were historical actors who did not perceive colonialism as their prime problem and whose transformative projects were not determined to assert a pan-African identity or nation. Consequently, reconstructing their history will not merely complement respective records of oppression and resistance. Nor will it simply add the black church to the history of Western Christian missions. Drawing on Scott and Cooper, I suggest that the study of black missionaries helps us to understand that there were other discontents, desires, demands, and expectations that drove African Americans to engage with colonial Africa. Black missionaries, for instance, illustrate how black subjects who were not colonized could access colonial power structures and use them to pursue their own aims. They also show how blacks could alter, if not challenge, such structures simply by adopting them. While this form of black agency seems moderate and elusive in retrospect, looking at it has important implications for how we conceptualize black self-determination in contexts of colonialism and anticolonialism. African American missionaries were liminal actors: they could be empowered by entering colonial regimes, and the moment they did, they shed light on new facets and nuances in the contemporary image of empire.100 Tracing their paths can, accordingly, illumiDavid Scott, Conscripts of Modernity: The Tragedy of Colonial Enlightenment (Durham, 2004), 6–7. 99 Cooper, Colonialism, 18. 100 John L. Comaroff, “Images of Empire, Contests of Conscience: Models of Colonial Domination in South Africa,” in Tensions, ed. Cooper and Stoler, 179–81.

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nate both where colonial power relations were inchoate and where such power relations became more than a limiting and stultifying force in the history of African Americans. I designate this ambiguity as ‘African American (anti)colonialism.’ Reconceiving the image of colonialism from an African American missionary perspective therefore requires us to account for forms of colonial power beyond domination and coercion. With Michel Foucault we can describe such forms of power as “relations” that have the potential to modify actions – relations that themselves in turn circulate and concatenate – such as norms or notions of order, discipline, and self-government.101 A core feature of such power relations was, as Colin Gordon puts it, that they were “practicable both to its practitioners and to those upon whom it was practiced.”102 In my analysis, I will use a relational concept of power to foreground how African American missionaries were involved with colonialism even if they were not colonial subjects. One such involvement concerns, for instance, colonial discourses. As Edward Said has shown, colonial discourses not only ‘othered’ those who were ruled but also produced new scientific, legal, and cultural repertoires for people outside of the colonial compound.103 Marcus Garvey, the well-known proponent of black anticolonial struggles, for instance, drew on British discourses when he imagined the construction of a “Racial Empire upon which ‘the sun shall never set’.”104 Similarly, AME ministers believed that they could “become more and more a source of uplift” if they worked “in cooperation with the [colonial] government,” while asserting that their “empire of African Methodism” reached “far beyond the territory which constitutes the British Empire.”105 To be sure, such empire-centered imaginations “captured the minds of many Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977, ed. Colin Gordon (New York, 1980), 96. 102 Colin Gordon, “Governmental Rationality: An Introduction,” in The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality with Two Lectures by and an Interview with Michel Foucault, ed. Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller (London, 1991), 3. This is related to Foucault’s methodological assumption that power can only be studied in how (by what means) it is exercised. Michel Foucault, “The Subject and Power,” Critical Inquiry 8 (1982): 786–87. 103 Said, Orientalism, 3–4. For a study that uses Said’s concept of Orientalism to trace how racial minorities envisioned international alliances against imperialism, see Bill V. Mullen, Afro-orientalism (Minneapolis, 2004). For some examples of studies that look at how imperialism informed masculinity, see Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880–1917 (Chicago, 1996); and Michelle Ann Stephens, Black Empire: The Masculine Global Imaginary of Caribbean Intellectuals in the United States, 1914–1962 (Durham, 2005). 104 The phrase was used to refer to the British Empire. We find it in the accounts of Marcus Garvey as well as of the AME Church. Marcus Garvey, “African Fundamentalism,” 1925, repr. in Marcus Garvey and the Vision of Africa, ed. John Henrik Clarke (New York, 1974), 158. 105 W. T. Vernon, “South Africa: A Challenge to the Christian Church,” AME Review (April 1922): 171; and Vince M. Townsend, Fifty-four Years of African Methodism: Reflections on the Law and Doctrine of the AME Church (New York, 1953), 142. 101

Reconceiving African American (Anti)colonialism

self-conscious minority activists.” They became practitioners of the European colonial discourse on Africa as much as they became the subjects upon whom such discourses were projected, as Cooper and Hauke Dorsch argue.106 In addition, my effort of tracing productive dimensions of empire in African American history comes with assumptions about imperial space. As Amy Kaplan has argued in the context of U. S. history, empire cannot solely be understood as a territorial extension of one nation-state beyond its borders. Instead, it is a way of life that is pervasive for the domestic and foreign subjects “who benefit from it, who are subjugated to it, and who resist it.”107 I use the term “empire” accordingly to go beyond the geographical boundaries and political barriers that the British Empire established for its subjects. With Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, we may think of empire as a “decentered and deterritorializing apparatus of rule” or, as Scott puts it, “an apparatus of dominant power-effects.”108 To study empire then becomes what Ann Laura Stoler calls an “analytics of imperial formations,” which looks at sets of practices structured in dominance and at the active and contingent processes of their making and unmaking through dislocation, dispersion, or appropriation. In this view, imperial spaces are defined not by political boundaries but by their functions. If the function of a colony is, for instance, social segregation, we can find it located inside its respective metropole and at the same time see it as linked to spaces with similar functions in different empires or nations, such as Jim Crow facilities in the American South and black townships in South Africa.109 Based on this understanding of empire, my perspective attempts to foreground the social spaces in which black missionaries established ongoing relations in colonial Africa. This approach allows us to account for an encounter that involved highly asymmetrical relations of domination and subordination without being confined to either the United States or Africa. It traces instead new, transatlantic contact zones in which, using Pratt’s phrase, the disparate peoples and cultures of black America and the British Empire met, clashed, and grappled with each other.110 These methodological precautions suggest that the following chapters will not be concerned with political activism, spatially defined empires, and anticolonial forms of agency. Each chapter will return to such topics to various extents, however, only in terms of a problematic contingency. The major anaQuote from Cooper, Colonialism, 23; and Hauke Dorsch, Afrikanische Diaspora und Black Atlantic: Eine Einführung in Geschichte und aktuelle Diskussion (Münster, 2000), 13. 107 Kaplan, “Left Alone,” 14. 108 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, MA, 2000), xii; and David Scott, “Colonial Governmentality,” Social Text 43 (1995): 192. 109 Ann Laura Stoler and Carole McGranahan, “Refiguring Imperial Terrains,” in Imperial Formations, ed. Ann Laura Stoler, Carole McGranahan, and Peter C. Perdue (Santa Fe, 2007), 8. 110 Pratt, Imperial Eyes, 4. 106

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lytical guideline of this study derives from its central theme: the Afro-colonial encounter. The flows, structures, and practices that emerged from this contact and in their shifting interrelation across racial, spatial, or cultural boundaries will guide us through the following chapters. Sources

This study aims to provide an alternative view of African American emancipation by analyzing the AME mission in the context of African colonization. My research was guided by – and limited to – finding sources that elucidated the AME Church’s activities in British West and South Africa between 1900 and 1939. I thus drew on materials the AME Church produced itself, as well as two external contexts that registered its arrival in colonial Africa: the international missionary movement and the British Empire. My sources come from archives that specialize in African American history as well as from national, public, and missionary archives in the United States, England, and West Africa. In my efforts to delineate AME missionaries’ contacts in diverse settings, I have analyzed personal papers, official and unofficial correspondences, institutional and government records, as well as a range of published materials, namely, books, reports, newspapers, magazines, and other periodicals, which include – but are not limited to – AME Church publications. While I cannot claim that this source base is complete, it does provide an original perspective because it carries the study of black international activities beyond the United States. Most relevant to this study are the AME Church Records (AME CR) held by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (SCRBC) in Harlem, New York. The AME CR derive from the AME Church’s Missionary Department alone, covering the years between 1910 and the late 1950s.111 What makes them especially valuable is the great number of unpublished documents they comprise, the majority of which are the correspondences between foreign missionaries and missionary secretaries, as well as between church affiliates on both sides of the Atlantic. Unlike the documentation the AME Church offers in its missionary publications, which helped me to reconstruct how the church wanted its mission to be seen in public, the AME CR provide invaluable insights into the conflicts, problems, and practical concerns the church had to handle behind the scenes. They touch on underfunding, demoralization, immigration restrictions, arrests, and deportations, but they also underscore the renewed vigor to sustain the missionary enterprise against all odds.112 The AME CR were in the process of cataloguing when I visited the SCRBC in 2010 and 2011. In the following, I will reference the collection based on the state of cataloguing that was achieved during my research stay. 112 The printed materials that were most important to this study were the AME Church Missionary Department’s official mouthpiece, the Voice of Missions, as well as conference proceed111

Reconceiving African American (Anti)colonialism

While the AME CR serve to reconstruct transatlantic communication, my consideration of a number of personal papers helped me to bring the incentives and the impact of individual workers into the AME Church’s grand missionary scheme. The Bishop Richard Robert Wright Jr. Papers held by the Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection (BAAC) at Temple University Libraries (TUL) and the Josephus Roosevelt Coan Papers held by the Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library (MARBL) at Emory University, were extraordinarily rich in this regard. They contain these individuals’ travel documents, clippings, invitations to events in Africa, postcards to family members, and their personal notes on the progress and achievements of their work. The establishment of the Crogman Clinic in Evaton, Transvaal, for example, appears therein as a joint initiative of Josephus R. Coan (1902–2004) and the Wright family rather than a church-induced plan to provide medical facilities in the mission field.113 A number of missionaries have published their recollections. These publications comprise a type of source that I call ‘autoethnographies.’ They tell us how missionaries represented their itinerant lives, how they adjusted to new environments, and they provide records of their impressions of African customs and the rivalries and loyalties they experienced among church functionaries. Read against the grain, these publications help illustrate how missionaries not only changed their own perceptions of Africa but how they also engaged with perceptions of other missionaries, as well as colonizers. At the same time, they allow us to detect the authors’ intent to educate, to speak for Africa, and to position themselves strategically within various black publics. Alongside their official use in missionary study courses, for instance, these autoethnographic texts form a powerful counter-narrative to the pan-African image of Africa of the time.114 ings and reports. I gathered these from the microfilm collection of African American Religious Serials, 1850–1950 (Chicago: American Theological Library Association, 2005), the New York Public Library, the Richard Allen Museum at Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, and the Temple University Libraries in Philadelphia, as well as the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University and the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. 113 Charlotte Crogman Wright, Beneath the Southern Cross: The Story of an American Bishop’s Wife in South Africa (New York, 1955), 48; and Mercedes Campbell Brown, Unconquered Mountain: Dr. Josephus Coan’s Life and Work in the African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Africa, 1938–1948 (Nashville, 1995), 56. 114 Published diaries and historical studies by AME Church staff on African missionary work include: Henry McNeal Turner, African Letters (Nashville, 1893); Charles Spencer Smith, Glimpses of Africa … (Nashville, 1895); Levi J. Coppin, Observations of Persons and Things in South Africa, 1900–1904, Vol. 2 (Philadelphia, 1905); John A. Gregg, “The Land of the Southern Cross” [1910?], in The Land of the Southern Cross: John A. Gregg and South Africa, ed. Dennis C. Dickerson (n. p., [1990?]), 9–42; Emily Christmas Kinch, West Africa: An Open Door (Philadelphia, 1917); Cameron Chesterfield Alleyne, Gold Coast at a Glance (New York, 1931); Amos Jerome White and Luella Graham White, Dawn in Bantuland: An African Experiment or an Ac-

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Besides AME Church materials, this study makes use of the archives of the International Missionary Council (IMC), the organization founded in 1921 to coordinate interdenominational missionary efforts.115 IMC records differ from the well-known archives of individual missionary societies because they focus specifically on international cooperation. IMC correspondences, conference reports, memoranda, surveys of mission fields, statistics, and programmatic literature help to situate the AME Church in the bigger picture of interwar missionary efforts, which centered on the transformation of Western Christianity into a global ecumenism, the concept that referred to all people of the inhabitable globe and to an ideal of religious pluralism. On the one hand, IMC material documents the growing interest in applying concepts of adaptation and indigenization as missionary methods in Africa. On the other hand, it provides insights into the role the black church played in the broader Western missionary movement. IMC archives, for instance, hold a number of studies on “Negro education” in the American South, often seen as the archetype of adaptation, as well as extensive documentation of attempts to circumvent British immigration restrictions for African Americans in colonial territory.116 Consequently, these materials help illustrate how ecumenical ideals encouraged the AME Church to consider Africa its missionary territory, while black missionaries in Africa became a pivotal problem in redefining the relationship between postwar missions and colonialism. The records of the Colonial Office (CO) and the Dominions Office (DO), held by the National Archives of the UK (TNA), and the Colonial Secretary’s Office files, located in the National Archives of Sierra Leone (NASL), complement the picture. They provide rich material on the structural reforms the British implemented following their impetus to create a system of indirect rule. Most insightful regarding the AME missions’ presence and activities in the context of this transformation were blue books and records on British funding schemes for mission schools that were considered as aligning with the British initiative to rule without coercion by means of education. The NASL exemcount of Missionary Experiences and Observations in South Africa (Boston, 1953); and Wright, Beneath the Southern Cross. 115 For IMC related material, I used the microfilm collection of the International Missionary Council Archives, 1910–1961 (IDC Publishers, 1987), hereafter referred to as the IMC Archives, and the Conference of British Missionary Societies/International Missionary Council (CBMS/ IMC). Both collections are available at the Archives and Special Collections of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London. Complementary material is also drawn from the Missionary Research Library Collections (MRL) at Burke Library at the Union Theological Seminary (UTS), Columbia University in the City of New York. 116 African American missionaries are mentioned in various contexts in the CBMS/IMC. See, for instance, folders “Le Zoute Conference, 1926” (box 217), “Christian Councils’ Relation to IMC” (box 203), and “South Africa: Negro Missionaries” (box 1226 and 1227); the IMC Archives have special sections on African Americans, such as “Negro Missionaries” (FBN 37, frame 261512, fiche 3–4) and “Tuskegee” (FBN 94, frame 267021, fiche 1–3).

Reconceiving African American (Anti)colonialism

plarily details how the AME mission engaged with the educational system that was established in Sierra Leone, and how its cooperation with the local administration created opportunities as well as regulations. In addition to colonial administration records, this study uses a number of local African newspapers (available at British Library Newspapers, SOAS, and NASL). Reprints of AME missionary speeches, sermons and interviews, as well as conference proceedings and open letters addressed to government officials, illuminate the local perceptions, lineaments, and conflicts AME missionaries had to deal with. The consideration of this wide array of source materials thus promises to offer a perspective on African American missionaries beyond the black Atlantic. Structure

This study is divided into three parts, taking Afro-colonial contacts as its main trajectory. Each part looks at the specific conditions and effects of an encounter that was involved with the AME Church’s Africa mission: first, the interaction of AME missionaries with black communities; second, their interaction with the Western international missionary movement; and third, their interaction with colonizers and the colonized in British Africa. Each part starts by providing information on the context of the contact zone in question. It then analyses the ways in which flows, structures, and practices characteristic of the colonial Atlantic world crystallized around the AME Church’s Africa mission. It is important to bear in mind, however, that the separate consideration of each of these three encounters forms an analytical tool that works to carve out the complexities of the entangled history of the church’s mission. All three encounters took place simultaneously, and their effects intersected on multiple levels. Together, as I will argue, they shaped African American emancipation, Western mission movements, and African colonization in the first half of the twentieth century. Part I, Encountering Colonial Africa, deals with the emergence and the effects of the AME Church’s relationship to the African continent. It illustrates how the AME Church, as an institution dedicated to African American emancipation, rejected relations to Africa due to the stereotype of the dark continent and thus did not subscribe to a foreign missionary agenda. It then examines the writings of a group of AME members who stepped onto the colonial stage in Africa nonetheless. By analyzing AME travelogues, Part I shows how the self-fashioning of African American missionaries as travelers and explorers was informed by imperial role models and how the same tradition of writing produced a distinctly black missionary knowledge about Africa. To explore how this knowledge returned to the United States, Part I then examines AME travelers, who, drawing on their Africa experience, developed new understandings of home and thus transformed family relations, church institutions, and

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the position of the AME Church Missionary Department in New York City. By doing this, Part I highlights that having a firsthand experience of Africa turned into a precondition for becoming an African American missionary. Over the 1920s and 1930s, this notion helped to boost missionary travel and was used by AME members to contest the claims laid to Africa by pan-Africanists. Part II, Encountering the World, engages with the AME Church as part of the ecumenical missionary movement, a loose network of institutions promoting Christian unity and missionary efforts on a global scale. Through the analysis of AME members’ participation in, and intellectual engagement with, interdenominationalism and religious internationalism, it traces how interwar missionary structures informed the formation of a black ecumenism, the AME Church’s self-conception as being “God’s last reserve,” as well as AME missionary practices in Africa. While the AME Church’s status within ecumenical organizations remained marginal, Part II shows how its principles of industrial education and adaptation – informed by Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee model – were received internationally. In the early 1920s, the IMC, the central missionary organization of the interwar period, modeled its program of Christian indigenization upon the ‘American Negro’ and constructed the hegemonic notion that black Americans were from the South and models of an alternative path to civilization. While this image helped to promote African American mission work in Africa, it went hand in hand with relegating AME activities to a discrete region. By analyzing the IMC’s negotiations with the British Colonial Office, Part II reveals how sociocultural expectations of black mission work turned into hard colonial prescriptions in the South Atlantic and considers how these prescriptions shaped the AME Africa mission. Part III, Encountering the Colonial Subject, focuses on how the AME Africa mission was formed by processes of colonization in British Africa. Drawing on materials produced by colonial administrations and the African press, I analyze how the church entered into the cultural and the political domain of indirect-rule society. Both of these spheres were organized around the ‘native,’ a category that the British colonial system imposed on its African subjects. By tracing how this category was reinstated among African Americans and Africans, Part III demonstrates how notions of nativity defined the relationship between African American clergy and local workers, how it cast them into a transatlantic division of labor, and how it furnished them with different opportunities and challenges. While African Americans enjoyed an elevated lifestyle as nonnatives and could move freely across imperial compounds and ethnic divides, local workers were able to align church institutions with the African independent church movement as well as with their respective local colonial administrations. By looking at examples of how each group garnered support for the mission among colonizers and colonized, Part III illustrates the idiosyncratic agency that the AME Africa mission gained from its multi-

Reconceiving African American (Anti)colonialism

dimensional encounter in British Africa. While this encounter involved the assertion of colonial notions of nativity and difference, it ultimately enabled African American and African AME missionaries to spread their notions of self-determination into the contradictory realms of rule and resistance. The conclusion, Afro-colonial Encounters, discusses and re-examines how this study’s key findings relate to the paradigm of pan-Africanism, the absence of empire, and the silencing of Africa in African American history. It then gives an outlook on the AME Church’s development in the era of decolonization and concludes with deliberations on how an entangled history of black emancipation and African colonization can begin African American postcoloniality.

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Part I. Encountering Colonial Africa: African American Missionaries and the ‘Dark Continent’

Figure 1. “C. S. Smith and His Adopted Family of Dwalla Children. [From a photograph taken at Bell Town, Cameroons.]” Source: Smith, Glimpses, 179.

T

he scene depicted here is a familiar one. A man clad in white stands out from a group of half-naked African children while a bright banner with a Christian slogan waves over their heads. Taken in 1894 in Bell Town, Cameroon, a decade after European colonial powers had partitioned the African continent, the photograph is a typical depiction of the advent of Western civilization on the so-called dark continent. Bodies, postures, and surroundings serve to stage well-known categories of colonial difference: light versus dark, civilized versus backward, and Christian versus heathen. At the same time, the civilized man extends a warm yet strong grip to the smallest, presumably weakest child, thus translating notions of dominance into a gesture of obligation of the superior toward the primitive ‘other.’ European bourgeois subjects, such as missionaries, philanthropists, and explorers, usually used this strategy of representation to secure their innocence in face of the brute imperial conquest that preceded them, while at the same time asserting their hegemony.1 During the last two decades of the nineteenth century, the phase of new imperialism and explorations of the interior of Africa, photography played an important role in providing people at home with such propaganda. Images drew on a mix of the artistic conventions of ethnography, Christian symbolism, and cultural entertainment productions. They delivered fascinating exoticism and at the same time showed why such exoticism needed to be overcome.2 According to the caption, the picture shows “C. S. Smith and his adopted family of Dwalla children.” The sense of the word family here picks up on a number of colonial discourses on sameness and difference. The ethnographic terminology marks those depicted as a tribe and Africans in general as a race of children, while the notion that they were adopted underscores Christian Pratt, Imperial Eyes, 7. This argument is drawn from scholarship on the visual dimension of the colonial enterprise, which focuses on photography in particular. See Paul S. Landau and Deborah D. Kaspin, eds., Images and Empires: Visuality in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa (Berkeley, 2002); Michael Wiener, Ikonographie des Wilden: Menschenbilder in Ethnographie und Photographie zwischen 1850 und 1918 (Munich, 1990); and Christaud M. Geary, “Photographs as Material for African History: Some Methodological Considerations,” History in Africa 13 (1986): 89–116. My analysis here is restricted to how African Americans engaged with representations others had made of them, and how they themselves engaged with and constructed their ‘others.’ It therefore cannot account for the history of photographic technology and its usage. For a comprehensive introduction, see Jens Jäger, Fotografie und Geschichte (Frankfurt am Main, 2009). 1 2

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charity as the condition upon which the Dwalla would be counted as members of the human family. Although it was common in the 1890s to represent Africa in such patronizing ways, there was yet one important difference: Smith (1852– 1922) was a black man, and the banner of Christianity he carried belonged to the AME Church, the preeminent institution at the time controlled by African Americans.3 The self-portrait was part of a three-hundred-page travelogue in which Smith claimed to present original observations, newly drawn maps, and genuine illustrations collected during 147 days of voyaging along the coasts of West and Southwest Africa. Titled Glimpses of Africa, the travelogue went into print in 1895 with the AME Church’s Sunday School Union, the institution that produced self-made educational literature for the black American generation that was then coming of age.4 The publication was thus one way in which the travels of one black minister began to connect black audiences in the United States to Africans. Smith’s trip to colonial Africa is an early clue to a colonial dimension in the history of AME missions that is the subject of the following pages. While he operated on the imperial stage, he used colonial strategies of representation to engage black American publics with his vision of Africa. From around 1900, AME travel writing would provide more and more such glimpses into the distant lands of Africa, prompting African Americans to think of the church not only as a “nation within a nation” but also as the foundation for “the greatest ecclesiastical empire among Negroes in the world.”5 From works on the history of African American transnationalism we know that black missionaries were a majority in the generally small group of black Americans who moved across the Atlantic regularly. As Marion Berghahn notes, black missionaries were “marginal if compared with those of the white churches, but they were significant as far as through them contact was maintained with Africa.” In other words, their relative dominance in maintaining this connection among blacks may have contributed as much to strengthening racial solidarity as to the difficulties of communication that continued to exist, for example, with regard to African mores and customs.6 Scholarship on missions and empire, too, has underscored the crucial role played by missionaries in maintaining the transcultural flow of representations of Africa and in the construction of Europe’s ‘others’ and bourgeois ‘selves.’ Nation-building, homemaking, and the cult of domesticity were often premised on the presumably reliable firsthand views Albert J. Raboteau, A Fire in the Bones: Reflections on African-American Religious History (Boston, 1995), 79. 4 The AME Church Sunday School Union, headquartered in Nashville, was founded in 1882 for the purpose of producing black Sunday school literature for children. Serving as the union’s secretary and treasurer, Smith played a leading role in this initiative. 5 Frazier, Negro Church, 35; and Townsend, Fifty-four Years, 108. 6 Marion Berghahn, Images of Africa in Black American Literature (Totowa, 1977), 44. 3

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missionary reports provided into foreign worlds. They were part of a vast cultural enterprise in which practices and personas were, as Greg Thomas puts it, “ritually constructed as well as theorized in the service of imperial structures.”7 Part I will consider these dynamics in its analysis of the formation of the AME Church’s Africa mission. It retraces over the first half of the twentieth century the connections that black missionary travelers like Smith established, or failed to establish, between African Americans and colonial Africa, and thereby emphasizes that such contacts were shaped by the contingencies of a social space that intersected with the flows, structures, and practices that linked colonies and metropoles. The becoming of African American missionaries, I argue, was a phenomenon of this contact zone.8 Other than identifying with the continent, black Americans fashioned themselves as missionaries through their encounter with the myth of the dark continent, which was the product of colonial discourses and power relations pertaining to race, class, and gender that spanned between the continent and black American publics. Here, Part I shows that what had developed into what came to be called the AME Africa mission was not a project conceptualized by the church in the United States but rather an effect of the wider AME community’s entrance into the complex and asymmetrical network of connections surrounding colonial Africa during the period of new imperialism. To illustrate this, my analysis takes three steps. Chapter 2 briefly looks into the history behind the AME Church’s name “African.” It underscores the role the church played in the black American community, not only as a religious institution but as a symbol of emancipation as well; it also shows that the church rejected existing missionary traditions because they suggested a specific relation to Africa. It then introduces the missionary department as an institutional arrangement that could circumnavigate the ideological deadlock on missions because it formed a nodal point of transatlantic contacts. Chapter 3 turns to the travel texts and traveling texts written by AME personnel. It highlights how a series of encounters with colonial strategies of representation inside and outside of the United States informed the emergence of a ‘black Atlantic missionary tradition’ shaped on the move to Africa. Because writing in this tradition conveyed a sense of connectedness based on travel-related practices, namely, the firsthand act of seeing and of self-made knowledge, it triggered effects in the black American community. Chapter 4 shifts the emphasis from the AtlanGreg Thomas, The Sexual Demon of Colonial Power: Pan-African Embodiment and Erotic Schemes of Empire (Bloomington, 2007), 2. On the domestic dimension of colonialism see, for instance, Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (New York, 1995). 8 I use this phrase with reference to Corbould’s Becoming to indicate that this becoming was not solely related to the pan-African consciousness that grew in the diaspora during the interwar period. 7

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tic dynamic of the black missionary tradition to the processes of its translation into the national context. It traces how AME travelers transformed their understandings of home based on their Africa experience and how this transformation shifted other understandings of home at various sites and scales. As agents who shared the function of connecting Africa and the black American metropole with pan-African agitators, AME missionaries could use such concepts of home, to some degree, to position themselves strategically among them. Gaining this position, however, was contingent on Africa experiences and did not involve strategic assertions of Africa as a homeland or opposition to white colonial oppression. I suggest calling the complex and inconsistent elements of AME understandings of home a ‘counterculture of pan-Africanism.’ By looking at the ways in which AME people engaged with colonial Africa, Part I introduces the basic themes that guide this study toward an entangled history of African colonization and black emancipation: the attempt by various agents to construct their self-representations as African Americans in Africa, to negotiate black sameness and difference in the transatlantic world of colonialism, and to use these negotiations to define new spaces of home and the foreign. By tracing these markers of blackness, this part aims to contribute to black Atlantic history and to offer a critique of African American history’s pan-African ideology of race and power.

2. What’s in a Name: The AME Church and Missions to Africa

2.1. The Church of Allen and African Methodism

N

onexperts and scholars alike have identified the AME Church both as an important black denomination as well as an institution central to the history of black emancipation in the United States. This interpretation usually derives from a mixture of features: the institution’s pioneering role as a church independent of white supervision, the background of AME founder Richard Allen (1760–1831), and the diverse functions the church had in black community life regarding social organization, economic cooperation, education, leadership training, and political agitation. As will be shown in the following paragraphs, all of these features became important in defining “African” as a name that did not assert connections to Africa. According to its founding myth, the AME Church emerged during the closing decades of the eighteenth century in response to segregationist tendencies within the American Methodist church. By then, Methodists had attracted a significant percentage of black communicants in New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Charleston, and their environs because of their direct appeal, dramatic preaching, and plain doctrine – as well as their conscious identification with the “simpler sort” and their condemnation of slavery.1 In 1792 or 1793, however, black church members attending a service at St. George’s Methodist Church in Philadelphia were relegated to pews in the back and the gallery, and one respected black parishioner was dragged from his knees while praying. After the incident, so the well-known story goes, the persecuted group stood and left

1

Raboteau, Fire in the Bones, 82.

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the church “in a body.”2 In 1816, when increasing numbers of black worshipers in the mid-Atlantic states had similar experiences, they met and resolved to “become one body, under the name African Methodist Episcopal Church.”3 The “body” then purchased its own headquarters in Philadelphia, the Mother Bethel AME Church. Its disciplines and doctrines were taken over from the Methodist Episcopal Church with the important distinction that theirs were used to voice criticism of a Protestant social milieu that did not stop racist practices, despite its rejection of human bondage. The historical preface of the first edition of the AME Discipline of 1817 read, “We deemed it expedient to have a form of discipline, whereby we may guide our people in the fear of God … and preserve us from that spiritual despotism … which we have so recently experienced – remembering that we are not to lord it over God’s heritage, as greedy dogs, that can never have enough.”4 In its articles, the AME Church outlawed white supervision in its government, and it excluded slaveholders from its membership. Enshrining the condemnation of social and religious oppression in its structure was one way in which the church, along with its African name, began to signify black self-determination.5 Another example is lodged in Richard Allen’s life story, which provides a “biography of his race” for the early republic and explains his historic standing as black Americans’ “Apostle of Freedom.”6 Born a slave in 1760 in colonial America, Allen worked paid jobs aside from his plantation labor over the course of five years and succeeded in purchasing his freedom in 1786.7 The manumission coincided with the much faster release he experienced with his conversion. By his own account, “all of a sudden my dungeon shook, my chains flew off, and, glory to God, I cried.”8 Allen soon gravitated toward Methodism because it offered spirituality alongside a welcome scheme of reforming and Allen, Life, 25. Ibid., 35. 4 Ibid. 5 The AME Church adopted the structure of the Methodist Episcopal Church, which stood in the tradition of John Wesley, a British reformer of the Anglican Church. Its government built upon a strict hierarchy of conferences that were regularly held on the national, state, district, and local level. Supervised by different church authorities, these conferences connected each parish to the AME General Conference, where the national policies of the denomination were defined. Dodson, Engendering Church, 18–19; and Lewis V. Baldwin, ‘Invisible’ Strands in African Methodism: A History of the African Union Methodist Protestant and Union American Methodist Episcopal Churches, 1805–1980 (Metuchen, 1983), 11–22. 6 The phrases are borrowed from David Levering Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919 (New York, 1993); and Wesley, Apostle of Freedom. Recent studies on Allen continue in their tenor. See Newman, Freedom’s Prophet, and Gary B. Nash, Forging Freedom: The Formation of Philadelphia’s Black Community, 1720–1840 (Cambridge, MA, 1988). 7 Allen presumably worked as a domestic aid for the prominent Philadelphia lawyer Benjamin Chew before he was sold for plantation work on a farm in Delaware. Newman, Freedom’s Prophet, 28–29, and 33. 8 Allen, Life, 15. 2 3

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ordering one’s life. The method of Methodism was to grant members individual liberties as to how they expressed their faith and to subject them to communal coercion in church-related activities. Both helped Allen to internalize a Protestant work ethic and values of honesty, modesty, thrift, and sobriety. Since faith and labor had facilitated his own liberation, he was prompted to disprove the canard that religion made worse servants. He began to go from “house to house” and to exhort “old companions” to join Methodist classes.9 In doing so, Allen was particularly keen on spreading the faith as a means of uplift for lowly people.10 According to his biography, he found “a large field open” among his “African brethren” during his activities as a traveling preacher, a group he called “the long forgotten people” because they hardly ever attended public worship.11 With their needs in mind, Allen initiated a variety of organizations that provided moral guidance and practical support.12 The founding of the AME Church continued this ambition and broadened it further into the religious realm. As an AME paper later put it, Allen’s church aimed to “exemplify in the black man the power of self-reliance, self-help by the exercise of free religious thought with executive spirit.”13 Its separation from the Methodist Church was thus not solely a reaction to the racist discrimination against black worshipers, but rather a consequence of Allen’s application of a Methodist theology that addressed fundamental human needs out of the particularities of black peoples’ living conditions. The distinction thereafter remained important to the AME Church. Upon its hundredth anniversary, it asserted itself as “an organization of people classed as ‘colored,’” as opposed to a church that propagated itself on the basis of “African … purposes and ideals” or “on the basis of race and color.”14 Allen’s specific path to Methodism was another way in which the term “African” pointed to black self-determination. Grounded in ecclesiastical separatism and driven by Allen’s “liberating theology,” the AME Church quickly mushroomed into a nationwide denomination.15 By the early 1830s, African Methodism had reached New England, by the late 1850s it had reached the Pacific Coast, and around 1880 it moved into “Indian territory” in Arkansas – all the while absorbing thousands of members in the South, which seemed to be the most “fertile soil for African Methodist Ibid., 16. Albert J. Raboteau, “Richard Allen and the African Church Movement,” in Black Leaders of the Nineteenth Century, ed. Leon Litwack and August Meier (Urbana, 1988), 8. 11 Allen, Life, 24. 12 These included the Free African Society, the Bethel Benevolent Society, the Society for the Suppression of Vice and Immorality, the National Negro Convention, and the American Society of Free Persons of Colour. 13 John T. Jenifer, “What Has African Methodism to Say for Itself,” AME Review (January 1916): 167. 14 “The Spirit of African Methodism,” AME Review (January 1916): 205. 15 Newman, Freedom’s Prophet, 158. 9

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gospel seed.”16 To effectively coordinate the numerous local congregations, the AME Church founded its own publishing houses and edited its own papers and periodicals; it also established departments for finance, church extension, education and Christian education, and special commissions for dealing with the rural church, social welfare, legal redress, as well as offices for research, statistics, and publicity.17 Each of these institutions not only contributed to giving direction and coherence to the nationwide African Methodist community. More importantly, they also helped to infuse the term “African” with a strong sense of belonging.18 A second line of growth and social consolidation was the operation of schools for Christian and formal education.19 Much of this development was due to the ascendency of Daniel Alexander Payne (1811–1893), the bishop who succeeded Allen in the ranking of influential church leaders as the “Apostle of Christian Education among Negroes.”20 Payne, a puritanical man of mixed ancestry, emphasized that the church had two tasks: to “improve the ministry and to improve the people.” According to Payne’s vision, lifting the ministry would also lift the “mass of general ignorance” and counteract the ingrained prejudice that black religion spread emotionalism and “baptized superstition.”21 Payne’s main legacy to the church was his initiative to purchase Wilberforce University in Ohio in 1863, one of the first institutions of higher education for blacks and, as understood by the AME Church, one of “the first echoes of the declaration of freedom.” To be sure, Wilberforce echoed two of the most prominent black philosophies of racial uplift, which shared the assumption that education was the key to removing economic and social differences between the races. On the one hand, Payne’s idea of creating a black Christian leadership to elevate the less fortunate was similar to Du Bois’s model of the Talented Tenth, the idea of an educated few raising the masses. On the other hand, Wilberforce built on a “Manual Labor School” in the style of Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Alabama, a school that defied elitism by emphasizing vocational training as a means for all individuals to provide for themselves, and thereby gain social respectability. According to church accounts,

Jenifer, “African Methodism,” 165–66. James H. Smith, Vital Facts Concerning the African Methodist Episcopal Church … (Nashville, 1941), 121–49 and 174–75. 18 Campbell, Songs, 11. 19 For the current analysis of education in the AME Church, see Shannon A. Butler-Mokoro, “Racial Uplift and Self-determination: The African Methodist Episcopal Church and Its Pursuit of Higher Education” (PhD diss., Georgia State University, 2010). 20 John T. Jenifer, Centennial Retrospect of the History of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (Nashville, 1916), 148–49. 21 Payne referred to this philosophy as “The Education of the Ministry.” Daniel Alexander Payne, Recollections of Seventy Years, ed. William Lorenz Katz (1888; New York, 1968), 221. 16 17

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Wilberforce could claim the “pioneership of industrial education among Negroes” as it enabled its students to both uplift themselves and one another.22 With its diverse philosophical orientations and civic services, the AME Church exercised unrivaled influence in the black American community for most of the nineteenth and well into the twentieth century.23 Its impact is perhaps best captured by descriptions by its prominent members and observers. Considering its functions, Du Bois described the church as the “newspaper and intelligence bureau, … the center of amusements – indeed, … the world in which the Negro moves and acts.”24 Black historian George W. Williams asserted that the AME Church “exerted a wider and better influence among the Negro race than any other organization created and managed by Negroes.”25 And black sociologist E. Franklin Frazier compared the church to a “nation within a nation.”26 Allen’s attempt “to mark out a way by which the despised African race might have an opportunity of receiving [religious instruction] from their own brethren” had become much more than a way up from slavery.27 As one AME historian noted, the church demonstrated that there was no “lack of the Negro in fitness” to meet “the emergencies … in this Republic.”28 In this sense, “African” finally denoted black claims for American citizenship. 2.2. Missionary Traditions in the United States

While the church’s name “African” referenced the course of black self-determination from slavery to civil rights in the United States, it persistently posed the question – and indeed the considerable problem – of how the AME community related to the African continent. This problem becomes clear when considered in the context of the missionary traditions that emerged over the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the United States. According to historian St. Clair Drake, these traditions suggested a special relationship between African Americans and Africans in three different ways.29 Jenifer, Centennial Retrospect, 148 and 147. The history of the AME Church particularly challenges accounts of black internationalism that give the impression that the African American interest in African liberation emerged from a small but dedicated group of black radicals in the 1920s and 1930s. See, for instance, Minkah Makalani, In the Cause of Freedom: Black Radical Internationalism from Harlem to London, 1917– 1939 (Chapel Hill, 2011). 24 W. E. B. Du Bois, The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study (Philadelphia, 1899), 201. 25 George W. Williams, History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880 (New York, 1883), 452. 26 Frazier, Negro Church, 35. 27 “What the African Means to the A. M. E. Church,” Voice of Missions (July 1939): 3. 28 Jenifer, Centennial Retrospect, 148. 29 Drake, “Negro Americans,” 667–73. 22 23

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The first and oldest missionary tradition dates back to American colonization efforts that began in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. In 1816, a group of influential white politicians, philanthropists, and churchmen founded the American Colonization Society (ACS) in order to deport freed slaves to coastal areas in West Africa – a project they called repatriation.30 Although rooted in a humanitarian abolitionist cause, the ACS aimed to avoid the integration of the free black population into American society. Apart from offering paid passage, land, and freedom in the colony, which was eventually named Liberia, the project advanced the idea that freed blacks would emigrate on behalf of a providential design. According to this, the enslavement of Africans in the New World was one phase in a godly plan to redeem the African continent. Slavery had served to lift up Africans to a higher level of civilization, but such a gesture in the New World likewise, and in return, implied the duty to civilize Africa. Over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, the idea of redeeming Africa through an act of black colonization surfaced variously in African American back-to-Africa movements. Among the best-known initiatives were Paul Cuffee’s emigrant settlement in Sierra Leone in 1815 and Marcus Garvey’s Black Star Line in the early 1920s.31 The second tradition evolved in North American missionary societies between the Civil War and the turn of the century, when the third Great Awakening coincided with the age of American imperialism in the Philippines and Caribbean islands. By then, Africa was mystified as the dark continent, and tropical areas in West Africa in particular were regarded as “the white man’s grave.” Climate and diseases made the territory not simply inaccessible to whites. As North American missionary societies began to argue in analogy to U. S. expansion in the Philippines, they were the “black man’s burden.”32 A typical American evangelist statement declared that in areas where “the white man cannot live … educated colored men … must … be the only instrumenOn black and white American colonization movements, see Norbert Finzsch, “Die Kolonisierungsbewegung von African Americans in Liberia bis zum amerikanischen Bürgerkrieg, 1816– 1866,” in Afrikanische Beziehungen, Netzwerke und Räume, ed. Laurence Marfaing and Brigitte Reinwald, 39–59 (Münster, 2001); Eric Burin, Slavery and the Peculiar Solution: A History of the American Colonization Society (Gainesville, 2005); and Edwin S. Redkey, Black Exodus: Black Nationalist and Back-to-Africa Movements, 1890–1910 (New Haven, 1969). 31 On the relationship between providential black emigration and black nationalism, see Wilson Jeremiah Moses, The Golden Age of Black Nationalism, 1850–1925 (Hamden, 1978); and Robert T. Vinson, “Providential Design: American Negroes and Garveyism in South Africa,” in From Toussaint to Tupac: The Black International Since the Age of Revolution, ed. Michael O. West, William G. Martin, and Fanon Che Wilkins, 130–54 (Chapel Hill, 2009). While black mass emigration never materialized, many individuals returned to Africa. For a comprehensive overview, see James T. Campbell, Middle Passages: African American Journeys to Africa, 1787–2005 (New York, 2006). 32 H. T. Johnson, “The Black Man’s Burden,” Voice of Missions (April 1899): 1, repr. in Willard B. Gatewood, Jr., Black Americans and the White Man’s Burden, 1898–1903 (Urbana, 1975), 183–84. 30

What’s in a Name

tality employed in the conversion” of Africans.33 Their alleged physical fitness, greater resistance to malaria, and African descent, together with their Western education and the appeal their complexion was assumed to have, made them ideal substitute workers in white missionary societies. Perhaps the best-known event organized for advertising missionary activities among black Americans was the Congress on Africa, held in Atlanta in 1895 under the auspices of the Stewart Missionary Foundation and in connection with the Cotton States and International Exposition. There, distinguished black race leaders, such as Timothy T. Fortune (1856–1928), Alexander Crummell (1819–1898), and Henry McNeal Turner (1834–1915) joined representatives of the ACS and delegates from West Africa in advocating the “civilizing mission” in Africa as the ancient duty of the “American Negro.”34 As opposed to providential colonization movements, the missionary movement materialized. Around the turn of the century there was a significant black missionary presence in Liberia, the ACS’s destination, and in Sierra Leone, the colony founded by the British Empire for slave repatriation.35 Finally, efforts to harness black Americans for the redemption of Africa through colonization and Christianization always also implied the broader purpose of elevating blacks, including those in the United States. According to Drake, the domestic missionary impetus built on the tradition of Hampton-Tuskegee, which emphasized Christian ethics, a highly practical form of education, and an accommodative approach to race relations.36 Although this endeavor was directed at secular problems, such as education and economic efficiency, the idea of racial uplift served to integrate blacks into a salvation history of mankind. Following from this, the progress of blacks in the United States prefigured the moral development of the African race more generally, and as such involved – but was not limited to – the redemption of Africa. As opposed to the racist euphemisms of repatriation and the physical fitness of blacks to work in Africa, the Hampton-Tuskegee tradition tied in with the Christian theme of a global “mission of the darker races,” which was indispensable to the universal redemption of humanity.37 Overall, these traditions together charged the relation between African Americans and Africa with condescending overtones while equally implying blacks’ cultural inferiority. Until World War II, when anthropological training created interest in a recognition and preservation of African customs and cultures – and when the control over Christian activities was gradually relinQtd. in Seraile, “Black American Missionaries,” 200. For addresses and participants, see J. W. E. Bowen, ed., Africa and the American Negro … (Atlanta, 1896), 3–4. 35 Cf. Seraile, “Black American Missionaries,” 199–200. 36 Drake, “Negro Americans,” 670. 37 Raboteau, Fire in the Bones, 51. 33 34

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quished to indigenous people – the construction of connections between African Americans and Africa in missionary traditions remained prone to race prejudice and a peculiar challenge to the AME Church’s course of black emancipation. 2.3. Missionary Traditions in the AME Church

The existence of these missionary traditions formed a delicate terrain for a black church to navigate. Founded on principles of self-determination, the AME Church’s mission corresponded to the Hampton-Tuskegee tradition to the extent that it aimed to spread “Christian enlightenment” by increasing black literacy. The lack of education became obvious to the AME Church during its domestic expansion in the South and West, and eventually in Canada, where it reached out to the fugitive slave population.38 Enslaved and later freed people appeared to adhere to a “primitive, barbaric, and heathenish” religion, as Payne admonished. “Ignorant though they be, on account of long oppression,” another one reported, they exhibited an unprecedented “desire to hear and to learn.”39 An AME Church resolution issued in 1843 stated accordingly, “it shall be the duty of every minister … to establish schools … and to insist upon parents of children sending them to school.”40 The first formally commissioned missionary of the AME Church, Paul W. Quinn (1788–1873), was expected “to go out and … to establish schools for children.”41 The founding of the AME Church Home and Foreign Missionary Department in 1844 perpetuated the educational tenor. According to its charter, its object was “to more generally diffuse the blessings of enlightenment among the backward races of mankind wherever found.”42 Nonetheless, it took two decades for the post of the missionary secretary to be staffed at all, and another decade for an auxiliary body called the Women’s Parent Mite Missionary Society (WPMMS) to be founded to “support missionaries, to extend Foreign Missionary work and to aid in the Home Mission Fields.”43 The church’s compliance with the Hampton-Tuskegee tradition of racial uplift at home, however, hardly translated into a missionary scheme abroad. Until the late nineteenth century, a handful of people had requested to be sent as missionaries to destinations in Haiti, Sierra Leone, and Liberia – only to have For a study on early AME missionary work see Walker, Rock in a Weary Land, 82–107. Qtd. in Raboteau, Canaan Land, 66–67. 40 Jenifer, Centennial Retrospect, 147. 41 Berry, Century of Missions, 91. 42 Repr. in Llewellyn L. Berry, Thirty-first Quadrennial Report of the Home and Foreign Missionary Department of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, 1936–1940 (New York, 1940), 82. 43 Smith, Vital Facts, 145. 38 39

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their requests denied. Others, ordained for the purpose of being sent abroad as missionaries, were met with similar disappointment. In 1849, for example, one resolution to establish a mission in the West Indies and in Africa did not materialize. According to the AME historiographer, the decision was “caused by the desire to do being mistaken for the ability to perform.” The few AME people who were given the opportunity to go as missionaries “to the Dark Continent” did so not as representatives of their church but as those sponsored by colonization societies.44 The best known was Daniel Coker (1780–1846), who in 1820 traveled to Liberia and Sierra Leone. He was inspired by Paul Cuffee’s campaign “to find a new lease of life and try their chance for a successful living in Africa” and did not hesitate to accept travel funds from the ACS.45 Some AME officials questioned whether Coker had been such a pioneer, instead suggesting another man, called Reverend Boggs, as the church’s first Africa missionary.46 In 1851, Coker’s defamation was asserted in an official AME resolution. The resolution rejected the use of colonization schemes as an approach to foreign missions, arguing that the ACS only aimed “to deport free colored people to Liberia.”47 The problematic beginnings of the AME Church’s foreign mission are evident in the following description by an AME historiographer of 1922: [T]here is no information available as to the character or the extent of the work which [Boggs] established. Nothing is known of [Coker’s] activities. … In the year 1878, … a church [was organized] among the company of emigrants aboard the ‘Azores’ … . This church remained intact after the emigrants landed and became the first regularly established African Methodist Episcopal Church … of which there is a record.48

As this statement suggests, the story of the few AME people that went abroad was marked by considerable practical difficulties and closely intertwined with black emigration efforts pushed by the ACS. While the inconsistency of foreign missions did not cause much concern to the home church, the lacking distinction to colonization schemes did.49 AME officials were troubled by the fact that, regardless of how small an involvement in Africa missions was, it could still be interpreted as expressing an allegiance based on racial affinity, and thus affirm those African stereotypes of backwardness, heathenness, savagery, and inherent inferiority that the church was struggling to defy. Some Smith, History, 20 and 15. Matei Markwei, “The Rev. Daniel Coker of Sierra Leone,” in Black Apostles, ed. Wills and Newman, 205. 46 Smith, History, 15. 47 Ibid., 21. 48 Ibid., 174–75. 49 Little, Disciples, 90–109. 44 45

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AME hardliners pinpointed the problem by suggesting that rather than invite unwelcome evocations of the myth of the dark continent and affirm that Africans’ enslavement was legitimate, “African” should be dropped from the church’s name.50 Around the turn of the century, moderate camps discussed Hampton-Tuskegee-style missions to the “vast majority of the race” outside the United States as an opportunity to solidify the church’s elevated state. In its “peculiar and vital relations to the darker races of the world,” some argued, the AME Church could underscore its capacity to perform “the duties of an evangelical Christian Church.”51 Nevertheless, the debate continued to insist that promoting missionary work abroad interfered with the domestic course of black emancipation. Not only were existing missionary traditions unsuited for a church whose intention was to propagate itself along lines other than “African … purposes and ideals” or “race and color.”52 More importantly, if missions were to encourage large numbers of blacks to leave the country, the movement would undermine the church’s prime aim to gain equality and citizenship for the black population that stayed in the United States. In favor of this national goal, the church implemented foreign missions only sporadically.53 2.4. The Formation of AME Missionary Structures

Notwithstanding the prevailing hesitation by the general church to embrace Africa in the African Methodist scheme of self-determination, there were developments in Africa that forced the church to consider from a new perspective the problem of foreign missions. By the late 1930s, reports from the African mission field counted about fifty thousand AME communicants, more than 5,300 students enrolled in AME mission schools, and eighty AME missionaries in West and South Africa.54 The AME Church Home and Foreign Missionary Department was the first to respond to the fact. In 1939, it published its own comprehensive account called the African Number, which filled two subsequent issues of an AME mission periodical.55 Llewellyn L. Berry (1876–1854), Campbell, Songs, 87–88. J. C. Powell, “The Mission of the African Methodist Episcopal Church to the Darker Races of the World,” AME Review (January 1903): 585–95, repr. in Social Protest Thought, ed. Angell and Pinn, 205. 52 “Spirit of African Methodism,” 205. 53 George, Segregated Sabbaths, 119. 54 Communicants were persons sufficiently schooled in AME doctrines and morals to be admitted to communion. About the same number of disciples were in their probationary period. Parker, Survey, 43; and “List of Missionaries Receiving Help from Missionary Department,” 1922–1923. SCRBC, AME CR, box 44, folder “Financial.” 55 The African Number appeared in July and August 1939 as a special issue of the Voice of Missions, the official organ of the AME Church Missionary Department. 50 51

What’s in a Name

the editor of the paper and the missionary secretary, was prepared to find that the news of an AME Church in Africa would puzzle many readers. In a somewhat reconciliatory fashion, he suggested that even its founder Richard Allen might have anticipated that for “his new … Church to be styled ‘AFRICAN’ would have a sympathetic appeal to every person of African descent,” thus asserting that the church’s original purpose and its moving into Africa were not mutually exclusive.56 In fact, as Berry argued, the term “African” had taken on its fullest meaning now that it referred to the AME Church of “the African” as well.57 By emphasizing the African segment of the church, Berry exposed an important inconsistency in its institutional development. While the AME Church, in order to distinguish itself from the existing missionary traditions, had opposed Africa missions for black people as a matter of course, it had not stopped AME people from flowing out and starting their own structures and traditions. Berry’s inversion of the meaning of “African” referred to this long history of transatlantic transfer. It had evolved alongside the church’s debate, with people on the move outside of the United States, rather than the movement for emancipation, at its center. This history was lodged in the AME Church Home and Foreign Missionary Department, the one place in the church’s institutional setup that was designed to register and respond to transatlantic movements – although such movements were not part of the church’s political cause. The formation of AME mission structures began in 1844, the year in which the General Conference, the executive body of the AME Church, founded its missionary department and formed the post of a missionary secretary. At first, the structural innovation was an intent rather than an urge to take up missionary activities, as the post remained vacant for almost twenty years.58 However, after the first secretary was appointed in 1864, the candidates’ average terms in office and expertise suggest that foreign experience became an important criterion for filling the post. Before 1884, when missions were mainly domestic, secretaries remained in office for one term only, whereas they held the post for at least two and sometimes up to three terms once there were candidates who had engaged in foreign missionary activities. In addition to having served abroad, post-1884 secretaries had in common at least one assignment in Africa. Distinguished by their Africa experience, these missionary secretaries bolstered their standing in the general church via a second structure, the Board of Missions. The board was responsible for defining the AME Church’s general policy of missions and involved people as diverse as AME bishops, representatives of “What the African Means,” 3. “What the A. M. E. Church Means to the African,” Voice of Missions (July 1939): 3. 58 It is not known why the filling of the post required such a long wait. However, the vacancy seems to support the view that AME missions had not taken off to the extent that they yet required orchestrated guidance, and that there was still a lack of candidates suited to the task. 56 57

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the regional sections under the church’s episcopacy, and the presidents of the missionary department’s auxiliary bodies. In their role as part of the board, missionary secretaries could stage their foreign expertise on all organizational levels and geographical scales of church-internal communication structures.59 In addition to the structural enclosures of the secretary, the department developed its own means of communication. Crucial to this was the Voice of Missions, a monthly magazine that served the dual purpose of spreading “missionary intelligence” and of giving “a continual graphic account of missionary activities.”60 Unlike the department itself, the magazine was created in 1892 through the initiative of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner, who later became the first official AME Church representative in Africa. Turner had intended the Voice as an instrument for instigating a back-to-Africa movement among African Americans, which was his personal political aim. But when Turner retired from the editorship in 1900, the paper became, as Berry put it, “free from politics, sectionalism, and personal slants.”61 In its new form, the magazine was supposed to be a “[v]oice in the wilderness of ignorance, superstition and sin,” offering documentation on the field and its workers while serving to communicate their needs.62 Missionary secretaries soon asserted that the paper began to fulfill the new purpose. The Voice “really speaks for this Department in more ways than one. It is a ‘live wire’ in circulating ‘World-Wide’ missionary news to the A. M. E. Church.”63 By World War I, the Voice counted about 3,500 subscribers, which was an increase of 300 percent since its launch. The department noticed that the demand was generated not only by professional missionaries at home and abroad but also by interested observers, libraries, colleges, and religious institutions. That the popularity of the paper grew profoundly outside of the intended audience led the Voice editors to believe it signaled a broader trend among people to “becom[e] more mission conscious.”64 Finally, the department cooperated with two auxiliary bodies, the Women’s Parent Mite Missionary Society (WPMMS), founded in 1874, and the Women’s Home and Foreign Missionary Society (WHFMS), organized in 1896 at Turner’s initiative. The WPMMS intended to involve women in starting local missionary societies, and it received support from two other auxiliary bodies, which since 1920 had aimed at organizing young people. While WPMMS activities were concentrated in the Northern states, its official organ, the Women’s

Berry, Century of Missions, 91–95. Ibid., 93. 61 Ibid., 95. 62 Smith, Vital Facts, 155–56. 63 J. W. Rankin, Annual Report of the Home and Foreign Missionary Department of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (New York, 1914), 20. 64 Berry, Century of Missions, 93. 59 60

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Christian Recorder, established in 1912, circulated nationwide.65 The WHFMS, in turn, targeted the South in the face of the grim post-Reconstruction period. Its local branches focused on raising funds in the Carolinas, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Oklahoma to “aid and accelerate the mission work” specifically in South Africa, the field Turner had just recently brought into the church’s orbit.66 Together, the women’s auxiliaries pushed missionary concerns to the church’s grassroots level throughout the United States, and served as an example of women who were “awakened along missionary lines.”67 The talk of a new missionary consciousness, after all, was not simply rhetorical. Like all American Protestant churches, the AME Church in general – and the missionary department in particular – could not be sustained without disciples expressing their faith in cash. Within the church’s general funding scheme, the missionary department received the smallest allowance of all departments, which was 6 percent of the church’s “dollar money,” the fee of one U. S. dollar it charged its members annually. It thus had to draw on alternative financial means, such as Easter collections and individual donations.68 While AME membership numbers stagnated and eventually dropped between 1896 and the Second World War – diminishing the church’s regular income as a result – the department nevertheless increased its revenue.69 Between 1896 and 1914, it quintupled its budget to half a million U. S. dollars, in comparison to the beginning of its operation in 1864. Between 1916 and 1933, a period in which the Great Migration, the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, the Great Depression, and a diminishing membership drained the church’s financial resources, the department’s funding again doubled to over one million U. S. dollars.70 Such numbers, indeed, reflected an increased mission consciousness, especially if one considers that the department dealt with issues that were not of immediate concern to the lives of black Americans. At the same time, the department’s financial consolidation suggests that the growing proficiency of its self-marketing, which, supported by the Voice and its auxiliary institutions, prompted black Americans to financially support their church abroad. Ibid., 101–103. Smith, Vital Facts, 147. 67 Rankin, Annual Report, 1914, 20. 68 Reverdy C. Ransom, ed., Year Book of Negro Churches: With Statistics and Records of Achievements in the United States, 1935–1936 (Wilberforce, 1936), 31. 69 Between 1916 and 1926, AME Church membership was about half a million, with a decrease of 0.5 percent. In this decade, almost all Protestant mainline denominations recorded reduced growth rates in their membership. U.S. Bureau of the Census, “Religious Bodies: Summary and Detailed Tables for the Year 1926,” 69–80, accessed November 6, 2014, http://www2.census.gov/ prod2/decennial/documents/13949806v1ch1.pdf. 70 Llewellyn L. Berry, Thirtieth Quadrennial Report of the Home and Foreign Missionary Department of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, 1932–1936 (New York, 1936), 47. 65 66

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The development of missionary structures within the church shows that even though the missionary department was founded in 1844, it did not gain ground until missionaries began to be sent abroad. In the 1890s, foreign missionary experience began to determine the department’s personnel policy, the purpose of the Voice, as well as its grassroots fundraising, which then partly focused on aiding missions in Africa. While the department’s new style of operation did not change its marginal status in the church’s funding scheme, it did garner recognition among the general black public and that of the church. As Henry McNeal Turner’s initiatives illustrate, the establishment of new structures for communication and fundraising carved out enough autonomy for the department to sustain itself even as church funds dropped. In this way, the missionary department could function as a bridgehead through which flows of people, information, and money could take paths that diverged from the general church’s attitude toward Africa missions. Because AME missionary structures were in contact with what was foreign, they evolved in a necessarily contingent manner while triggering powerful effects. They generated people’s consciousness of a formation that eventually became called the AME Africa mission. ◆◆◆ The sections above have shown that the term “African” became synonymous with the AME Church’s institutional separation, its theology of liberation, and its integrating function for black communities in the United States. As a result, the church emphasized self-determination over an assertion of links with Africa as a continent, and therefore contradicted missionary traditions that encouraged this connection. While the executive church could not agree to become mission conscious, the missionary department, however, realized that some portions of its membership on both sides of the Atlantic could. For the purpose of this study, it is important to note that this possibility was not due to a prior commitment to pan-Africanism, but, as Secretary of Missions Llewellyn L. Berry summarized in 1942, to “the missionary activities of the founders, pioneers, and explorations of the men and women … who just learned their task … by performing it.”71 Berry’s hint at the improvisational character of missions as an activity one learned by doing returns us to the very few who found ways to both visit Africa and put their visit on the record. By looking at their writings, the subsequent chapters explore the formation of what, drawing from Gilroy, could be called a black Atlantic missionary tradition: a history of people on the move whose writings prefigured the becoming of missionaries through

71

Berry, Century of Missions, 237.

What’s in a Name

making connections with Africa, and whose writings constituted an alternative way for church members to relate to the African continent.

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3. Moving onto the Imperial Stage: Colonial Africa and the Self-fashioning of African American Missionaries

3.1. The Pioneers of Black Autoethnography

T

he history of this ‘black Atlantic missionary tradition’ began around 1900. At that time, Americans had celebrated the 400th anniversary of the discovery of the New World, and their country bred its first imperial ambitions for overseas possessions in Hawaii, Cuba, and the Philippines. Europeans, too, witnessed the heyday of their nations’ global reach. In 1884 and 1885, they partitioned Africa, the last empire, and in doing so turned the long mystified interior of the ‘dark continent’ into British, Portuguese, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, French, German, and Belgian states.1 All of this irreversibly transformed the lives not just of Africans.2 The new economic, political, and social structures that came into being in Africa also changed the worlds of African Americans. Lynched and disenfranchised in the United States, they had long seen their origins and their future in the biblical lands of Ethiopia and, more recently, were set into motion across the newly established imperial compounds to a degree not witnessed before, or since.3 On the image of the continent before the scramble for Africa, see P. E. H. Hair, Africa Encountered: European Contacts and Evidence, 1450–1700 (Aldershot, 1997). 2 The British Empire alone encompassed more than forty-three million African colonial subjects and 260,000 settlers. Ronald Hyam, “The British Empire in the Edwardian Era,” in The Oxford History of the British Empire, Vol. 4, The Twentieth Century, ed. Judith M. Brown and William Roger Louis (Oxford, 1999), 48; Lewis and Foy, British in Africa, 121; and Iliffe, Africans: The History of a Continent, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, UK, 2007), 219–50. 3 Thomas C. Holt, Children of Fire: A History of African Americans (New York, 2010), 185–236; and Francine A. Dempsey, “Afro-American Perspectives on Africa: The Images of Africa Among Afro-American Leaders, Artists and Scholars, 1915–1940” (PhD diss., University of Minnesota, 1976), 29. 1

Moving onto the Imperial Stage

Among those en route to Africa were Charles Spencer Smith and Henry McNeal Turner, two men whose names we have already encountered. Apart from the similar chronologies of their travels, they came to Africa from different backgrounds. Smith was born in 1852 in Canada, in a town near Toronto and for the better part of his life had migrated geographically. After the Civil War, his various occasional jobs as a trader in furniture finishing, porter, waiter, and assistant cook, took him across the Great Lakes region, until his teaching and preaching assignments, as well as his entry into the AME Church, brought him in 1870 to the Reconstruction South. In 1894, he erected a building for the AME Church’s Sunday School Union in Nashville, which was a publishing house he had helped to found in order to launch the production of the first black school literature for AME students. The building became his first proper settlement and the starting point for his further journeys. In the same year, on his own initiative and at his own expense, Smith embarked on a sea voyage along the coasts of West and Southwest Africa. Not surprisingly, perhaps, his two ventures were related. Smith, already known for his “originality of thought, vigor of expression and elegance of diction,” considered the trip an opportunity to widen his intellectual horizons and a chance to promote the “self-help, self-support and self-culture” of his race.4 In 1895, by providing the Sunday School Union with his travel notes and along with the publication of Glimpses of Africa, he closed the circle between his private ambition and his public legacy. In contrast, Turner was born in 1834 in South Carolina, a state in the socalled deep South where racial oppression and social immobility determined blacks’ lives. Although his parents were free, they apprenticed him to work on slave plantations until he ran away and taught himself how to read and write. For lack of alternative opportunities, he became a traveling preacher and, as he put it, a “convert to African emigration.” The combination soon made him known as a “staunch defender of his race.”5 From the start of the Civil War, his approach to the race problem led to a series of high-ranking public jobs. He became President Lincoln’s first black army chaplain, the first Southerner elected to the AME Church’s bishopric, and the first AME representative authorized to visit Africa, which he did four times between 1891 and 1898.6 In various ways, the trips added to his popularity. Turner used his travels to publish a series of 4 Richard R. Wright Jr., The Bishops of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (Nashville, 1963), 321. 5 Qtd. in Andre E. Johnson, The Forgotten Prophet: Bishop Henry McNeal Turner and the African American Prophetic Tradition (Lanham, 2012), 72; and Reverdy C. Ransom, “Bishop Henry McNeal Turner,” AME Review (July 1915): 45. One of Turner’s most pronounced pleas for emigration is his “Essay: The American Negro and the Fatherland,” in Africa and the American Negro, ed. Bowen, 195–98. For some of his earlier writings, see Freedom’s Witness: The Civil War Correspondence of Henry McNeal Turner, ed. Jean Lee Cole (Morgantown, 2013). 6 Wright, Bishops, 331–32.

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African Letters, in which he underscored that mass emigration to Africa could easily redeem the continent “in twenty-five years.”7 Within national consciousness, Turner ascended to one of the “principal agitators of the return of his race to Africa,” as the Who’s Who in America would eventually write in 1901.8 The AME Church, in contrast, promoted him as the “‘Peter the Hermit’ of the Missionary Crusade to be made in Africa in the twentieth century.” Turner was also said to be the one individual who made the church “see the open door of the Fatherland” and who became its “Apostle of Foreign Missions.”9 The latter designation put Turner on par with AME Church founder Richard Allen and its prime educator, Daniel Alexander Payne, all the while honoring him specifically for establishing the AME Church in Africa. On his trips he brought into the church’s orbit remainders of AME emigrant communities in Sierra Leone and Liberia, and incorporated a new congregation, the Ethiopian Church of South Africa. This church was one of those “self-supporting, self-governing, [and] self-propagating” African denominations that aimed to “produce a truly African type of Christianity suited to the genius and needs of the race, and not a copy of any European church.”10 Turner’s African Letters and his expansion of AME Church structures to West and South Africa prefigured a set of Atlantic connections that, in the following decades, more people and letters would circulate along. At first sight, Smith’s and Turner’s respective roles as pioneers have little in common. Smith, a prudent and educated man, made the trip at his own expense and out of intellectual curiosity. Instead of assessing the possibility of African redemption, he wondered “whether the partitioning of Africa was not a scheme on paper, rather than an actuality.”11 His Glimpses were meant to educate young African Americans, especially regarding the colonization of Africa. Turner, a powerful orator but an uneducated and unconventional man, went as a church official. Notwithstanding his role in establishing institutional contacts with African congregations, he viewed his trips as an opportunity to propagate his own “African dream,” namely, the idea that black Americans and Africans could be jointly redeemed by an act of African American mass emigration.12 Henry McNeal Turner, eleventh letter, Muhlenberg, Liberia, December 4, 1891, repr. in Respect Black: The Writings and Speeches of Henry McNeal Turner, ed. Edwin S. Redkey (New York, 1971), 120. 8 John W. Leonard, ed., Who’s Who in America: A Biographical Dictionary of Notable Living Men and Women of the United States (Chicago, 1901–1902), 1157. 9 H. B. Parks, Africa: The Problem of the New Century – The Part the African Methodist Episcopal Church Is to Have in Its Solution (New York, 1899), 21; “Bishop Turner’s Vision of Africa in Concrete Form,” Voice of Missions (July 1939): 4; and Wright, Bishops, 340. 10 Qtd. in Josephus R. Coan, “The Expansion of Missions of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Africa, 1896–1908” (PhD diss., Hartford Seminary Foundation, 1961), 81. 11 Smith, Glimpses, 50. 12 For Turner’s vision, see Edwin S. Redkey, “Bishop Turner’s African Dream,” Journal of American History 54 (1967): 271–90. 7

Moving onto the Imperial Stage

More than once he had pronounced, to the great discomfort of his church, that he did not see a “manhood future in the United States for the Negro” and that nothing he would “see or hear” about Africa would change this conviction.13 While Smith and Turner traveled with different motivations, and while they fashioned themselves as leaders of different emancipatory projects for their race in the United States, they shared a single mission. “Dr. Smith,” Turner wrote in the introduction to Glimpses, “set before the reading public – and especially the colored portion of it – a narrative of his observations … that will arouse disinterested thousands, and awaken the spirit of investigation in connection with the Negro which has heretofore been dormant.” Turner thus underscored Smith’s transcendence of the color bar that prevailed in the production of information about Africa. Turner had found that, as a rule, this was the domain of “European adventurers and explorers.” By reading Smith’s work, he hoped, many more blacks in the United States could be inspired to follow his example.14 Smith returned the tribute shortly before his death in 1922. Commissioned to compose the second volume of the History of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Smith called Turner’s departure to West Africa in 1891 “a notable event in African Methodist circles” and his trip to South Africa in 1898 an “epoch-making event.”15 Smith here meant to emphasize quite literally Turner’s notability. In comparison to the AME emigrants who failed to provide information about their activities, Turner’s pioneering role lay in not being lost in the record. As evidence for the case, Smith reprinted lengthy excerpts from the African Letters in his History.16 Irrespective of their different purposes, the paths of this unequal couple crossed in their respective literary productions. Both had once connected their ideas of black self-determination to practices of travel and writing. And the travel writing of both circulated in AME periodicals, school books, and church chronicles, thus entering the homes of church fellows in various ways, contexts, and for decades to come. United in this project, Turner and Smith built their travel writings on a much longer history of travel literature. Turner, the less lettered of the two, disclosed having read about Este Vanico Dorante, a black explorer who in the sixteenth century traveled on an expedition with the Spanish to New Mexico and was described by Spanish historians as “the Negro Columbus,” while others shamed Dorante as “a brutal and cruel Negro.” He had also heard of David Livingstone, the most popular British missionary of Victorian Britain Turner, “Essay: The American Negro and the Fatherland,” 195, emphasis original; and Henry McNeal Turner, “Planning a Trip to Africa,” 1891, repr. in Respect Black, ed. Redkey, 84. 14 Henry McNeal Turner, introduction to Glimpses by Smith, 13. 15 Smith, History, 175 and 181. 16 Turner wrote fourteen letters during his trip to Sierra Leone and Liberia in 1891. The excerpts used in Smith’s History will be discussed below. 13

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who in the mid-nineteenth century had explored large parts of South Africa and who, in 1869, had been deemed lost. The status Livingstone achieved as a hero dedicated to his cause made him, in Turner’s opinion, an apt role model for blacks.17 Smith quite fittingly admitted to being familiar with “a number of other volumes treating of the ‘Dark Continent’,” especially those written by Henry Morton Stanley, the man who found Livingstone, and who in his travelogues coined the image of the dark continent for Africa. In his office in the Sunday School Union, he had even gone so far as to hang up “several maps connected with Mr. Stanley’s work” in order to prepare for his trip.18 Stanley’s aura was, indeed, noticeable in the travel route Smith developed. Like him, Smith voyaged by water, along coasts and rivers – with the distinction that he did so after the partitioning of Africa had, as Smith argued, become at the very least “a scheme on paper” (Figure 1.2).19 Aware of the dominance of European role models in his travel planning, Smith regretted the unavailability of accounts by George W. Williams, a contemporary black historian who had visited the Congo by railroad, because Williams had died before publishing his story.20 At the same time, Smith and Turner both emphasized that their search for role models and the consumption of exploration literature was an expression of their previous yet more abstract understanding of themselves as descendants of Africa. Turner stated that he had always “professed great interest in Africa,” and Smith confessed to having had a “long-cherished desire to make a personal visit to the land of [his] forefathers.”21 Out of curiosity and desire, they both composed their texts in interaction with the longstanding and different traditions of European and African American knowledge production about Africa – the continent in which the interests of these unequal groups tended to intersect and clash. In fact, one aim in Turner’s and Smith’s respective attempts to join the mission in order to write about Africa was their desire to engage readers with their work. Turner, perhaps the most famous black Africa traveler of his time, graced Glimpses with an introduction. In it, he portrayed Smith as the “Alexander of old,” who had conquered a “new domain for the exercise of his intellectual prowess” and who had selected Africa as a field for his “gladiatorial risk Turner, introduction, in Glimpses by Smith, 12–13. Smith, Glimpses, 148. On the popularity of Stanley’s travelogues in the United States, see Jeannette Eileen Jones, In Search of Brightest Africa: Reimagining the Dark Continent in American Culture, 1884–1936 (Athens, 2011), 22–28. 19 Smith, Glimpses, 50. For the maps Smith presented of the partitioning and his travel route see Figure 1.2 and 1.4. The analogy, and yet opposite direction of their waterways, is apparent in the subtitles of Smith’s Glimpses and Stanley’s Through the Dark Continent, being “the Congo River from Its Mouth to Matadi,” and “down the Livingstone River to the Atlantic Ocean.” 20 Smith, Glimpses, 154. 21 Henry McNeal Turner, “Missionaries to Africa,” 1881, repr. in Respect Black, ed. Redkey, 51, emphasis original; and Smith, Glimpses, 148. 17 18

Moving onto the Imperial Stage

Figure 1.2. “The Political Divisions of Africa.” Source: Smith, Glimpses, 28.

and venture.” Turner’s picture of Smith as an intellectual adventurer was related to his claim that Smith was the sole reliable narrator. Because the story had a “racial and denominational coloring,” Turner argued, Smith presented knowledge that was at once “universal” and “genuine” in the sense that it concerned those “merits or demerits of the colored race” that were “impossible for a white man or woman to tell.” According to Turner, Glimpses demonstrated that “the Negro, colored man, Afro-American, or whatever name the reader may prefer, is not sitting idly by, while the mighty host of meritorious men … are ascending the hills in quest of the summit of distinction.”22 22

Turner, introduction, in Glimpses by Smith, 11 and 12.

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Writing three decades later, Smith similarly prompted black readers of his History to note Turner’s intellectual heroism. By this time, Turner’s letters had been published three times, which testified to their enduring popularity: in 1891, in the AME newspaper, the Christian Recorder; in 1892, in the church’s scholarly paper, the AME Church Review; and finally, in 1893, as an edited collection.23 Smith, however, not only honored Turner as a proficient writer. He argued that Turner’s accounts of the founding of the first AME Church conference in Africa provided an occasion in the 1920s for ethnographic and historical investigation to readers. What Turner once called an event that was “impossible to picture … in words” was complemented with detailed information and acclaimed as highly interesting study materials in Smith’s narration.24 According to the History, the founding was an event of unusual interest among all classes of people, not only in Freetown, but in the regions adjacent thereto. Bishop Turner’s striking personality, and his vigorous and eloquent speech captivated thousands, none showing greater interest than the natives, even where they did not understand his language. [Among them were] Timnee, Caso, Akoo, Ebo, Sherbo, Mendi, Mandingo, Fullah, Limba, and Yennie.

In addition to prompting readers to engage with the ethnic variety among Africans, Smith encouraged them to use Turner’s letters in order to learn how Africans received African Methodist rituals, as well as to familiarize themselves with some of the conflicts that existed between German, English, and French colonial powers before the outbreak of the Great War.25 Finally, Smith’s remake of the Letters into ethnographic and historical textbooks lent, albeit implicitly, enduring credence to his own Glimpses from that same period. Smith and Turner thus constructed a lineage of self-made information about Africa between their accounts, and over time. They referenced, recontextualized, and supplemented one another’s texts so that they eventually became the stories of two fearless adventurers and sober participant-observers of Africa. While Smith’s and Turner’s respective narratives owed much of their style to the representational strategies of the Europeans who had preceded them on the African imperial stage, those predecessors ceased to be their sole role models. In addition, Smith and Turner established an explicit connection between their

Henry McNeal Turner, African Letters (Nashville, 1893). The original edition by Turner is available electronically, accessed November 1, 2014, http://docsouth.unc.edu/church/turneral/ turner.html. In the following, I refer to the edition by Edwin S. Redkey, Respect Black, which contains other writings by Turner, as well. 24 Henry McNeal Turner, sixth letter, Freetown, Sierra Leone, Africa, November 12, 1891, repr. in Respect Black, ed. Redkey, 106. 25 Smith, History, 175–76. 23

Moving onto the Imperial Stage

travels and their writings, which, in turn, allowed them to authorize what the other had to say about Africa and to follow suit in a new tradition. At the same time, Smith’s and Turner’s writing cast a foundation for their new tradition to take off. In 1892, after his first trip to Africa, Turner launched the Voice of Missions, the paper that later became the official organ of the AME Church Home and Foreign Missionary Department. In the Voice, Turner published a second series of African Letters, this time written during a trip to West Africa.26 This series of Letters developed into a regular column, “Letters from the Field,” which remained in place after Turner resigned in 1900 from the paper’s editorship. As unpublished correspondences about the Voice from the early 1920s demonstrate, the column became immensely popular as a nodal point of transatlantic communication. It encouraged those abroad to provide details “interesting to … friends at home,” it helped to “quicken interest” of those at home in the work abroad, and it provided editors with “regular letters from [the] field for publication.”27 Smith’s Glimpses also inspired future writing practices and conventions. His book can be seen as the first in a series of monographs published by AME Church-related authors between 1895 and 1955 that were geared to the travelogue genre. Accounts of Africa travels appeared as sections in individuals’ autobiographies, such as Levi J. Coppin’s Unwritten History (1919), William H. Heard’s From Slavery to the Bishopric in the A. M. E. Church (1924), and Richard R. Wright Jr.’s 87 Years Behind the Black Curtain: An Autobiography (1965). They also recounted authors’ life stories via recollections about Africa kept in diaries, letters, and travel journals. Among the accounts that were based on, or written in the style of, personal notes were Levi J. Coppin’s Observations of Persons and Things in South Africa, 1900–1904, Vol. 2 (1905), John A. Gregg’s “The Land of the Southern Cross” [1910?], Emily Christmas Kinch’s West Africa: An Open Door (1917), Cameron Chesterfield Alleyne’s Gold Coast at a Glance (1931), Amos Jerome White and Luella Graham White’s Dawn in Bantuland: An African Experiment (1953), and Charlotte Crogman Wright’s Beneath the Southern Cross: The Story of an American Bishop’s Wife in South Africa (1955). According to Missionary Secretary Llewellyn L. Berry, who presumably reviewed most of these writings in the 1930s when he was commissioned to write the official “history of the AME Church mission,” these texts all shared a style of improvised narration. Like Smith and others before him, Berry explained that he used the method of “picking up historical nuggets, gathering scraps and fragments here and there” and assorting them into one picture.28 Berry’s A Century of Missions of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, published in For reprints of the West African letters, see Redkey, ed., Respect Black, 139–42. J. W. Rankin to W. T. Vernon, May 10, 1921. SCRBC, AME CR, box 41, folder “Corr. Vernon, W. T., 1921.” 28 Berry, Century of Missions, 238. 26 27

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1941, became one of the most visible sites that fused and represented the accounts of AME members who aimed to share with black fellows at home their personal observations of Africa. Alongside their use in church publications, such as A Century of Missions and the Voice, AME travel writing appealed to an ever-growing readership beyond mission experts and church people. Many of these accounts had been produced by non-ecclesiastical publishing houses, a fact that hints at a shift in purpose, from reporting to a form of storytelling that gained allure as entertainment literature.29 Crogman Wright’s Beneath the Southern Cross, one of the few accounts written by a woman, for instance, was said to have “received quite a hit of praise” and was celebrated as a “best-seller” for one year.30 From the late nineteenth century, writings by members of the AME community wove together scraps and fragments of prior images of Africa along with the episodes drawn from personal notes, letters, and diaries. Their literary snapshots of Africa inscribed these black authors into the momentous encounter between Europe, Africa, and North America, while creating a peculiar tradition for the AME Church to remain in tune with the colonization of Africa. As George Shepperson, an eminent scholar of pan-Africanism, observes, Europe’s last empire in Africa owed much to the triangular “trade not of pocatille, slaves and molasses, but … of ideas and politics between the descendants of the slaves in the West Indies and North America and their ancestral continent.”31 Here, one might also consider that these descendants owed much to the triangular commerce of imperial ideas and politics. What then, did black American missionary travelers say in the early twentieth century about colonial Africa? 3.2. “But to See Africa in Africa Is Another Thing”: Empiricism and Introspection on the Colonial Frontier

Published in 1895, Smith’s Glimpses became throughout the first half of the twentieth century one of the most central and comprehensive AME print sources on colonial Africa. Although his travels were a unique venture, Smith’s account was not a peerless travelogue. According to his title, the book was mainly devoted to “Africa,” specified as the “West and Southwest Coast,” and contained “The Author’s Impressions and Observations During a Voyage of Six Thousand Miles from Sierra Leone to St. Paul de Loanda, and Return”; it also included the “Rio del Ray and Cameroons Rivers, and the Congo River from its These publishers included the Hunt Printing Company and Exposition Press in New York, as well as the Christopher Publishing House in Boston. 30 Ada Crogman Franklin to Cecile Portis, October 4, 1939. TUL, BAAC, Bishop Richard Robert Wright Jr. Papers, box 2. 31 Shepperson, “Notes on Negro American Influences,” 299. 29

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Mouth to Matadi,” as well as “Maps and Many Illustrations.”32 This title suggests that the account combined the major types of sources on Africa that existed to date: the presumably objective statistical surveys, historical almanacs, maps and photographs of the continent, on the one hand, and explicitly subjective descriptions provided by interior exploration and navigational adventure literature, on the other. Because Smith’s book captures the style of both European science and sentimental travel writing, I use it as an example to show the intersections and divergences between colonial and African American perspectives on Africa. In addition, Smith’s style prevailed to different extents in subsequent accounts written by AME members so that his Glimpses formed the beginning of what I have previously introduced as a black Atlantic missionary tradition. The two-part structure of his book reveals Smith’s use of the two, albeit very different, European writing styles of science and adventure. The first part of his account consisted of a generalizing systematic portrayal of Africa. It included schematic descriptions of Europeans, Africans, climatic conditions, and so on that were in accordance with the contemporary conventions of ethnography and natural science. While Smith claimed to have based his account on what he called “the simple narrative of the results of my observations,” the first part neither narrated Smith’s contact with Africa nor told of his meanderings ashore. It focused instead on the “error, particularly in reference to Africa,” that the existing literature had propagated.33 Although Smith extensively referenced statistical, historical, ethnographic, geological, and botanical records, the appropriation of such earlier works served to make his own on-site presence seem absolutely essential. In a prefatory statement, Smith rejected the authority of Western science and book knowledge, and insisted on the empirical trustworthiness of his own account. “I do not regard any remark or comment necessary, other than to say that I frankly confess to error of judgment,” Smith stated and specified that his error was “the result of seeing Africa from afar.”34 Implicit in Smith’s confession was his claim that he was able to present an untold truth about Africa by means of his own observant agency, even if his method of empiricism required the removal of himself as the experiencing subject from the narration. The second part of the book, titled “personal memoranda,” is different. Here, Smith’s ‘eye/I’ is at the center of the story. The section discloses his desire to visit Africa and explains how his own questions, interests, and concerns shaped his travel arrangements and preparations, and his choice of routes and equipment. In addition, the memoranda present narratives of his local interactions and integrate them into a much longer story about his personal transfor32 33 34

Smith, Glimpses, cover page. Smith, Glimpses, 6. Ibid., 21.

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mation, thus revealing the vast and discontinuous history of meaning-making that preceded and succeeded his first actual encounter with Africa. Although Smith wrote at a time when narratives of interior travel had prevailed among the British Africa explorers he admired – among them Henry Morton Stanley and David Livingstone – he did not follow their lead in his memoranda. In his sentimental narrative, he drew instead upon the navigational conventions of earlier maritime exploration. Recounting it as a sea voyage, he rambled on at length about the pleasures and perils of the Atlantic passage, and detailed his cruises along African coasts and rivers.35 Smith, in fact, distinguished himself from the Africa travelers he idolized by stating explicitly that he did not get to the continent’s “interior at any point.” His ambition to explore concerned instead his emotional life, starting with “the inducing causes which lead [him] to make the voyage” and going, from there, further into his own interior.36 In this way, Smith styled his personal memoranda section as an introspective account. The two-part structure of the book discloses that Smith’s movement across the Atlantic followed two vectors. The narration in part one evolves along the empirically describable surfaces of Africa corresponding to dominant Western knowledge-tropes about the continent. In this part, Smith’s confession to having made erroneous judgments makes him appear to be an objective observer who launches the production of presumably genuine knowledge about Africa without including himself in his description. One may call this narrative strategy a black ‘anti(colonial) conquest,’ because it uses typical structures of Western science in order to falsify its findings. The memoranda narrative in part two follows a different trajectory. Having Smith’s travel route at its center, the memoranda strongly declare Smith the subject of the exploration. They do so, however, by disclosing his inner life, such as personal inducements, transformations, and feelings, as opposed to a narration of his perseverance into the interior of Africa. One may call the memoranda an ‘(en)counter narrative,’ because it uses the image of European explorers to establish Smith as the narrator of the story without grounding the story itself in tales of terrestrial exploration.37

According to Pratt, the navigational paradigm usually entails a survival story with storms, sickness, brackish water, and a threat of attack on the high seas. Pratt, Imperial Eyes, 43. 36 Smith, Glimpses, 6. 37 I borrow the term “anti-conquest” from Pratt. She uses it to designate travel writings that were inspired by natural history and inland travels, both of which aimed at surveying the land, appropriating resources, and achieving administrative control; they thus served to contrast with the brutality of the European invasion. In the context of this study, I will use the term ‘anti(colonial) conquest’ to indicate that African American travel writing used similar strategies to distance the authors from the imperial enterprise. The term ‘(en)counter’ is my own. It serves to underscore that AME travel writing yet differed from the inland travel paradigm regarding the avoidance of narrating interior explorations. Pratt, Imperial Eyes, 39. 35

Moving onto the Imperial Stage

Apart from indicating the spectrum of travel performances and writing conventions to which Smith had access, the two vectors show that AME authors did not simply choose from available options. If Smith on a number of occasions had reinvented himself in his narrative, his choices reflect how his representational strategies as an Africa traveler were shaped by a priori knowledge, a time-specific episteme that conditioned the possibility of knowing Africa, either scientifically or sentimentally. Pratt identified science and sentiment as the two clashing and complementary languages most characteristic of the bourgeois subject on the imperial frontier, one often represented by the “seeing men.”38 Indeed, much of the European knowledge-building project has centered on delivering, as Michel Foucault argued, “a description of the visible.” With this, he means the attempt “to bring language as close as possible to the observing gaze, and the things observed as close as possible to words,” thereby often reducing “the whole area of the visible to a system of variables all of whose values can be designated … by perfectly clear and always finite description.”39 Interestingly, Smith’s narrative aspires to precision in its description of the seeing subject without emulating late-Victorian imperial masculinity and its gesture of penetrating a dark continent, which much scholarship has addressed.40 As we will see in detail in what follows, he uses empiricism and introspection to create a metanarrative around the “confession” of his errors, a terminology that alludes to his role as a churchman, as well. The Christian pastorate, Foucault argues, brought with it an entire series of techniques and procedures concerned with the truth, which differed from the scientific technique of describing the visible. Serving as the “masters of truth” for their flock, pastors came to intimately know the inner life of people during confession – the procedure in which otherwise untold desires, failures, and secrets were disclosed to detect new truths about oneself.41 In the first part of the book, Smith constructed himself in the tradition of the European natural scientists and explorers Pratt calls the “seeing-men” because their “imperial eyes passively look out and possess.”42 But with his memoranda in the second part, he also produced a pastoral form of self-knowledge: seeing Africa in Africa could be seeing oneself and in turn move beyond descriptions of the visible.43 Ibid., 7. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences (New York, 1971), 131 and 136. 40 Good analyses of the late-Victorian ideal of imperial manhood in the black mission are Turner, “Black-White Missionary”; and Mitchell, “Black Man’s Burden.” 41 Michel Foucault, “Sexuality and Power,” in Religion and Culture, ed. Jeremy R. Carrette (New York, 1999), 125. 42 Pratt, Imperial Eyes, 7. 43 Smith, Glimpses, 21. 38 39

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Seeing Africa in Africa: Narrating the Anti(colonial) Conquest

As Smith’s title promises, his account begins with a comprehensive survey of the continent. Because his major finding was that there were several European powers “so well entrenched” in their possessions that “there are no conditions likely to arise which will dislodge [them],” he divided the object of investigation into Europeans, Africans, and their civilization.44 Then, “for the sake of convenience,” he subdivided each of these components into a binary classification system.45 Europeans were grouped into “Propagationists” and “Exterminationists,” based on their style of rule. For Smith, the British and the French formed a category of colonizers that encouraged “the natives … to retain their ancient domains,” whereas the Germans and the Belgians aimed to exterminate the same by transporting the “indigent element of their home countries” to their colonial possessions.46 The “Africans,” by contrast, were grouped according to their proximity to the coastline into “Maritime Tribes” and “Hinterland Tribes,” the latter of which, Smith admitted mindful of his navigational paradigm, could only be observed to the extent that they came to trading places near the coast. The geographical location of these tribes also formed the criteria for their state of “civilization.” Smith classed maritime tribes as “civilized natives,” which included people such as government officials, professionals, traders, clerks, middlemen, skilled craftsmen, and simply “wealthy natives.”47 These stood apart from the “bushman or raw native” of the hinterland, who was “wholly uncivilized” and who fell, by means of a totalizing of the classificatory scheme across the Atlantic, into a single category with the “North American Indian.”48 While it was easy for Smith to systematize the relationship between European rule and Africans’ civilization, it was difficult for him to show that it had beneficial results. He had not only observed that two types of civilization (one Arabic, one Anglo-Saxon) had found “growth and fruitage” among them. He also understood how the “ratio” between the Africans he categorized as civilized and uncivilized did not match the ratio of their virtue and vice.49 Smith saw in particular the territories of “Propagationists” with the Anglo-Saxon type of civilization characterized by malicious lifestyles, tribal conflicts, and hatred between rulers and ruled. He maintained that this was because the African was per se “intelligent” and “a keen observer” and therefore able to emulate the habits of cheating, robbing, and lying that white people demonstrated. “In the 44 45 46 47 48 49

Ibid., 50. Ibid., 67. Ibid., 53. Ibid., 67–68. Ibid., 70, 67, and 81. Ibid., 68–69.

Moving onto the Imperial Stage

Figure 1.3. Left: “A Mandanile Bride. – Side View (Uncivilized).” Right: “A Mandanile Bride. – Front View (Uncivilized).” Source: Smith, Glimpses, 80.

progress of civilizing influences among Africans,” Smith concluded, “it is true, as it is of other races, that the stream cannot rise above its [i. e., Anglo-Saxon] source.”50 The geographical structure of civilization that he proposed was therefore not dissociative, but it rather emphasized the connection that emerged between Europeans and Africans due to the transmission of questionable European behaviors. The possibility of an African source of civilization did not make its way as a category into Smith’s classification system. It was, however, a core result of his observations. Smith’s hankering to consider Africans as civilized also beyond their exposure to Europeans became evident when Smith regretted that, even as “a close observer,” he could not disprove the prejudice of Africans’ lacking “Moral Ethics.”51 Instead of asserting this deficiency as an African characteristic, Smith argued that it was essentially European. To exemplify the case, he pointed out that colonizers praised the “bushman” as a “noble savage” while condemning “civilized Africans” as “impudent, indolent, immoral, thievish, 50 51

Ibid., 74. Ibid.

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lying, and hypocritical – the personification of unmixed evil.” According to Smith’s relational scheme of civilizations, this defamation only enumerated those shortcomings of Anglo-Saxon lifestyles that Africans had, regrettably and yet successfully, adopted.52 Another example, in which converging standards between Europeans and Africans seemed to highlight that Africans possessed not only their own, but also a morally superior civilization, was given by Smith in his analysis of their respective sexual behaviors. As Smith explained: [T]he African found that the white man lusted after many women – even the disfigured, tattooed, heathenish, fetish worshiping African women – and he was thus reassured of the eminent correctness and propriety of his own long established custom of a plurality of wives. The point of difference between the African and the European … is that the former has many wives and no concubines; but a large number of the latter have one wife and several concubines.53

With his discussion of polygamy as an African custom, Smith restored the virtue of Africans in relation to their own moral systems and intimated that Europeans did not honor their Western Christian ethics to the same extent. This finding was to the favor of an African civilization, and yet confined to the rehabilitation of African men. Smith’s description ultimately reinforced the notion that African women, here cast as sex objects, presented such an extreme abnormality that male desires for them, whether they were articulated by Africans or Europeans, became a negative feature. As such, Smith excluded African women even from the “noble savages.” They symbolized instead the lures of an eternally mysterious dark continent that could not be subdued but remained poised to take possession of men with all kinds of civilization.54 The first part of the book thus appropriated the descriptive structure of the literature that emerged in the context of interior exploration. As Pratt has shown, this literature typically corresponded to the enormous project of natural history to develop a classificatory system for all nature on earth, combined with practical suggestions on how to construct an augmentable taxonomy for whatever new countries, plants, animals, and people were there to discover.55 In the context of European economic and political expansion, a systematization of nature played an important role in stabilizing the colonial order. It served to elevate Europeans to the status of the norm-creating agents, who, instead of being objects of analysis, were themselves describing and ordering the planet. Smith used the same strategy: he omitted himself from his description, and Ibid., 70. Ibid., 73. 54 On the sexual norms that characterize the construction of the bourgeois white European subject, see Stoler, Race and the Education of Desire. 55 Pratt, Imperial Eyes, 24–37. 52 53

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Figure 1.4. “Prince Manga Bell and Favorite Wives.” Source: Smith, Glimpses, 175.

deducted norms from his observations. His empirical approach, however, brought Europeans back into the picture. He categorized their styles of rule and types of civilization within the same descriptive system that he applied in his analysis of the Africans. Ultimately, the descriptive system revealed in each group virtues and vices, which challenged the notion that Europeans were the norm of a superior civilization and sat at the top of the strict racial hierarchy developed by natural science.56 Smith’s core finding, instead, was that the presumably superior Europeans conveyed erroneous views – not only about Africans, but most of all about themselves. That they did not seem to live according to the standards of their own civilization, at least when they were observed in Africa, was most evident to Smith in his assessment of customs relating to sexuality and marriage. Here, Europeans tended to undermine the morals of Western Christianity whereas Africans appeared to honor their indigenous Since the eighteenth century, natural science cultivated the view that Europeans were the most advanced race in human evolution, whereas Africans were the lowest. Cf. Berghahn, Images of Africa, 8. 56

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rules of polygamy. There were, however, limits to Smith’s critical intervention. Smith did not abolish the stereotype of the dark continent but claimed it as part of a gendered system of defamation, in which the lack of civilization was synonymous with the sexual urge for the excessively exotic African woman. Seeing Oneself in Africa: The (En)counter Narrative

While Smith’s assessment of the correlation between types of European rule and Africans’ civilization involved a certain vindication of African customs, his appraisal did not prefigure the way in which he himself related to the continent. His personal memoranda section, which he presented as a sentimental narrative in the book’s second part, dates the beginning of this connection to about twenty-five years before the trip. At this time, Smith wrote, he was “seized” by a desire to visit Africa that was sparked by a book called The Negro Problem Solved. The book argued that Africa was gradually assimilating to Western civilization, and it convinced him that “its ultimate redemption and development” was therefore coming into view. Although Smith, apparently, would have liked to see Africa evolving toward the West, he denied that a calling to civilize informed his wish to visit. Obscuring his motivation, Smith spoke of “some uncontrollable agency” that prompted him “gradually” to get ready “to gratify a long-cherished desire to make a personal visit to the land of my forefathers.”57 The more than two decades of somewhat infatuated preparation ended abruptly when Smith’s travels materialized. The narrative of his crossing of the Atlantic was, above all, concerned with his demonstration that he was able to take command of overpowering desires. From the perspective of a tourist rather than a descendant, Smith listed the series of occasions he used to engage with Africa. Aboard the ship, Smith wrote, he studied the relevant literature and conferred about his trip with other passengers; he also visited exhibitions and museums during stopovers in England, Belgium, Spain, and Portugal. Access to these types of knowledge, as the memoranda section of Glimpses suggests, changed Smith’s understanding of what it meant to make a “personal visit.” Rather than enhance his enthusiasm, the approach of the continent cautioned Smith against local immersion: Smith wrote that he brought a medicine chest to “combat diseases common in the tropics” and a “tropical outfit,” consisting of clothes made of white flannel and rubber, a pith helmet and a Panama straw hat, as well as an umbrella to protect him from both the sun and the rain. To this, he added canned food and scientific instruments, which included a thermometer and a magnifying glass, and which again indicated that Smith, Glimpses, 147–48. The book Smith referred to was Hollis Read, The Negro Problem Solved: Or, Africa as She Was, as She Is, and as She Shall Be: Her Curse and Her Cure (New York, 1864). 57

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he had planned to glimpse at Africa from a distance. Finally, a substantial part of his luggage was taken up by a total of fifty-five books. Bringing his research library on Africa along, Smith argued, was essential to his empirical mission to “compare” the knowledge he had acquired with his own on-site observations.58 While Smith had, arguably, many travelogues to choose from, the image in the memoranda section he created for himself was primarily indebted to Henry Morton Stanley. The British explorer had long enchanted Western audiences with books including How I Found Livingstone (1872), Through the Dark Continent (1878), and In Darkest Africa (1890); Smith had devoured many of these. Perhaps not surprisingly, much of Smith’s Glimpses carried, explicitly and implicitly, Stanley’s tone. The explicit analogy was apparent in his subtitle. Just as Stanley had specified his route in Through the Dark Continent as going “down the Livingstone River to the Atlantic Ocean,” Smith based his on his waterway passage on “the Congo River from its mouth to Matadi.” Implicit in the analogy was his ambition to overcome his vague curiosity about “the land of [his] forefathers.” Smith, the traveler, followed Stanley’s sober instructions for “how and what to observe,” and for how “to map, lay out and describe” traveled areas.59 Using Stanley as a proxy to establish a new relationship to Africa, Smith’s Glimpses displayed a tendency to involve visual imagery, a source that, at that time, ranked high in the cannon of empirical evidence. “I unhesitatingly vouch for the genuineness of all illustrations,” Smith stated right away in his preface. In both sections of the book, readers found a considerable variety of images, encompassing illustrations “made from photographs collected by [him]self,” as well as engravings, and maps.60 Much of the visual material testified to Smith’s expertise as to the contemporary conventions of cartographic and ethnographic depiction. The image of Africa that emerged in his account was dominated by representations of its colonization (see, for instance, Smith’s map of partitioned Africa, Figure 1.2), and of the savagery that European explorers such as Stanley had defined as typical of Africans. Smith’s captions identified them, accordingly, with names that suggested their strangeness, such as “Fetiches [sic] and Worshiper[s],” “Batta Natives,” “Mpongwe Cannibals,” and so on.61 However, Smith’s aim to document his travels also involved the new venture of visualizing his own presence in Africa. Smith here used several strategies. One was to present photographs of items he had purchased or received as gifts, such as the “War Implements of the Aruwimi People” and “Native Cloth, 58 59 60 61

Ibid., 150, 156–57, and 6. Ibid., 148; and Henry M. Stanley, Through the Dark Continent …, Vol. 1 (New York, 1878), 2. Smith, Glimpses, 7. Ibid., 17.

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Figure 1.5. “Map of the West and South-West Coast of Africa Showing Points Touched at by C. S. Smith During His Voyage from Freetown to St. Paul de Loanda, 1894.” Source: Smith, Glimpses, 146.

Moving onto the Imperial Stage

Mats, etc.”62 Another was to include himself in the picture. One of these was his self-portrayal with the Dwalla (Figure 1). Smith explained that he wore a Knight Templar uniform to be “resplendent with the rays of the tropical sun, and in striking contrast with the surroundings.” Dressing in bright colors was, of course, the tried and tested strategy of visualization in African contexts, for it underscored, as Smith himself noted, the binaries necessary to legitimize colonial subjection. For Smith, a black man, the logic was slightly inverted: it focused attention on his presence in Africa and at the same time it clarified that this presence was not about pan-African reunification but alienation.63 Smith added to his photographs a personalized map of Africa, “showing points touched at … during his voyage.” The chart and the sensory language of its caption stressed Smith’s attempt to demonstrate that he was in Africa without experiencing any form of immersion. Both worked to indicate that his individual points of contact were strictly confined to the coastline between Freetown and St. Paul de Loanda and that he intentionally left the interiors of Africa blank (see Figure 1.5). Decorated with these illustrations, most of the memoranda concerned the two and a half months he had spent on a boat. They contained merely short descriptions of his ten-day stay in Liberia, as well as of the six days he spent in Sierra Leone. In addition, Smith made clear that even his ascent to the Cameroon and Congo Rivers, as insinuated by his Stanley-style subtitle, had not taken him further into Africa than “as far as ocean steamers can go.”64 In terms of content, Smith’s personal narrative thus explicitly diverged from his European role models. At no point did Smith seek to discover their mysterious ‘dark continent,’ but he had instead circumnavigated some of the best-explored coasts of Africa: Sierra Leone, Liberia, Congo, Cameroon, and Angola.65 By clearly avoiding new discoveries, Smith’s navigational narration generally foregrounded his personal mission of producing knowledge by means of comparisons between colonial realities and books. His memoranda drew upon the categorizations he had used to systematize colonizer-colonized relations in the whole of Africa in his first part, and applied them to describe the territories he himself passed through as a participant-observer. “Natives” thus appeared to him as classifiable “in point of civilization,” their “physical characteristics,” their “language,” and their relationship to the colonial powers that controlled them. To this he added information on landscapes, climates, communication and supply infrastructures, cities, as well as on local trading companies.66

62 63 64 65 66

Ibid., 18. Ibid., 174. See the beginning of Part I for my analysis of this image. Smith, Glimpses, 6. Jones, Brightest Africa, 71. Smith, Glimpses, 192.

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In general, Smith’s memoranda were therefore able to sidestep the Stanley-style Africa explorer, who Smith had created during his Atlantic passage. Instead, his memoranda resembled a ship’s log, and emphasized the ways in which Smith considered his ocean steamer his prime contact zone. A typical entry read: October 8, 7.45 A.M, we drop anchor at Setta Cama, situate near a river of the same name. There are four trading places at this point. Here one of the Liverpool passengers disembarks. For the first time I see a Portuguese-African … . Stopping time, 6 hours and 50 minutes. Thermometer, 80o at sea.67

Because Smith’s contacts at sea contained some level of order and predictability, his trips ashore tended to contain descriptions of unwelcome disturbances. Smith, for instance, remarked wryly that he had been “‘blessed’ with a small crop of tropical boils” by the time his steamer arrived in Freetown, and as a result, he did “not feel disposed to spend much time in moving around.”68 Another episode, in which Smith finally disembarked, involved one of those potent arrival scenarios characteristic of contemporary inland travel literature. Descriptions of encounters allowed explorers to define their relationship to the traveled area, and by creating images that symbolized, for example, mutual approximation, inclusion, intrusion, ignorance, interaction, or rejection, they insinuated how their readers should relate to it themselves.69 In Smith’s narrative, the spectacles of inshore exploration begin with him catching sight of a local king. Smith described the king as an “old, shriveled-up, drunken sot,” who was apparently dancing with some of his “head men.” To emphasize the strangeness of the scene, Smith expressed his difficulty to give “an accurate description” but then gave a description, nonetheless. “There is no swaying of the hands or shuffling of the feet,” he wrote, “but seemingly a mere shrugging of the muscles of the shoulders and back.” The encounter scenario that followed his observation illustrates Smith’s involvement: As I approach the palaver house where the dance is going on, the music and dance suddenly cease. I am accosted by a head man, who with great suavity of manner informs me that if I want to see them dance I must give them ‘dash.’ I proffer a sixpence, which is readily accepted, the dance is resumed and provokes on my part a decided feeling of disgust.70 Ibid., 205. Ibid., 277. 69 On arrival scenes in European travel literature, see Mary Louise Pratt, “Field Work in Common Places,” in Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, ed. James Clifford and George E. Marcus, 27–50 (Berkeley, 1986). 70 Smith, Glimpses, 173. 67 68

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The passage epitomizes the logic of Smith’s (en)counter. While the whole scene is one of mutual approximation – Smith noted the king, and the king noticed him – it did not allow Smith to overcome his alienation. Instead, Smith presented himself as attentive to an exotic African ritual staged for him, as well as a performance for which he was ready to pay. For a brief moment, the exchange of money turned the unequal pair (Smith and the shriveled drunken sot) into decent gentlemen who make a fair business deal – perhaps expressing Smith’s desire to achieve reciprocity. Yet the scene began and resolved with Smith’s disturbance of the local life. By acknowledging his presence, the Africans marked him as an intruder who came from elsewhere and was drawn to their otherness. In following the story, one could read Smith’s memoranda as the tragedy of the curious black adventurer who, instead of strengthening his emotional ties to the land of the forefathers, finds himself estranged from his sought-after roots. Smith alluded to this conclusion when he admitted that “a great change ‘came o’er the spirit of my dreams’ while abroad” because he learned primarily that “civilization” was slow and that only the “fittest will survive.”71 Regardless of what Smith’s story tells, its form illustrates that Smith was an adventurous writer. Smith both experimented with interior and navigational narrative paradigms and styled himself as a desiring descendent of Africa, a skilled Stanley-style explorer, a gentlemanly seafarer, and a fascinated and disgusted spectator, who paid for an African show for the sake of decency. Distinct from the first part of the book, these performances cast Smith as an observer who did more than just correct and compare the views of earlier Africa travelers. By frequently alternating his subjective perspective, Smith avoided being set as either opposing or embracing the idea of an African heritage. He could enter a variety of active and passive relationships with the continent, which ranged from hope to disgust, from desire to analytic interest. All of these points of contact disclosed the possibility of exploring the uncertainties of one’s interior by using Africa travels as a method and an end in itself: because Smith’s sentimental writing explicitly anchored his judgment, agency, and desires in his sensory experience of Africa, he had the authority over how intensive he made his connection and the capacity to present a new way for his African American readers to relate themselves the continent.

71

Ibid., 285.

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3.3. “Views Fortified by Experience”: Passing on the System of Confession

Smith’s account was the only one that explicitly teased apart the dual structure of empiricism and introspection. Nevertheless, Glimpses provided a basic plot, combined with practical suggestions on how to keep good field notes, to make accurate maps, and to write up results. Over the next three to four decades, the AME accounts that followed Smith’s example used different formats, such as letters, articles, diaries, or autobiographies, to lend themselves the authority of authenticity in their narration of immediate contacts. They, of course, also had different parts of Africa as their object of investigation, as the routes and destinations of AME travelers spread over the first half of the twentieth century into the Gold Coast, as well as various British territories between the Union of South Africa and Nyasaland. While this variety makes it impossible to distill a coherent political message from these travelers’ statements – such as whose side they were on or whose ends they served – a survey of their texts shows that these travel writings related to each other through a metanarrative of confession of the kind that was prefigured in Smith’s account. Alongside the patterns of their distribution (as discussed in 3.1), the system of the confessions about Africa that AME travel texts conveyed presents us with a form and a method of knowledge production that I suggest considering another feature of the black Atlantic missionary tradition. Smith’s trip coincided with the travels of the man who eventually came to be recognized as the founding father of the AME Church’s Africa mission: Henry McNeal Turner.72 Perhaps not surprisingly, Turner conceived of himself as Smith’s companion in the mission to travel and write. He made this broader mission explicit in an account, “My Trip to South Africa,” published in 1898 in the AME Church Review, the scholarly AME paper. Using the model of the missionary ethnographer, he informed his readers that although he traveled as a functionary of church extension, the “results” of the trip were “broader than church lines.” Here, he meant that the information he had “concerning the native races of Africa was corrected in many particulars” by his experience. The language of “correction” suggested his awareness of the classifications that had been designed in previous texts, including Smith’s Glimpses and his own African Letters. To legitimize the expansion of the existing taxonomy, he argued that “it is true that a knowledge of the West Coast of Africa does not furnish a true criterion for judging other parts of that magnificent continent.”73

Wright, Bishops, 340. Henry McNeal Turner, “My Trip to South Africa,” 1898, repr. in Respect Black, ed. Redkey, 178. 72 73

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By adding contents and altering conclusions, the following narration left intact the coordinates of the classificatory scheme of Europeans, Africans, and civilization. For Turner, the “Africanite” was neither “black at all,” nor did he have “the thick lip, retreating forehead and chin [that] are characteristic types of the negroid races.” Rather, Turner considered their faces “indicative of great ideality and rhetorical power” and their physical movements free from “the shuffling that centuries of slavery … have imparted to the American Negro.” Totalizing the observation, Turner claimed that these characteristics applied to “hundreds of thousands of original and unmixed tribes,” regardless of their geographical location. With Smith, he shared the fascination with female bodies but reasserted their otherness in more favorable ways. Turner called them “models of shapeliness” because their beauty had not been vitiated “by enforced subservience to another race.” He thus restored them, in contrast to Smith, as the true ‘noble savages.’ To underscore their unspoiled naturalness as their distinctive feature, Turner compared them with African American women. In this perspective, African American women appeared to Turner as displaying a misled desire for “hair-straighteners and skin-bleachers,” which he considered blasphemy and a sign that they had “nothing to cultivate on the inside of the head.”74 Finally, Turner not only expanded his classificatory system to include African Americans, but also used it to describe himself within African environments. In his (en)counter narrative, he claimed that he was “received with all honor” by both the English colonial officials and the colonized of the Cape Colony. Finding that his color evidently was no longer a “barrier to the proffer of courtesies and hospitalities,” Turner confirmed Smith’s notion that prejudices, rather than essential racial differences, shaped the relationships of colonial society. By means of classification, Turner defined them as prejudices “of condition” and as characteristic of any conquest. The same claim, then, allowed Turner to declare his own condition the prerequisite for his encounter. Due to his having “the bearing of a gentleman and a scholar,” he asserted, he was able to enter the colonial stage regardless of the color line.75 Like Glimpses, Turner’s narrative echoed European colonial discourses about the noble savage, social Darwinist evolutionism, and the male-coded bourgeois order of the planet, which could unfold around the distinct appeal of the African woman. His description of South Africa, however, no longer aimed to compare his own observations to those of others. On the contrary, the practice of travel allowed Turner to conceal the European categories that informed his perspective. As Smith later articulated, if styled as travel accounts, an author’s opinions could be presented as views that were “fortified by experience.” In other words, observant agency meant that the observer could possess what74 75

Ibid., 178–79. Ibid., 179.

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ever he pretended to have seen and could provide additions to the basic plot of the black Atlantic missionary tradition.76 After Turner’s and Smith’s writings, the staging of firsthand experience continued to appear in the form of an unexpected revelation, which cast prior knowledge as erroneous and was followed by the presentation of systematic empirical evidence in support of a new image. In this way, AME accounts put a strong emphasis on narrating individuals’ diverse and unique experiences while at the same time structuring and connecting them to the ongoing tradition of engaging through confession with intersecting structures of knowledge. In most accounts, this system of confession unraveled along the missionaries’ travel route. It began with the recounting of the transatlantic passage, followed by the arrival in coastal urban centers, and meanderings from those centers into the interior, mainly for the purpose of inspecting and supervising inland mission fields. Since all AME delegations to Africa traveled by water, the arrival in African port cities usually set the stage for the first revelation and the tone for the rest of the narrative. Freetown was described as standing in “surprising majesty – surprising by reason of the wide streets and stately two-, three- and four-story buildings.” Its cleanliness, sidewalks, rock sewers, and decency defied expectations of finding a “low, swampy, lagoony town with narrow muddy streets, as filthy as a cess-pool.”77 Similarly, Cape Town was deemed a “really modern city,” which provided facilities of water supply, sanitation, telephones, telegraphs, and cables that were “the same as in London and New York.”78 The unexpected existence of parks, churches, schools, hospitals, tramcars, automobiles, and the “usual variety of merchandise” contrasted with the observer’s prior idea of finding a “desert jungle with savage people and hungry beasts roaming about.” One account even asserted that milk was “delivered in bottles at your door, just as in America.”79 Because such confessions consisted in finding no difference at the coast, discovered differences were often asserted to be located in the hinterland. Here two stylistic means were available. Either, AME accounts drew on naturalist-environmentalist discourses to idealize the “scenic beauty” of the countryside, describing it, for instance, as “charmed with the warm blaze of color” and as abundant in water streams and “fruits of every kind, and flowers of every beauty.” 80 Or, they saw rural areas as characterized by their lack of modern facilities. Such accounts typically (and somewhat Charles Spencer Smith, “Racianity and Nationalism in the Acid Test,” Christian Advocate, April 8, 1915, repr. in Current Topics Discussed (Detroit, 1915), 3–5. 77 Turner, sixth letter, 105. 78 Coppin, Observations, 22. 79 Wright, Beneath the Southern Cross, 20–21. 80 Ibid., 96; and Henry McNeal Turner, eighth letter, Freetown, Sierra Leone, November 18, 1891, repr. in Respect Black, ed. Redkey, 113. 76

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dramatically) reported thatch-covered huts, unskilled labor, poor drainage and sanitation, and enteric fever.81 A key trope in any AME description of the hinterland was, of course, the ‘native’. AME authors considered his image as a “conception which many Americans have of Africa” and as one that was in need of adjustment. In their accounts, they began usually by presenting typical elements of this conception, such as nudity, tribal organization, cannibalism, witchcraft, or polygamy. Their narrations of the classic spectacles of African savagery, however, served to invite readers to partake in the teaching moment that the authors themselves had experienced. Charlotte Crogman Wright, for example, related that she mistook the warning sign, “Beware of the Natives,” for a warning that “nearly everybody is running around naked, that cannibalism is rife, that one is in constant danger of foul play.” Then she went on to explain that the sign actually marked pedestrian crossings and that the term “native” was not a designation of savagery, but a legal category introduced by the British.82 Wright also undertook to clarify that nudity was not a nuisance for Africans but only for “peeping Toms.” From the African perspective, she stated, covering one’s breasts in the presence of a white man was indicating “evil thoughts” rather than decency.83 Others undertook to explain that the absence of Christianity could not be equated with “cruel savagery.” Levi J. Coppin contended, for instance, that Africans’ social life had a “settled form of government” in family as well as tribal relations that was based on their firm sense of morality. To illustrate the case, Coppin submitted that robbing a weaker tribe when short of provisions was legitimate among Africans only if the tribe was known as an enemy.84 Thus, when these accounts sensationalized African life in the hinterland – as was the style of colonial discourses – they often did so to combine a confession with a lesson about Africans, which in turn insinuated for readers how they should rework their concept of Africa. Finally, many AME accounts dealt with aspects of colonialism, especially where they related to Africans’ hinterland life. Some AME travelers encouraged Africans to build roads, railways, farms, and trading posts in hopes that “those who develop [t]his country will become its owners and rulers.”85 But most writers hesitated to advocate industrialization and urbanization, because they sensed that these developments could foster the adoption of Western lifestyles that involved alcoholism, dishonesty, and selfishness. Several accounts substantiated the view that colonial influences endangered polygamy, the basic feature of Africans’ sex and family relations. As one AME observer remarked 81 82 83 84 85

Wright, Beneath the Southern Cross, 22; and Turner, eighth letter, 112. Wright, Beneath the Southern Cross, 76–77. Ibid., 83–84. Coppin, Observations, 125–29, quote on 125. Smith, Glimpses, 77.

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angrily, the British not only disgraced the custom with their habit of pursuing several women at once outside of marriage. They also seized upon polygamy as an opportunity to levy hut taxes on the larger number of houses that Africans required to accommodate their wives.86 After all, most AME travelers concurred that colonial civilization was a threat to what they themselves constructed as “native” in their accounts: a sense of moral conduct and solidarity, physical integrity, and well-ordered relationships between the sexes, as well as among families and tribes – elements that had fascinated AME writers ever since they had been observed by Turner and Smith. This overview of the themes within AME travel literature distills neither a substance nor a genealogy in the image of Africa as a whole. To be sure, there were many factors, contexts, and specific conditions influencing the accounts’ contents and their meaning. A range of individuals on both sides of the Atlantic negotiated and complicated, rather than simplified, the image of Africa. Through the diversity of their descriptions, however, a pattern emerges in which Freetown looked more similar to Cape Town and to New York than to the hinterland of Sierra Leone and South Africa. In addition, there were features in African life in contrast to those of Europeans and African Americans; such features brought into view the virtues and vices of African and colonial civilization. While it is easy to hold the authors’ claims to unique observation against such patterns within the narration, they highlight a system of confession that organized AME missionary practices of representation. All accounts staged surprise, misconceptions, and corrections. This practice not only marked where prior knowledge of Africa was wrong, uncertain, or deficient. More importantly, it marked those points in the long history of Africa’s scientific and sentimental representations at which AME missionaries could begin to tell their own, and presumably more authentic stories about the continent. Many authors used the beginning of their story to assert, quite literally, deficiencies in their observations as the decisive capacity to produce new insights. A typical introduction, taken from Levi J. Coppin, the first AME bishop to live in South Africa for a few years, stated: No attempt is made in these brief pages to give a history of South Africa and its cosmopolitan people, but to note some things the result of personal observation, which the historian … would very naturally neglect. … It is our purpose, … to give an account of some of those things which pertain to everyday life of the people, and which serve as the key to their real character.87

86 87

Gregg, “Land of the Southern Cross,” 20. Coppin, preface to Observations.

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The gap in the historical record that Coppin meant to occupy privileged the subjective over the ‘scientific’ perspective, and it made the inner life of the flock, as opposed to its visible exterior, the object of investigation. Coppin’s account thus shifted its focus away from empiricism to the type of introspection introduced by Smith’s Glimpses. Rather than strive to achieve a comprehensive historical account of Africa, Coppin argued, there was value in limiting the scope of the observer’s judgments, as well as various categories, and time and space. He thus carved out the domain of knowledge and a practice that could alone be possessed by the figure of the African American missionary. With Foucault we may call this domain a “subjugated” knowledge of Africa, a knowledge that was fragmented, particular, local, differential, and incapable of unanimity.88 By claiming to produce a genuine knowledge of Africa, AME missionaries could stop fashioning themselves solely in relation to European sciences of the visible. As the mission to write about Africa became a key element of their missionary practices, they could begin to approximate the unknown terrains of the human interior. After all, exploring and representing the inner particularities of African people provided not only incentives for travel but also sales arguments in a growing market for black missionary travel writing. With their claims that Africa could neither be seen from afar nor systematized as a whole, books such as Glimpses and Observations carved out a niche for themselves in a vast field of transatlantic knowledge production. AME-related book critics from the United States and Africa endorsed each other’s accounts as “carefully and beautifully written,” as supplying information “sadly needed … to make effective entree to the African mentality and life,” as being of practical value to “correctly interpret their aspirations and hopes,” and as refreshing, because they did not pretend to provide “an exhaustive study of all phases of … native life.”89 They underscored that each individual account was a “valuable source of information,” both because it was individual and authentic, and because it concerned only those parts of Africa with which the author had “personal contact.”90 African American readers’ growing attention for the partial truths delivered by the participant-observer gave AME missionaries an authority to speak for Africa that could not easily be claimed by other leaders of the diaspora, such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey. As Charles A. Bodie has shown, between 1890 and 1930, it became difficult for the renowned spokespersons of the race to dismiss the descriptions articulated by these groups. What black missionaries like Turner and Smith said about the continent carried the inherCf. Foucault Power, Knowledge, 81–82. F. A. Osam Pinanko, foreword to Gold Coast at a Glance by Alleyne, 3rd page of unpaginated foreword. 90 Reverdy C. Ransom, qtd. in acknowledgements of Dawn in Bantuland by White and White, 16. 88 89

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ent credibility of being rooted in direct experience and was enhanced by the prestige and authority of the church they represented.91 Even though the popularity of the AME Church as a political organization was superseded by the rise of pan-African movements in the 1920s and 1930s, it was still a major black organization that for generations had been the cornerstone of black community life, offering avenues for mobility and serving as a crucible for collective action on many fronts. To conclude this chapter, it is thus apt to draw attention to the fact that, when he began to push for the opening of a new front on the other side of the Atlantic, Turner was well aware of the power of his institution. In 1881, he urged Benjamin Tanner, the editor of the Christian Recorder, to use his “powerful pen to reform our church”: providing accurate information about Africa would, he argued, break the “missionary apathy” of “thousands of ministers, and through the ministers, hundreds of people.” Long before he put his demand into practice, Turner had thus developed the notion that giving “people a knowledge” was basic to “enflame” the spirit of missions.92 ◆◆◆ These sections have analyzed the genealogy of the writings that followed Turner’s demand. Over the first half of the twentieth century, their contents, structure, and circulation took the shape of a black Atlantic missionary tradition. As opposed to the social and political conditions of blacks in the United States, this tradition was informed by a conscious engagement with the structures of knowledge and travel performances of European bourgeois subjects. In addition, AME accounts constructed through the predominant episteme of Western knowledge a relationship between the traveler and the traveled area. The maintenance of this connection involved the negotiation of the ancient relationship between African Americans and Africa, as well as the novel perspective of the African American subject on site; authors therefore styled themselves as Africa explorers and experts of human interiors – two vectors that evolved along with their movement across the Atlantic and that intersected in a system of confession. Their image of Africa was influenced by the imperial ‘eyes/Is’ of famous adventurers, and representations of a dark continent. However, texts like Glimpses neither emulated nor resisted the colonial gaze: they cut across ingrained patterns of racial divides and solidarities, as well as the related missionary traditions on behalf of what they deemed sober investigation. Overall, the rubrics of seeing and knowing Africa, which AME travel literature developed, illustrate that the self-assertion of the on-site observer was an end in Charles A. Bodie, “The Images of Africa in the Black American Press, 1890–1930” (PhD diss., Indiana University, 1975), 157. 92 Turner, “Missionaries to Africa, 1881,” 50–51. 91

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itself, for it produced knowledge about the contact zone their authors entered. Taking into account that the consolidation of AME missionaries’ relationship to Africa was not based on ideology but was instead an effect of contingent intersections of movements, structures of knowledge, and writing practices related to colonial Africa, AME travelogues traced the paths of blacks who chose to both leave the country and return as African American missionaries.

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4. African American Missionaries at Home: Colonial Africa and the Black Metropole

4.1. African American Missionaries at Home

S

ince 1900, AME missionary communication structures, which consisted of the movements and writings of individual AME actors, had made it possible to pass on knowledge about Africa. This dynamic was more responsible for the development of an Afro-Atlantic connection than Allen’s idea of the name “African,” or the church’s national political agenda of black emancipation. As a colonized continent, Africa was an integral element in the development of AME missionary practices; this development, therefore, cannot be understood within the national frame. The following chapter shifts the emphasis from the transnational dynamic of the black Atlantic missionary tradition to the processes of its translation in a national context. I argue that the effects of AME travelers’ Africa experience can be traced through their concepts of home, the sites and scales that I suggest understanding as elements of a ‘counterculture of diasporic pan-Africanism.’ I use this phrase as analogous to Gilroy’s conception of a black counterculture of modernity that was shaped beyond pan-Africanism, but with the key distinction that, in my analysis, focus is placed on black people who developed a diasporic consciousness based on their contact with African and colonial cultures.1 The following pages bring into view the elements of this counterculture at three sites of home: first, AME missionaries’ home lives; second, the home church’s missionary institutions; and third, the black American community. By looking at shifting concepts of home across these three sites, I aim to idenGilroy describes pan-Africanism as “the strategic choices forced on black movements and individuals who were embedded in national political cultures.” Gilroy, Black Atlantic, 19. 1

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tify the locations and scales upon which missionaries’ Africa experience bore fruit in the United States. As scholarship on the relationship between African Americans and Africans indicates, even though they formed a minority, black missionaries shared the function of connecting Africa and the black American metropole with pan-African agitators.2 The problems and potentialities they saw in that same connection for defining black notions of home were quite different, yet no less culturally profound. The first, and perhaps most obvious, clue to the emergence of a counterculture of diasporic pan-Africanism lies in the ways in which AME travelers made sense back home of their Africa experience. As I indicated earlier, some of them not only documented their travel in writing but also included their travel writing in their autobiographies. Rather than evoke the black Atlantic missionary tradition, autobiographical descriptions took the experience of blacks in the United States as their starting point, as titles such as Unwritten History, From Slavery to the Bishopric, or Behind the Black Curtain suggest.3 In order to illustrate the themes and problems that occurred with the translation of Africa experiences in a national context, I focus here on the story of Levi J. Coppin (1848–1923). Coppin was the first African American AME bishop assigned to South Africa since Henry McNeal Turner had established the field. More importantly, Coppin was the first AME member to publish memoirs after living in Africa for several years. The significance of the text is underscored by its publication in 1919, a year when W. E. B. Du Bois convened the first PanAfrican Congress in Paris, when Marcus Garvey established the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in New York, and “when Harlem was in vogue.”4 Given the rise at that time of a pan-African consciousness in the United States, Coppin’s memoirs are a key example of how African Americans who had been in Africa began to look backward, into their own homes. Unwritten History

Coppin wrote his memoirs, Unwritten History, in the spring of 1904, fifteen years after his return from Cape Town, where he had served for four years as a resident bishop. The account was preceded by one that he had written immediately after his homecoming in 1905 and that dealt exclusively with his Africa experience. His Observations of Persons and Things in South Africa highlighted his insights into the “everyday life of the people,” which had given him the “key to their real character” and stories “the historian would very naturally neglect.”5 Drake, “Negro Americans,” 664. See under Coppin, Heard, and Wright in the section “printed primary materials” in the works cited. 4 David Levering Lewis, When Harlem Was in Vogue (New York, 1981). 5 See my analysis of Coppin in Section 3.3. 2 3

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Unwritten History, as the title claimed, was constructed according to a similar narrative. “Of course,” Coppin announced in his preface, “much of the ‘Story’ is omitted, but things that impressed me most, and facts that seem to me most important among the ‘Unwritten’ things, are noted.”6 His reflection upon his time as a bishop in South Africa brought into view the distinct interplay of facts and omissions he aimed to address: I filled some lecture engagements, as means of collecting some funds to assisting the work over there. Of course the subject of my lectures was: ‘Africa,’ or ‘South Africa,’ or ‘The Dark Continent.’ It is amazing, how much one can say upon a subject that he knows absolutely nothing about. But are there not books upon every imaginable subject? Yes, verily: ‘of making many books, there is no end.’ I soon collected a small library on various phases of Africa, its peoples etc. Those books contained a great deal of information, but most of them contained also many errors. This is such a large, interesting and important subject, that it is difficult for either a white or a colored writer to avoid being influenced by prejudice. The white man sees the African full of faults and deficiencies, which may be true; but certainly not all of the truth: while the colored man, in trying to correct the misrepresentations so apparent, may incline to the opposite extreme. In the books I read, I saw much about the Kafirs [sic], and so, supposing that they were the principal tribes among whom I would have to work, I informed myself concerning them, and lectured about them before leaving America. Now imagine my mortification when I found that there was no such tribe on the continent. The word originated among the Mohammedans, and meant, something like ‘infidel’: one outside of the faith: no reference to race at all … . It finally came to be used opprobriously, just as in America the word ‘nigger’ is used.7

Viewed against the backdrop of the black Atlantic missionary tradition, Coppin’s Africa experience was typical. Like other AME travelers before him, Coppin staged a pedagogical moment by disclosing how his physical proximity to Africa guided him through a universe of misrepresentations, manifested his own misconceptions, and then caused him embarrassment in his actual encounter. Yet Unwritten History was not meant to assert his view of Africa in Africa. Rather, the book addressed the role his Africa experience played in his life as a black man in the United States. Similar to the biographies of most first-generation AME missionaries, Coppin’s life was marked by his constant traversal of environments and activities structured by relations of race and power, and he almost always expeLevi J. Coppin, preface to Unwritten History (Philadelphia, 1919). Coppin, Unwritten History, 312–14. For an in-depth analysis of this passage, see Leigh Anne Duck, “The Textual Atlantic: Race, Time, and Representation in the Writings of AME Bishop Levi Jenkins Coppin,” in The American South and the Atlantic World, ed. Brian Ward, Martyn Bone, and William A. Link, 170–94 (Gainesville, 2013). 6 7

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rienced those relations in their most extreme form. Coppin saw both slavery and abolition in Delaware, the least hospitable place in the Union for black people prior to the Civil War.8 He saw in Virginia and the Carolinas, the heart of the New Cotton South, the racial terrors of the post-Emancipation period.9 Around the turn of the century, he witnessed the arrival of the migrants who fled the South to Philadelphia, the city that emerged as one of the most visible black metropoles in the North.10 Finally, he chose to live in Washington, the national capital, where segregation determined much of the city’s outlook, and where he was regarded as “the most influential African Methodist” for over twenty years.11 Coppin explored the landscape of African American resistance along with the changing rural and urban settings of the United States. In Philadelphia, he managed the Frederick Douglas Memorial Hospital, one of the few medical centers run by black people. He was active in Du Bois’s National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), as well as in Alexander Walters’s (1858–1917) and Timothy T. Fortune’s National Afro-American Council, organizations that up to the mid-twentieth century provided the most important training grounds for civil rights activists.12 Such memberships flanked his own initiatives. In Philadelphia, he helped found the Women’s Christian Alliance and the Colored Protective Association, two nonprofit mutual aid societies created to integrate Southern migrants into the city’s growing black community. His activities on the other side of the Atlantic were somewhat similar. Between 1900 and 1904, he saw the British conquest of South Africa after the Boer War, founded a Masonic Lodge for blacks in Cape Town, worked with the rising independent Ethiopian Church movement, and supported his second wife (out of three), Fanny Jackson Coppin (d. 1913), in her work among South African women.13 Considering Coppin’s experience of and agitation against circum-Atlantic structures of white oppression, Unwritten History could have made a powerful narrative of pan-Africanism. As much scholarship has shown, marginalized people often constructed an essential group identity to counteract their nonLocated in the Chesapeake Bay area, Delaware was one of the largest slave-trading harbors in North America. Thornton, Africa and Africans, 317. 9 On the transition from forced to free labor, see Frederick Cooper, Thomas C. Holt, and Rebecca J. Scott, eds., Beyond Slavery: Explorations of Race, Labor and Citizenship in Postemancipation Societies (Chapel Hill, 2000); and Jarod Roll, Spirit of Rebellion: Labor and Religion in the New Cotton South (Urbana, 2010). 10 On the AME Church in Philadelphia, see Gregg, Sparks from the Anvil of Oppression. 11 Wright, Bishops, 148. 12 Scholarship increasingly investigates the extent to which the U. S. South was such training ground. See Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919– 1950 (New York, 2008); and Shawn Leigh Alexander, An Army of Lions: The Civil Rights Struggle Before the NAACP (Philadelphia, 2012). 13 Wright, Bishops, 148–49. 8

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or misrepresentation by others.14 In the United States, the early 1920s were a period during which such a group identity flourished. Powerful black organizations like the UNIA and the NAACP were beginning to defend the interests of their race. Many race leaders, including Ida B. Wells, Julia Cooper, Marcus Garvey, and W. E. B. Du Bois, also defended blacks outside of the United States. This pan-African moment manifested itself in a number of international black alliances. The Pan-African Congresses spoke on behalf of the world’s colonized to the European metropole. A more radical wing, which formed around the Afro-Trinidadian George Padmore and Cyril Briggs’s African Blood Brotherhood, allied itself with the Communist International to fight imperialism. Another section, lodged among the proletarian nationalists of the Garvey movement, adhered to “African Fundamentalism,” an ideology that derived from the vision to build a racial empire upon which “the sun shall never set.”15 Much black postwar internationalism revolved around, in David Scott’s opinion, a romantic “longing for the anticolonial revolution.”16 This longing involved the patronizing gesture to speak for Africa that characterized political movements as well as the nostalgia for an African past that was typical for cultural ones. Literature and art productions of the 1920s heralded the Harlem Renaissance with their focus on blacks’ African heritage. And a growing class of black intellectuals began to dig for their history in Africa in order to insert into the historical record black contributions to the making of the United States and world civilization.17 In the United States, earlier connotations of the term “African” – including black inferiority, enslavement, and second-class citizenship – were thus gradually replaced with an image of Africa that symbolized an ancient civilization, a culturally rich history, and the rightful homeland of the black race. Although diverse groups and classes imagined the continent in many different ways, the dominant narrative has it that they all were somehow “emphasizing similarities and encouraging unity.”18 In this sense, as Clare Corbould argues, blacks in the United States were Becoming African Americans (2009). On the role of strategic essentialism among subalterns as a precondition for organizing their resistance, see Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing Historiography,” in The Spivak Reader: Selected Works of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, ed. Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, 203–36 (New York, 1996). 15 Garvey, “African Fundamentalism,” 158. This paragraph is drawn from Anderson, Eyes off the Prize; Kelly, “But a Local Phase,” 1053–54; Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition (London, 1983); and Minkah, In the Cause of Freedom. 16 Scott, Conscripts of Modernity, 65. 17 Steven Watson, The Harlem Renaissance: Hub of African-American Culture, 1920–1930 (New York, 1995); on the role of history in black identity politics, see Wilson Jeremiah Moses, Afrotopia: The Roots of African American Popular History (Cambridge, UK, 1998); and William M. Banks, Black Intellectuals: Race and Responsibility in American Life (New York, 1996). 18 Sylvia M. Jacobs, The African Nexus: Black American Perspectives on the European Partitioning of Africa, 1880–1920 (Westport, 1981), 13. 14

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Thus, when Coppin claimed to be telling an Unwritten History, much had already been written and said about the race and its relation to Africa. As the description of his encounter suggests, Coppin was aware that Western imperialism and African culture were the themes that concerned his fellow black Americans. Yet the intimation of his mortification revealed that it was not easy for him to translate his Africa experience into anticolonial agitation or the prevalent imaginations about African origins. Instead of increasing his knowledge, or his authority as a speaker and agitator, the books he read seemed to diminish his ability to perceive, describe, and act in the world he inhabited. Coppin realized this alienation when he mistook the “Kafirs” for a tribe and found out that the term was commensurate with “nigger.” In Africa, he could therefore find neither the tribe nor the race he had anticipated. In the United States, he did not know on behalf of which tribe or race he would contest the misrepresentation.19 Drawing from his Africa experience, and from his inability to adopt the racial essentialisms blacks and whites had constructed, Coppin resorted to a different form of knowledge in his own writing. Coppin stated in the preface that Unwritten History was a story told from “memory” alone. As such, Coppin conceded, it could not be “verified” by any other kind of written authority, the prime form of Western cultural production. Nor could it be free from “omissions” and “repetitions,” he argued, as these were characteristics of memories and therefore precisely the elements that made his text both “historic and real.”20 With this writing strategy, Unwritten History invited the reader to glance into Coppin’s homes, the places where he built his manhood and which he shared with a number of women, including mothers, lovers, wives, and daughters. Coppin constructed the book as a highly intimate narrative and used his domestic life to trace a much broader, racial essence. Through this perspective, the home illustrated what was racially “innermost”: one’s private family and sexual relations.21 From there, he attacked Western epistemic violence. Unwritten History placed women at the center of the story of his race and thus Cf. Coppin, Unwritten History, 312–14. Coppin, preface to Unwritten History. Coppin’s text offers an interesting lens for thinking through what postcolonial scholarship has termed as “third space” to designate the impossibility to determine the essence or the precise location of a culture, race, or nation. Cf. Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London, 1994). With Gilroy, Coppin’s storytelling may be described as part of a black Atlantic “politics of authenticity” that was typical of cultural productions that emerged in settings with a strong oral culture, therefore involving nonlinearity, inconsistency, repetition, and rupture as stylistic characteristics. Gilroy argues that these characteristics demonstrated the “unspeakable terrors of the slave experience” beginning with enforcing blacks’ illiteracy and therefore could not shape a counterdiscourse but a counterculture that challenged Western writing conventions. Gilroy, Black Atlantic, 73. Hip hop studies continue to explore the claim of “keepin’ it real” as a black politics of authenticity. The groundbreaking study is Tricia Rose, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (Hanover, 1994). 21 I draw particularly on Stoler’s argument that sexual and family relations were a sign of what 19 20

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reinscribed females into the history of Western imperialism, which had long involved the silencing of women in the historical record.22 At the same time, the history of the women that surrounded him unfurled a narrative of male oppression spanning from American slavery to the colonization of Africa in the twentieth century. Coppin’s focus on females, however, did not victimize them in favor of a masculine reflex to protect the ‘weaker sex,’ and by extension, Africa as a motherland. Instead of embracing an imperial role model of masculinity, Coppin foregrounded how women helped emancipate him from ideals of masculinity that aspired to subordinate women. His response to the unwritten history of women was a civilizing mission that aimed to draw men into the home and to free women from the home across the Atlantic. Unwritten History presents us with a rare opportunity to demonstrate how the retreat into the domestic sphere was a strategy that black American men had at hand to assert their masculinity. Because this strategy differed from the pan-African vision of the home of the black race in Africa, the following sections view Coppin’s autobiography as an element of what I here label a counterculture of diasporic pan-Africanism: a black missionary culture that developed concepts of home and gender based on its Africa experience. Mapping Masculinities Across the Atlantic

Coppin was born in 1848 in a log cabin in Fredericks Town, Maryland, as one of seven children.23 His parents, Jane and John Coppin, were born free because Coppin’s grandmother was free, and children inherited their mother’s status as birthright. While his family escaped slavery through clever marriage politics, they also inhabited a marginalized social status defined by the “unwritten laws” of Maryland, which denied school education and hospitality to blacks. Coppin’s social background prompted him to mimic President Abraham Lincoln’s masculine saga of the “Log Cabin Statesmen,” which showed that famous men could come from “these primitive dwelling places of earth’s lowly.” Within his family, Coppin identified his father as his role model of a man of good taste and judgment. Most important for developing Coppin’s sense of manhood, however, was his mother. Her “instinct” and her “inspired vision,” he wrote, were crucial to make him a man.24 Watching his parents, Coppin began to grasp two philosophies of life, which for him were related to the two sexes. His prudent, hard-working father treated was racially essential and therefore vital to imperial politics. See Ann Laura Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule (Berkeley, 2010), 9. 22 Spivak argues that Western epistemic violence was particularly destructive to the representation of women. Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak,” 294–308. 23 Wright, Bishops, 147. 24 Coppin, Unwritten History, 11.

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his wife with respect, while his aspirations for his family and society were limited. Jane Coppin, in contrast, insisted upon teaching her children how to read and write, and upon being generous toward neighbors and kin. Although this meant breaking the “unwritten law of Maryland,” Coppin thought of her as a courageous woman, who combined uplift with Christian convictions, inspiration, and vision.25 Unlike John Coppin’s authority, Jane Coppin’s own version transcended the confines of the family’s household. She used moral and Christian principles to withstand racial subjugation, which convinced Coppin that it was “the hand that rocks the cradle [that] rules the world.”26 At one point, Coppin left his parents to stay with relatives in Wilmington, Delaware. The move was fortunate for it brought him closer to what he began to discern as a “model, Christian home.” The housewife where he was staying impressed him as “a model woman, and housekeeper and Christian” and her husband as “especially affectionate.” Because both were Christian, Coppin concluded, “the moral atmosphere was pure, and love abounded, and the influence could only be salutary.” It was in view of the affectionate Christian man that Coppin became conscious of his hankering to be such a husband.27 Alongside a positive sense of conjugal sexual relationships and Christian matriarchy in the private space, Coppin’s juvenile manhood developed in view of the patriarchal family structures that were considered the norm in the United States. Based on the examples of his mother and relatives, Coppin challenged both black and white masculinity by pointing to the role men played in suppressing women. He contended that overvaluing male leadership caused the omission of the quintessential role mothers played as a force of uplift, which was particularly important for the course of black emancipation. Fathers, in contrast, seemed to epitomize a different unwritten history. Coppin stated that fatherhood was, more often than not, related to the sexual abuse of women, a crime that up to that point remained “nameless.” In his view, the problem of sexual violence began with slaveholders’ overbearing concerns to perpetuate their “stock” and was common among white and black men, since masters and slaves alike committed the crime against black women. Although not called a “crime” in the legal sense, Coppin argued that rape and sexual abuse were evident in the stereotyping of the black man as “woefully wanting in his regard for sexual purity” and in the enormous economic benefit “proud Anglo-Saxon[s]” gained from selling their own “flesh and blood.” Coppin’s condemnation of fathers as rapists was nuanced in its consideration of racial solidarity. Sexual violence, he argued, “degraded the master even more than the slave.” However, he 25 26 27

Ibid., 14. Ibid., 31. Ibid., 210.

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could not condone the silent pact whereby rape was considered nonexistent as long as one did not “get caught.” Coppin instead advocated an understanding of rape as “[t]he crime for which any man deserves to die, according to the law, of course.”28 He here underscored a gender bias that underlay the rule of law commonly associated with civilization and called into question the superiority of those societies that concealed the sexual violence of men in favor of accepting them as the moral leaders of their families, their races, their societies, and even their nations. Coppin’s negative view of American males informed his view of Africa. “I say Mother Land,” he stated, “because the amalgamations Americana [sic] that slave conditions brought about gave us so many American fathers, that should such offspring go to Africa, it certainly would not be going to a Father Land.”29 Following his own assignment in 1900 to Africa, Coppin correspondingly envisioned his mission. He anticipated that the colonialists would spread sexual misconduct under the banner of Western civilization and appealed to the British to be recognized as a marriage officer. As such, he hoped to be able to bring “natives and coloreds” into legally binding monogamous relationships. Because these groups were often excluded from colonial Christian church life, Coppin articulated the bond of marriage as a way to encourage the “lowly and the lowliest” to regulate their “domestic relations in accordance with Christian doctrine, and in keeping with the demands of our civilized age.”30 At the same time, Coppin’s time in Africa brought him new insights into male sexuality. With the African custom of polygamy never far from view, he could neither reinforce the stereotype of black promiscuity, nor could he support the idea that Africans were uncivilized. For Coppin the custom affirmed, first, that “the verdict of the world civilized and uncivilized as expressed by action, [was that] it is not good for man to be alone” and, second, that not being alone was not necessarily synonymous with an inclination to a monogamous relationship. Rather, polygamy seemed to be in tune with a tabooed desire for several women at once. Framed as a “natural bent of man,” Coppin began to appreciate the African custom as corresponding to an aspect of male sexuality that was significantly different from what he had previously rejected as the crime of slavery. Polygamous relationships, Coppin observed, were characterized by a remarkable “strictness”: they regulated sexual misconduct in a way that actually enhanced the “sanctity of the rite” of marriage, and they prevented Africans from engaging in rape, divorce, and adultery.31 As a result, Coppin found some comfort in the insight that the Western ideal of monogamy could be reworked with non-Western examples from Af28 29 30 31

Ibid., 41–42. Ibid., 309. Coppin, Observations, 124. Ibid., 113.

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rica. His positive sense of polygamy was clouded primarily by the observation that “Africa is not unlike other portions of the world in its habit of holding the women back.” After all, the worldwide subordination of women strengthened his conviction that the spread of Christianity had to be a mission to herald “women’s emancipation everywhere.”32 Coppin’s clarion call to restore a manhood not gained at the expense of women sounded global. But, according to Unwritten History, the construction of such manhood began at home, within the arrangements of one’s family. Domestic Bliss

Coppin’s Unwritten History ended with a description of his family life, a sphere he called “Domestic Bliss,” and one which he considered to be the backbone of his career and his own masculinity. With three marriages total, and several infatuations to boot, he asserted his rejection of patriarchy and disclosed his demand for women – not promiscuously, but rather as a method to discipline him at home. The women Coppin shared his home with worked as industrial teachers, AME missionaries, and physicians. According to Coppin, they were the quintessence of Christian emancipation. He was convinced that their marked intellect and public appeal made them indispensable forces in the course of human uplift, including his own. While his first marriage ended with the tragic death of his wife and his son, the second lasted nearly a lifetime. Fanny Jackson Coppin had a “fixed course in life, and stubbornly maintained it, until it became a fixed habit.”33 According to Coppin, her strictness almost prevented their romance and, to be sure, it served to forestall male domination in their relationship. During their childless marriage, she remained in the classroom, advanced the work of the AME Church’s WPMMS, established a girls’ dormitory, and launched a campaign for industrial education in Philadelphia – all before, Coppin emphasized with reference to Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute, “it became real propaganda.”34 Coppin admitted that he would have liked for his wife to give up her public responsibilities and that he attempted to “eliminate [them] gradually.”35 His assignment in Africa seemed to be an opportunity to withdraw her from teaching. And yet Coppin described her as Coppin, Unwritten History, 363. Ibid., 356. 34 The AME Church claimed to be the originator of industrial education on various occasions, usually in competition with Booker T. Washington. It is thus interesting to consider Coppin’s claim that it was a woman who introduced industrial training. Coppin, Unwritten History, 359. See also Michael Rudolph West, The Education of Booker T. Washington: American Democracy and the Idea of Race Relations (New York, 2006). 35 Coppin, Unwritten History, 357–58. 32 33

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constantly working to organize missionary societies, to train local women in Christian work, and to travel from Cape Town as far as to Bulawayo in Rhodesia.36 Although this was not exactly what he had envisioned, Coppin liked to note “with special emphasis” that African women had learned from her that Christianity was not “simply something to believe or recite, but, something to be, and to do.”37 Their time in the African field was followed by eight years of Fanny Jackson Coppin’s slow decay. Coppin eagerly stressed that her retreat to “the house” was an “enforced retirement” caused not by illness, but by the gradual breaking down of a constitution that had tirelessly and faithfully responded to “the call of duty.” Eulogies later confirmed that Fanny Jackson Coppin stood for good character, purity, thoroughness, and righteousness, thus serving as an “inspiration of thousands.”38 While sharing the urge of her eulogists to acknowledge women’s public achievements, Coppin also wanted his readers to pick up a lesson that concerned male duty in the realms of marital intimacy. He wrote: This seems like a strange way to express it, but what I mean is so difficult to express. We had learned to live within each other. … Before [Fanny’s decay], both lives were so busy that each could easily become absorbed in the duty at hand. At last, my ‘duty,’ and privilege and pleasure, was to live alone for her who had lived for so many; and she, now unable to live the old life that was as broad as humanity itself, could only live for and depend on me.39

Coppin elaborated his vision of male domestic duty with the example of his third wife, physician Melissa E. Thompson. After Fanny Jackson Coppin’s death, he resolved to not go after other women. But friends who observed his moral decay – including sleeping in, smoking, and decreasing intellectual interest – advised him to seek “companionship at home.”40 Coppin narrated his infatuation with Thompson as a love at first sight story, which was fueled by the professional manner in which she presented herself in public. Referring to a speech she had given at an AME annual conference, Coppin noted that it was “free from that sophomoric air, and tone that so often characterized the speech of professional people.” This, he emphasized, was remarkable, as men were “so Ibid., 362. Important works that show how African American women used their identity as homemakers and mothers to transcend the domestic sphere are Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, 2nd ed. (New York, 2000); and bell hooks, Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics (Boston, 1990). On women missionaries, see Bettye Collier-Thomas, Jesus, Jobs, and Justice: African American Women and Religion (New York, 2010), 215–27. 37 Coppin, Unwritten History, 363. 38 Ibid., 364–65. 39 Ibid., 367. 40 Ibid., 368. 36

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inclined to either discount the ability of the woman physician or to regard her as, at least, being on trial … that it would not have been a great wonder had this young woman [tried] to utilize the opportunity to prove that her certificate was held by merit.”41 The story of Coppin’s third marriage again castigated male sexism in public while praising the bliss of men’s domestic duty. By World War I, Thompson gave birth to Coppin’s first daughter, whom he named Theodosia, that is, a “Divine gift.” Coppin called the child “a rollicking ‘Tom-boy girl,’ … decidedly precocious; naturally spoiled,” but lucky, because she had “a wise Mother.”42 The depiction epitomized Coppin’s philosophy of embracing apparent contradictions as natural traits that were as such divine and served to underscore his juvenile admiration of the moral superiority of Christian women and mothers as the actual moral leaders of the race. Disclosing his intimate relationships with females in all their various roles allowed Coppin to underscore that racial mothering was not limited to one’s own children, but it required women to be active outside of the home. Correspondingly, black masculinity had to be shaped at home and dismantled from notions of sexual aggression and Western dominance. On the one hand, Coppin’s domestic bliss thus asserted an ideal of modern monogamy, as both sexes used the domestic sphere to mutually unleash otherwise restricted potentials, namely, male capacities for love and affection and female capacities for public leadership. On the other hand, Coppin’s disclosure of the domestic concerned the innermost parts of his race. It filled the gaps in knowledge that existed in the histories of black mothers, the unnamed sexual abuse involved with slavery, and the polygamy of African men that was taboo in the West. By framing these elements as unwritten, Coppin pointed out where the epistemic violence of Western imperialism had destroyed black males’ ability to express their masculinity other than in the subordination of women. Coppin’s call to domesticate black males by subjecting them to emancipated women, in turn, installed the home as a new avenue for both sexes to subvert, through intimacy, black and white imperial masculinities. Coppin’s Africa experience served in this narrative to reinterpret the stereotype of black promiscuity. Constructed as a natural trait, male sexuality helped legitimize polygamous forms of cohabitation, because they served to regulate the misconduct of rape, divorce, and extramarital sex. Combined with an appraisal of Christian marriage, Coppin applied these beliefs to his own home life as he entered into a sequence of monogamous relationships with emancipated women. Coppin’s ideal black Christian manhood thus aspired to both African and female role models in a non-pan-African way. He grounded his relationship to Africa in new understandings of male sexuality and morality instead 41 42

Ibid., 372–73. Ibid., 375.

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of imagining himself as a son of an African motherland. And he suggested homemaking, as opposed to going home to Africa, as the essential civilizing mission of his race because it promised to undermine the power structures that suppressed the vital potentials only women had to offer. Over the next decades, Coppin’s sexual moral code remained an important subtext in the Christian black Atlantic. Drawing on similar experiences, many more AME missionaries redefined the relationship between men and women, home and foreign, civilization and savagery, and missions and Africa. All of these cultural elements pertained to an idea of the conservation of a racial essence. None of these, however, essentialized the relationship between African Americans and Africa.43 4.2. Manifest Black Male Domesticity: Institutional Reconfigurations

Next to an unwritten history of his race, Levi J. Coppin’s emphasis on the domestic sphere as the training ground for a nonimperial manhood hinted at the problem that his generation of Africa missionaries tended to assert imperial aspirations. By 1920, two decades after Henry McNeal Turner and Charles S. Smith had pioneered the exploration of the African field, it became clear that many had followed their paths, with an unwelcome focus on what Turner once called a “quest of the summit of distinction.”44 The appeal of the imperial explorer was noticeable in other memoirs, too. John A. Gregg (1877–1953), who succeeded Coppin in South Africa, considered his Africa experience an example of the saying that a man’s ambitions are “the prophesies of his abilities.”45 And Henry B. Parks (c. 1856–1936), the missionary secretary who oversaw at the turn of the century these pioneers’ first steps on African soil, was inclined to think about Africa as the new “colonial possession of the Missionary Department of the A. M. E. Church.”46 Since 1900, Africa had emerged as a new domain of highly skilled and high-ranking male church staff, usually from the bishopric. In this, they not only dominated their disciples’ perception of Africa but they often controlled the church’s public sphere, as well. Bishops were highly visible leaders. To the home church, they appeared to be impressive, educated, eloquent, and intelligent writers and orators who were at times “outspoken” and at times “aggressive and autocratic in their tone.” The prime image of the female missionary I borrow this phrase from Barnes, “Christian Black Atlantic.” Barnes emphasizes that transatlantic conversations among black religious agents involved a critical engagement. 44 Turner, introduction, in Glimpses by Smith, 11–12. 45 Gregg, “Land of the Southern Cross,” 9. 46 Parks, Africa, 39. 43

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was accordingly that of the bishop’s wife. Like Fanny Jackson Coppin, they were considered helpers in the home or servants to the community, primarily instructing women in sewing, cooking, mother craft, and hygiene, often in less prominent areas in the interior.47 Behind the scenes, as unpublished letters from the field illustrate, assignments in Africa tended to turn the search for distinction into fierce rivalries among men. Missionary correspondences spoke of the competition for funding and prestige in the home church, of mutual suspicion, and of explicit accusation. Many bishops in the field imputed that bishops at home were trying to impede or “embarrass” their work abroad. Others defamed the needs articulated by lower-ranked fieldworkers as “wrong propaganda,” which was directed at winning the sympathy of female auxiliaries alone.48 While it was easy for the pioneers of the black Atlantic missionary tradition to reconcile their Africa experience with the authoritative style of European explorers, it grew more difficult for them and their successors to vouch for their leadership regarding Christian and racial ideals of unity at home. The rise of the new male generation of Africa missionaries was enhanced by the fact that they tapped into a field of AME activities, primarily constructed around the special mission of African American women. Female service was at the core of most of the church’s philanthropic contributions. Women engaged in Sunday school and church work, temperance movements, the building of hospitals, orphanages and homes for working girls, and raised funds for various purposes. The female agencies of the WHFMS and the WPMMS, for instance, were central auxiliaries of the AME Church Missionary Department from 1892. Both organizations played a leading role in bringing to life at the grassroots level a mission consciousness. By 1920, they convened conferences and mass meetings relating to missionary issues in every American state.49 Although women were excluded from the prestige of the ordained ministry, they had established a massive nonpartisan basis of power. Forming a majority of more than half of all church members (350,000 out of 600,000 church members), their influence upon the church lay in translating religious commitment into concrete practices of racial uplift, which set a lasting tone for AME Church extension.50 As the sex-based divide of the church began to reveal an imbalance in ambition, the AME Church felt compelled to react. In 1920, the General Conference issued the foundation of an institution that focused on men, called the Men’s Missionary League. According to its constitution, the idea to form the I have drawn these adjectives from the biographies provided in Wright, Bishops. Many entries contain information about bishops’ wives. For Fanny Jackson Coppin, see Wright, Bishops, 149. 48 E. H. Coit to M. F. Handy, December 15, 1927. SCRBC, AME CR, box 43, folder “Corr. Mary F. Handy, 1927.” 49 For details, see Section 2.4. 50 Dodson, Engendering Church, 59; Collier-Thomas, Jesus, 188–89. 47

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Figure 1.6. Official Logo of the Men’s Missionary League. Source: Voice of Missions (August 1920): 17.

League was inspired primarily by the awareness that “our good women have done more in a year than we [men] have done in a decade.” Behind the League’s praise of women’s achievements stood the acknowledgement of the church’s shortcomings in generating interest among men in missionary work. To balance the disparity, the League built its understanding of missions on the basic aim to achieve “a closer and stronger brotherhood in our Christian duty and human uplift generally” while specifying the role men should play within it.51 In terms of operation, it was argued that men would implement ideas, schemes, and plans that were “purely modern and scientific.” In terms of ideals, they were supposed to exemplify the “real brotherhood of man” by including in their brotherhood “helpfulness and inter-dependence – one toward one anConstitution and By-Laws of the Men Missionary League of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (New York, 1920), 3. In the church’s accounts, the spelling varies between Men and Men’s Missionary League. 51

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other [with] our brother man in Asia, in Africa, in Europe and in the Islands of the Sea.”52 The official logo of the League illustrated how men were to picture their mission (Figure 1.6). It featured a map of the world that excluded the United States but depicted Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia. The center of this men’s world was clear: Africa was marked with a shining cross with rays of light expanding outward into all compass-points. With its flavor of world evangelization, the logo encouraged League members to imagine themselves as bearers of Christianity outside of the United States, moving instead from Africa to beyond. What the picture skipped, however, was where all of this would begin. Establishing such an institution back home, the Voice made clear, was “a forward step” in that direction.53 The Construction of the Male Missionary Leader at Home

While the League’s logo suggested that the church expected men to respond best to a global vision, its official purpose spoke to the opposite. At the core of the organization stood the ideal of a male missionary, who was domestic and who could match the example of women. The League encouraged men to perform service functions, such as organizing male missionary leagues in schools and colleges, mission posts, circuits, and stations. In addition, members were obliged to participate in Sunday schools, in the Allen Christian Endeavor League, in the Men’s and Boys’ Clubs of the church, and were requested to make weekly visits to hospitals and jails. Most essential, however, were the rules and regulations the League issued for male missionaries’ home lives. They stipulated: 1. Daily consecration, private, public and prayer in the family. 2. Daily reading of the Bible in concert by his whole family . . . 3. Rule of Service. He shall seek the welfare of his brother man and especially the members of his League . . . 4. He shall make an earnest endeavor each week to bring some one nearer to Christ … and not be content until this duty is performed.54

The rules showed that, in contrast to the contemporary development in the Africa mission, male missions were meant to start at home. Their service evolved from preaching the gospel to their families, to establishing daily Christian routines, and then to serving broader communities specified as brother man. The Ibid., 4. “Men’s Missionary League of the A. M. E. Church,” Voice of Missions (July 1920): 17; and “Men’s Missionary League of Mississippi,” Christian Recorder, August 3, 1922, 3. 54 Constitution and By-Laws of the Men Missionary League, 6–7. 52 53

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“chief lever” for men to become a force “for the uplift of mankind,” the League’s constitution asserted elsewhere, was prayer and service in the “immediate surroundings.”55 The construction of the male missionary domain as a space gradually broadening from the “home-acre” to foreign countries corresponded to a specific ideal of missionary masculinity.56 The constitution declared that missionary men should preferably have internalized the “Gospel of intellect, the Gospel of industry …, the Gospel of dignified labor and frugality.” The emphasis of this evangel lay in the development of male qualities, which pertained to the everyday around them, such as circumspection, diligence, and active support.57 The League pictured the male missionary as a leader who enjoyed the confidence of his fellows less as a “brilliant man” than as someone who could “be depended upon in all emergencies.” In addition, the male missionary leader was constructed as cheerful, spiritual minded, patient, and practical, in short: “a man of action – who thinks as he acts, and acts what he thinks.”58 With reference to Methodist religious practice, men were called upon to turn “means of grace,” such as reading the scriptures, prayer, and singing, into methods of placing brotherhood above male competitiveness and rivalry. The League underscored this priority by encouraging its members to decline offers to perform public duties, such as the organization of fundraising events, because they presented opportunities to increase one’s own prestige and certainly power by accumulating financial resources. The ideal male missionary leader, the League asserted, led by the power of his example.59 As such, the male leadership the League envisioned conformed to the sexbased division the AME Church maintained in its missionary institutions. Church members felt safe assuming that the League’s “accomplishments … will compare favorably, or perhaps rival the Women’s Mite or Women’s Home and Foreign Missionary Societies.”60 But the male role the church sought to institutionalize was not structured around the classic division of labor typical of foreign missions. According to historical studies, foreign missions often helped emancipate black American men and women from their proper spheres by expanding those spheres internationally. As missionaries, black men could assert their masculinity in the spirit of imperial conquest and racial superiority, whereas black women were engulfed in mothering and domesticating the foreign.61 The League, in contrast, aimed to equip men with the traditionally 55 56 57 58 59 60 61

Ibid., 3. Ibid., 25. Ibid., 4–5. Ibid., 15. Ibid., 5–6. “Men’s Missionary League,” 17. For concepts of black manhood and imperialism, see Mitchell, “Black Man’s Burden”; and

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female qualities of care, nurture, and empathy, and by doing so expanded the male sphere into the domestic domain. Similar to Levi J. Coppin’s notion of the model Christian home in Unwritten History, the League pictured men as focusing on engaging closely with their families. To this it added an ideal of devoted leadership and their retreat from public activities, both of which required men to be able to domesticate themselves. The idea of forging a global Christian black brotherhood with Africa at its center thus had a distinct subtext in the AME Church. It entailed a reversed vector pointing to the home as the essential training ground for black male missionaries. The Reconstruction of the Black Family

The ideal of a domesticated black manhood, suggested by Levi J. Coppin’s Unwritten History and propagated by the Men’s Missionary League, corresponded to contemporary debates about the reconfiguration of the family itself. Beginning with World War I, American evangelicals generally concentrated on “the home front” as a field at risk and in the making but, other than in the black church, their warnings were directed at women alone.62 In Christian postwar discourse, the challenge to Christian womanhood consisted mainly in securing a religious education for children. Women were supposed to instill youngsters with morals concerning sex and were to implant faith and prayer in their minds as a “cumulative disciplinary force.” To make this a challenge for women alone was not without implications. That the home was considered the key site of children’s religious upbringing ultimately meant that women who “accept[ed] this challenge” accepted being the patrons of the home.63 At first, the trend to create a mother-child-home nexus reflected the increasing anxiety about the worldliness of “busy” women and denigrated those who had managed to step out of their place because of their engagement in the church.64 Since the Civil War, churchwomen had increasingly taken up national and international responsibilities. While most denominations, including the AME Church, refused to ordain women, they welcomed their help in coping with new conditions, such as immigration, urbanization, and industrialization, and in opening up new fields of operation, such as the international temTurner, “Black-white Missionary.” On expansionist aspects of domesticity, see Amy Kaplan, “Manifest Domesticity,” American Literature 70 (1998): 581–606; and Jacobs, “Three African American Women Missionaries.” 62 Sydney E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People, 2nd ed. (New Haven, 1972), 864. 63 “A Challenge to Christian Womanhood,” Voice of Missions (September 1920): 21. [Orig. publ. in Reformed Church Messenger]. 64 Ibid.; I borrow the phrase from Susan Hill Lindley, ‘You Have Stept Out of Your Place’: A History of Women and Religion in America (Louisville, 1999).

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perance movement.65 As Lucy Peabody, a leading advocate of the Interchurch World Movement and later president of the Women’s National Committee for Law Enforcement, argued somewhat cynically, it was mainly men who considered homemaking and childrearing women’s “inalienable rights.” God, she added, had drafted women’s place in the world along several lines of achievement: as much as mothers were supposed to teach, care, and tell the evangel to their own children, they were also supposed to teach the children of the world. Female understandings of mothering thus contrasted with an ideal image of women as the spiritual savior of the family at home.66 In addition to emerging debates of how female emancipation was to be reconciled with domestic family life, the question concerned the black church for more particular reasons. Several church accounts, such as Levi J. Coppin’s Unwritten History and the rules of conduct enforced by the Men’s Missionary League, indicated that one line along which black homemaking came into focus was the critical engagement with traditional notions of black manhood. Coppin remarked that such manhood was primarily shaped by slavery, when black men were forced to serve as “the common law husband of all the women in place.”67 W. E. B. Du Bois and E. Franklin Frazier confirmed in the sociological studies they conducted during the 1930s that it was not until the end of slavery that African American men began to establish their own families.68 By then, freed men were exposed to social and economic hardships, which led many to pursue careers within the black church, and which, in turn, introduced them to the practical benefits of marriage. Due to this development, as Frazier found out, black men “generally built churches as well as homes.” However, in their role as preachers, they tended to pursue relatively autocratic leadership styles in their home and community life.69 Another line in the 1920s along which the black home was considered was that of its precarious condition. Only 23 percent of black families owned homes; about 21 percent of all black households had female heads, and about 130 out of 1,000 children were born illegitimate. The employment rate of black married women in urban areas was about 50 percent on average, and thus was not only Women typically outnumbered male church members, especially among Protestants. On women’s religious activities, see Jane H. Hunter, “Women’s Mission in Historical Perspective: American Identity and Christian Internationalism,” in Competing Kingdoms, ed. Reeves-Ellington, Sklar, and Shemo, 19–42; and Ian Tyrrell, Woman’s World, Woman’s Empire: The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union in International Perspective, 1880–1930 (Chapel Hill, 1991). 66 Lucy W. Peabody, “Woman’s Place in the World: An Address Before the National Conference of the Interchurch World Movement in Pittsburgh, Pa.,” Voice of Missions (March 1920): 20. 67 Coppin, Unwritten History, 40. 68 See, for instance, W. E. B. Du Bois, ed., The Negro American Family (Atlanta, 1908); E. Franklin Frazier, The Negro Family in Chicago (Chicago, 1932); and E. Franklin Frazier, The Negro Family in the United States (Chicago, 1939). 69 Frazier, Negro Church, 33. 65

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higher than that of white women but often also higher than that of black men.70 If hired, black men mostly worked in coal and iron mines, or the automotive and shipbuilding industries, whereas black women concentrated in fieldwork in the South and in domestic services and cleaning jobs in offices and factories in the North.71 Part of the high demand for black female labor even originated in the idealization of unemployed white women as the “paragons of [the] domestic ideal.” As black women often performed the role of the provider, there was no need for them to be emancipated from the domestic sphere.72 The AME Church was aware of the problems that came with the trends of male dominance and female providers when it commented on the rambling debate about women and the Christian home. AME representatives denounced the black preacher’s autocratic role model in favor of concepts of home that expressed adherence to moral principles, which jump-started racial uplift. According to newspapers, homes should be styled as a “true idea of living” pertaining to all the physical, moral, and spiritual welfare, and the development of humanity.73 AME concepts of home even foregrounded its secular function, which ranged from disciplining male promiscuity and securing childcare, to policing work ethics and obtaining access to assets, such as houses, clothes, or bank accounts. In its broadest sense, the black Christian home was meant to prefigure the “Negro’s adjustment to modern civilization.”74 Insofar as homes were understood to be the main place for the Christian education of children, as well as the site for their preparation for marriage and building a family, this concept was in line with the prevalent Christian discourse.75 The reconstructions the AME Church envisioned for black family relations, however, took a different direction from the Christian focus on the women’s and mother’s significance in the home. In accordance with the new ideal of the domesticated black man, which emanated from the church’s missionary discourses, AME papers declared “affection” as the basis of all family life. This appeal went out solely to men, addressing their sense of companionship and zeal to provide for their loved ones. Mutual and equal care, responsibility, and The percentage was lowest in Indiana with 12 percent and highest in Florida with 78 percent. Frazier, Negro Family in the United States, 585–91. 71 Banks, Black Intellectuals, 69. On the related transition from Victorian to modern ideals of black masculinity, see Martin Summers, Manliness and Its Discontents: The Black Middle Class and the Transformation of Masculinity, 1900–1930 (Chapel Hill, 2004). 72 Qtd. in Marcy S. Sacks, Before Harlem: The Black Experience in New York City Before World War I (Philadelphia, 2006), 142. 73 Ida Moss, “How to Make the Home Better,” Christian Recorder, May 11, 1922, 2. 74 Frazier, preface to Negro Family in the United States, xix. 75 This view goes back to the American theologian Horace Bushnell. He believed that the instruction of children at home had a more powerful and lasting effect on their Christian spiritual journey than conversion. Bushnell’s essays on family prayer were widely read in the AME Church through reprints in the “Family Column” of the Christian Recorder. Bailey, Around the Family Altar, 16–18. 70

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respect were framed as expressions of the spiritual bond that the two sexes witnessed in the act of marriage, and emphasized the “oness [sic] … of man and wife.” The same definition applied for parenthood. As the Christian Recorder asserted, “in every home the father and the mother should be jointly the inspirers and teachers of the coming generation.” At the heart of the reconstructed black family stood thus not the mother-child-home nexus but the expansive idea that “love [was] the duty of all, the chief cornerstone of the family and the hope of civilization.”76 The relationship between black male missionaries and their role within the domestic sphere intersected with black Christian discourses on how men conducted themselves and with white Christian concerns about emancipated women. The challenge to reshape intimacies of the black home became a key element of the growing mission consciousness as it related to gender roles and the equality of the sexes – though concepts of home were not simply a matter of the family and domestic life. 4.3. Managing Black Atlantic Missionary Connections at Home: The AME Church Missionary Department

During the interwar period, African American concepts of home became an important political statement, as the term could refer to both the United States as a country of residence, as well as to Africa as the presumed ancestral homeland of the black race. In the following two sections, I will explore how this ambiguity played out for AME missionaries and the semipublic sphere in which they operated. As we just read, the black Atlantic missionary tradition asserted Africa travels as a practice of knowledge production, for seeing Africa from afar was thought to be an impractical method to create familiarity with the continent’s particulars. During the interwar period, when the second generation of Africa missionaries emerged, the assumption that seeing was a condition for developing a relationship with Africa altered both the institutional setup of the missionary department and, eventually, the position of AME missionaries in the black community. The second generation of AME missionaries entered Africa in the 1920s and 1930s. Unlike the pioneers who went on a mission to write about the “things … [that] have been lost,” this generation was formally appointed as missionaries.77 Their frequently unpublished writings primarily consisted of letters and reports meant to maintain contact and to inform the missionary department about their activities. Instead of staging confessions of spectacular fallacies 76 77

R. R. Wright Jr., “Making Our Homes Christian,” Christian Recorder, February 3, 1927, 1. Coppin, Observations, 7.

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about Africa, such as those characterizing the autoethnography of Charles S. Smith, Henry McNeal Turner, and Levi J. Coppin, these correspondences focused on enabling, and at times disabling, the transatlantic flow of information. For example, a typical letter, written by William T. Vernon (1871–1944), who in 1920 was assigned to South Africa, read: “life and labor among these people have shown me our opportunity and duty as a church. I pray that one day may come when I can tell the story of South Africa as I have seen it.”78 While the style was indebted to the traditional notion of the participant-observer, Vernon withheld the story of what he had seen. He continued by merely stating that “there is much to be done … . I wish you might see the opportunity … . One must be on the ground to do this.”79 As Vernon illustrates, missionaries of the second generation underscored how the AME missionary department depended on their expertise as much as on their willingness to share information that they gathered in the field. Their self-fashioning as the sole reliable source of information of the department enhanced the prior notion that Africa could not be understood from afar, while it tapped a new potential of the black Atlantic tradition: to cut the flow of information. As missionaries’ firsthand contacts began to involve a transatlantic politics of information, they altered the department’s operation in several ways. First, the notion of the missionary as a provider of information allowed the department to differentiate the AME mission from other missionary traditions. Most profoundly, this new form of self-fashioning defied the theory of “Providential design,” according to which African Americans, from the perspective of their enslavement in the United States, understood themselves as being obliged to civilize and Christianize Africa.80 In the 1910s, the department began to draw the distinction between the informed versus the providential missionary. At that time, an increasing number of laity embraced the hazy rhetoric of African redemption and applied to be sent to Africa as missionaries. The department denied such requests, asserting that “SPECIALISTS” and “efficiency” were needed for foreign mission work.81 With its hiring policies, the department asserted that expressions of a vague yearning to redeem an African homeland disqualified people for African service.

W. T. Vernon to W. W. Beckett, August 5, 1922. SCRBC, AME CR, box 42, folder “Corr. W. T. Vernon, 1922.” 79 W. T. Vernon to J. W. Rankin, February 3, 1921. SCRBC, AME CR, box 41, folder “Corr. W. T. Vernon, 1921.” 80 Drake, “Negro Americans,” 669. 81 This is one example of how outspoken the department became about its purpose. Generally, the AME CR held rich correspondences with laypeople attempting to get to Africa. Their usually passionate language of desire, yearning, and dedication to the homeland was in this case not sufficient. The above quote is taken from W. W. Beckett to Josephine Neal, March 31, 1922. SCRBC, AME CR, box 42, folder “Corr. N, 1922.” 78

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The missionaries’ demand for information all across the expanding network of transatlantic relations was another example of how their new selfunderstanding as informants altered the department’s operation. A clerk who wrote to a missionary in West Africa asserted that people in the United States were “eager to see and know how the work is progressing,” and pressured the department to provide such data.82 Due to “the growing interest the church has manifested in our foreign heathen lands,” missionary secretaries complained about the “gravity” their work had assumed.83 Searching for solutions, some department officials trusted that the missionaries’ “being there” sufficed to “serve the very good purpose of keeping the Home Church intelligently informed as to the true conditions.”84 Others preferred to intensify, and institutionalize, the exchange of information by introducing regular reporting duties for fieldworkers.85 Fieldworkers, in contrast, threw into the debate their local expertise. A report system, they argued, did not seem feasible if one considered the time it took to collect the required information from all mission stations, which were located far away, and were difficult to reach. “I realize, as it seems you cannot,” one missionary asserted, “that one must be on this field to understand the situation.”86 With an unsettled debate among mission staff on both sides of the Atlantic about methods for obtaining and distributing information, the home department agreed that it was “evidently the duty of the Secretary to know his field.” Precisely the absence of the missionary secretary from the field highlighted what he “cannot know unless he should have an opportunity to travel.”87 Beginning in 1908, all missionary secretaries, and several presidents of the women’s auxiliary organizations, seized the opportunity to visit missionary territory in Africa at least once in their career. The routine was considered a means to “realize” the general church’s expectations and to unburden fieldworkers from reporting duties. While people based in Africa welcomed U. S. staff coming out to “just see what the needs of the field are,” the visiting system restructured the department.88 Despite its “growing demands and grave responsibilities,” a 1920 report emphasized that “the department was … growing towards a fuller

Clerk to W. S. Brooks, May 26, 1923. SCRBC, AME CR, box 42, folder “Corr. W. S. Brooks, 1923.” 83 Rankin, Annual Report, 1914, 3. 84 Clerk to L. C. Ridley, May 10, 1922. SCRBC, AME CR, box 42, folder “Corr. Ri, 1922.” 85 The first inspection tour was conducted by Emily C. Kinch in West Africa in 1927. For a discussion about this practice, see SCRBC, AME CR, box 43, folder “Corr. K, 1926.” 86 A. D. Graham to E. H. Coit, December 10, 1926. SCRBC, AME CR, box 43, folder “Corr. A. D. Graham, 1926.” 87 Rankin, Annual Report, 1914, 3, emphasis original. 88 J. A. Gregg to E. H. Coit, September 25, 1925. SCRBC, AME CR, box 43, folder “Corr. Coit, G-H, 1925.” 82

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realization of its ideals along the lines of missionary accomplishment.”89 By ideals, the report meant that following workers onto the African stage eliminated misleading “visionary and imaginary prospects.” In 1922, even the chairman of the board of missions, the highest rank of AME mission structures, appreciated how “we cease chasing phantoms and make use of the ground we have.” To this end, the board stepped back from its presiding role insofar as it suggested conceiving of missionaries as “the leaders and propagators” of the home and foreign missions office.90 By the 1920s, when the AME community’s transatlantic movements and information politics came under the purview of the missionary department, field expertise determined the department’s inner structure and made collecting information on the move its missionary ideal. In 1930, the department’s new impetus to replace visions for facts on Africa and the Africa mission manifested itself on a broader scale. That year, the AME Council of Bishops, the highest executive authority over the church in all areas of its operation, appointed a commission to survey AME missionary activities. The commission consisted of eight members, including Henry B. Parks, a first-generation secretary, and Bishops William H. Heard (1850–1937), William T. Vernon, John A. Gregg, and M. H. Davis, all belonging to the second generation of South and West African mission staff.91 While members of the commission deemed its formation the result of a “controlling impulse” of the autocratic rule of the AME Church’s episcopacy, they nonetheless agreed that they lived in a time “dominated by a desire to obtain facts as a sure foundation for thinking.” To this end, they investigated missionary expansion, financial resources, and the methods of supervision applied by the episcopacy as well as the department. It was the first time that the church officially aimed to produce a comprehensive survey of its missionary activities.92 The prime result of this agenda was that it revealed that surveying itself was a problem on several levels. Commission members regretted that it was not possible “to hire a trained investigator to go to the fields and see what was actually being done there,” although inspection tours in the field became the rule in the missionary department. Forced to resort to existing reports, the commission discerned in the materials provided by the missionary department and the women’s auxiliaries an “imperative need of thoroughgoing and definite Quadrennial Conference Report, 1920 (Draft). SCRBC, AME CR, box 44, folder “Misc., Corr., Minutes, Reports, South Africa, Cuba, US.” 90 W. W. Beckett, Chairman, to the Secretary and Members of the Home and Foreign Missionary Board of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, June 21, 1922. SCRBC, AME CR, box 44, folder “Financial, Special Reports, Rankin Loan, 1922–1923.” 91 The Council of Bishops exercised full executive authority whenever the general conference, which convened four times a year, was not in session. The church itself was divided into episcopal districts, each of which was supervised by one of these bishops. See Wright, Bishops, 22–23. 92 “Report of the Commission on Survey of Missionary Activities of the African Methodist Episcopal Church,” Voice of Missions (August 1931): 8 and 10. 89

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re-adjustment and revision.” Revision was needed regarding the image of the people in the mission fields, who were, as the survey pointed out, “in no sense heathens, illiterate or barbarians.” In addition, the commission found that the very idea of a coherent Africa mission was in need of adjustment. The survey concluded as its central finding that AME missionary work took the shape of a “conflicting maze” that, although it lacked centralized coordination, had helped “the widening of our borders,” and with respect to colonial powers and other missionary bodies, had “saved our work from serious entanglement.”93 Since the commission had trouble determining any clear “formula” regarding the policy of the AME mission, it went on to identify “principles implicit in the operation.” One example was the fact that AME missions had transmitted the idea of “Western civilization as evidenced here in America” without questioning its merits for the foreign fields. The commission argued such practice, in turn, implied that the church had taken for granted such “phases of our culture as Nationalism, War, Capitalistic industrialism and materialistic philosophy … simply because they happen to be part of temporarily effective civilization.”94 To change the habit, it exhorted the AME mission to be critical of the premise that “all the religious customs of the people to whom we go are heathen, and antagonistic to the Christian message” – a view prevalent among other white missionary societies, too. In addition, it suggested that fieldworkers specifically remembered the “wisdom of Apostle Paul,” who made his approach to Christianity “through something which he finds already in the life of the people,” and who believed that God revealed himself in “diverse ways and means” even in the “heathen”; the same approach involved demanding the missionary “not only to give, but also to gain” and to act with non-Christians as “a medium of exchange.”95 In line with the travel writings of the pioneers, and expanding the notion of the informing missionary, the survey underscored that “direct contact with the mission field” was key to gaining an appropriate understanding of African ways of life, and it therefore involved the responsibility of imbuing the Afro-Atlantic connection with the Christian sense of give and take.96 As mediators of human variety, the commission expected black missionaries to at once scrutinize what was understood to be Western civilization, and to revise the image of the heathen and of ancestral Africa in the black community in the United States. The creed of missionary exchange thus promoted the “conflictReport of the Commission on Survey of Missionary Activities of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. SCRBC, AME CR, box 44, folder “Misc., Corr., Minutes, Reports, South Africa, Cuba, US,” quotes on 1, 2, and 4. 94 Ibid., 4 and 5. 95 Ibid., 5. 96 The corresponding restructuring of the department was formalized in a twelve-point paper in 1932. See “Suggested Changes Affecting the Home and Foreign Missionary Department,” 1932. SCRBC, AME CR, box 45, folder “Reports, 1932.” 93

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ing maze” through which missionaries had taken their paths onto the colonial stage in Africa as a key principle of the black Atlantic missionary tradition. With its basic criticisms and validations of nationalism, industrial capitalism, Western hegemony and religious pluralism that arose in the aftermath of the First World War and the peak of the world economic crisis, the survey was also part of the black missionary response to the pan-African ideologies that marked the era.97 It underscored the importance and the availability of information provided by fieldworkers and inspectors, while fellow African Americans fantasized about Africa as an ancestral motherland and cast themselves as defenders against colonial encroachment. To leave no room for doubt, the Voice emphasized that “missions should not be exploited for political enhancement.” The “conception of missions,” the paper stated, “is that one should be so filled with … missions that things political should have no place in his thinking.”98 Reports and surveys began to view missionary travelers as weapons against chasing “phantoms.”99 The department believed that with their help, views of Africa could be narrowed to the practical need “to have first-hand knowledge of the mission problems,” as opposed to fleshing out the spellbinding myths of Africa as the bright and the dark continent.100 Finally, all this allowed the AME mission to fancy a different projection. As Secretary Llewellyn L. Berry wrote in A Century of Missions of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first official AME survey of missions since the commission report, inspecting the field became a way to look out for things “compatible with the spirit and genius of the Fathers and the commitment … to MISSIONS.”101 Alongside the operational reconfigurations that AME missionaries’ Africa experience triggered, the department developed new instruments – reports and inspections – to assert its perspective on Africa as authorized by missionary information. The knowledge the department produced of Africa and its mission remained therefore necessarily dependent on missionaries’ willingness to supply it. Prioritizing them as sources of information involved the risk of not getting access to the desired content, but it was strategic to the extent that it served to demystify dreams of an ancestral homeland.

Tomoko Masuzawa dates the use of the term “religions” in the plural in Christian discourse to the 1920s and 1930s. I will discuss this notion of pluralism in Part II in greater detail. Tomoko Masuzawa, The Invention of World Religions: Or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism (Chicago, 2005), 37. 98 “Interpretative Thinking on the Foreign Field,” Voice of Missions (July 1939): 3. 99 W. W. Beckett, Chairman, to the Secretary and Members of the Home and Foreign Missionary Board of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, June 21, 1922. SCRBC, AME CR, box 44, folder “Financial, Special Reports, Rankin Loan, 1922–1923.” 100 Berry, Century of Missions, 99. 101 Ibid., 101. 97

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4.4. Coming Home to Harlem: The New Home of Missions in the Black American Community

In addition to the development of semipublic communication structures for Africa missionaries, the representation of the Africa mission to both Atlantic and black American communities was an important aspect of the department’s work. In the day-to-day business of the AME Church Missionary Department, there was one incident that indicated that its authority – to speak both about and for Africa – had much to do with defining where the home of black Americans was. For the department, the ambiguities that were traditionally involved with black concepts of home became most apparent in 1926, the year in which the department moved from its downtown New York City location to its new address on 112 West 120th Street in Harlem, the heart of the black diaspora. The move was initiated by E. H. Coit, who in 1924 had only just begun his tenure as missionary secretary. Already acquainted with the “gravity” of this job, Coit intimated that practical reasons lay behind his effort to purchase the Harlem building. Apart from the $1,000 annual savings in rent – a sum desperately needed to support work abroad – Coit argued that the house could host “our missionaries who are required to pass this city en route to and from their fields of labor.”102 No one in the church doubted these advantages, and many saw the relocation to Harlem as a meaningful event. After the move was completed in May 1926, Coit received letters from Jacksonville to Cape Town notifying him that the new home was “the talk of the town.” They pictured the building as “a gate-way to all the world” and as an act of emancipation “from 50 years of … bondage.”103 H. M. Steady, the head of the AME Mission in Freetown, Sierra Leone, was particularly enthusiastic: “I congratulate you upon the phenomenal results accomplished … with reference to the new ‘Home’ of our Missionary Dept.” Steady believed that the new home would “give to us as a church free and untrammelled [sic] status”: [W]e are becoming a vital moral force of Church agencies, occupying a more dignified position, which will elevate us to greater privileges. By this act you inscribed your name in the heart and the minds of the present and future generation, as one of the ardent and honest workers to perpetuate the great cause, led by father Allen.104

AME Church periodicals agreed. Addressing the literate black church and scholarly black public in the United States, the AME Church Review noted that E. H. Coit to J. A. Gregg, [1926?]. SCRBC, AME CR, box 43, folder “Corr. G, 1924–1926.” R. A. Grant to E. H. Coit, May 6, 1926. Folder “Corr. G, 1926”; and R. S. Jenkins to Board of Missionary Department, March 1, 1927. Folder “Corr. J, 1927.” Both SCRBC, AME CR, box 43. 104 H. M. Steady to E. H. Coit, June 15, 1926. SCRBC, AME CR, box 43, folder “Corr. H. M. Steady, 1926.” 102 103

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Figure 1.7. “Mission Headquarters.” Source: Voice of Missions (April 1931): cover page.

the department had clearly been “buried in the great down-town section of New York City, where our people … knew nothing of our whereabouts.” The new home was advertised accordingly as an “imposing commodious building” that opened up “the way for thousands of our members, and well-wishers to come in contact with the Secretary of Missions, and to personally investigate our work.”105 The enthusiasm for the building helped people from across the board, the country, and the Atlantic to relate to the entity it represented: the beginning of AME mission work “under its own vine and fig tree.”106 105 106

“Our Missionary Department,” AME Review (July 1926): 24. Our Missionary Department, 1928. SCRBC, AME CR, box 45, folder “Misc. Reports, 1928.”

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Almost worthy of the title “foreign” mission department, the house summoned local and transnational visions of black independence and emancipation. The opening celebration of the new facilities, which were held on May 10 and 11, 1926, reflected the department’s desire to serve as a meeting point for its national and international missionary community. Apart from a dedication service and a missionary mass meeting, the festivities featured “local and visiting” speakers, as well as high-ranking male and female AME Church representatives. Among the most renowned guests were Henry B. Parks, the missionary secretary of the first hour, and the acting bishops of the church’s overseas districts: John A. Gregg from South Africa, W. Sampson Brooks (1856–1931) from West Africa, and Abraham L. Gaines from South America and the West Indies. In addition, the program featured the presidents of the women’s auxiliary bodies, Mary F. Handy (WPMMS) and Lucy M. Hughes (WHFMS). Two representatives from local missionary branches, L. M. Hunter from Texas and Hattie L. Shelton from Illinois, gave a talk about “Education and Christian Womanhood,” the hot topic of the day in the black community.107 The opening’s impressive turnout led the AME Church Review to rhapsodize about the “wonderful sight” of “the venerable H. B. Parks, surrounded by those who are doing missionary work” and the inspiration contained in the image of “these Missionary leaders together.”108 The attempt to familiarize AME missionary officials from across the Atlantic with each other went hand in hand with efforts to advertise their missionary leadership to the church community in the United States. A few days after the official opening, the AME Mission Board convened in the new facilities for its annual meeting, taking the event as an opportunity to win church members’ support for the new home. The proceedings announced that the meeting gathered a “large crowd” of ministers, laymen, and missionary men and women. To further emphasize their “significant service,” the board organized a luncheon for seventy guests in the St. Luke’s Dining Room, a mutual aid institution located in Harlem. The luncheon was meant to appeal to church members’ sense of being an “august body” – a strategy that was evidently met with success. As the board reported afterward, all guests were “loud in their praise” of the event and agreed that a “representative place [was] greatly needed by the people of our particular Group in the city of New York.”109 One of the first ways in which Coit began to use the well embraced building was to make it a venue for fundraising activities. He reckoned that most E. H. Coit to H. L. Shelton, April 7, 1926. SCRBC, AME CR, box 43, folder “Corr. Sf-Sm, 1926.” For a discussion of this, see Section 4.2. 108 “Our Missionary Department,” 24. 109 “St. Luke’s Dining Room Patronized by Missionary Board of the A. M. E. Church, in their Annual Board Meeting, New York City.” SCRBC, AME CR, box 45, folder “Misc. Reports, 1926– 1927.” 107

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Harlem residents were “poor, hard-working men and women,” and focused accordingly on devising strategies to siphon off their “scanty earnings.”110 To this end, Coit slated missionaries to arrange “lecture tours” whenever they passed through on their way to, or from, mission fields. Their authority and authenticity as firsthand informants, he believed, would prompt more donations than lofty ideologies or middle-class-style luncheons. To complement the lectures, Coit organized exhibitions that illustrated the efficiency of missionary activities. “[A]n ocular demonstration that the monies given by the people have not been thrown away,” Coit argued, would work best to impress working-class people with the work done “over there.”111 Over the years, Coit was able to improve his approach to visualizing for Harlem locals the always-distant foreign mission. In 1929, a bishop returning from South Africa brought along five “South African natives” meant to showcase African life at concerts and church services. Coit agreed with the bishop that their performances could illustrate African customs even better than lectures by missionary officials. Part of the deal, then, was that their representation “in moving pictures, in costume, in song, in dialogue, in dance” was staged in a way that emphasized Coit’s “type of a Missionary Secretary.”112 This type conformed to the general idea of enhancing the image of the AME mission, one that focused on “hope for the betterment of the conditions of the people,” as opposed to presenting an “ugly picture” – the prevalent strategy of white missionary marketing.113 Believing in the appeal that such shows would have for the neighborhood, Coit suggested that African performers could potentially recuperate the costs of their travel in the United States, if not extra money.114 Coit’s effort to bring the spectacles of Africa home by means of AME traveler’s first-hand accounts, as well as African performers, presented a powerful addition to the representations of Africa circulating in Harlem at that time.115 By the early 1920s, the streets of Harlem had turned into a thriving cultural venue to address the enduring question of the significance of Africa in black American consciousness. Many political agitators preached that black Americans should embrace their true identity as Africans. Garvey called Africa the E. H. Coit to Brother, September 9, 1926. SCRBC, AME CR, box 45, folder “Misc. Reports, 1926–1927.” 111 J. A. Gregg to n. n., August 31, 1926. Folder “Corr. G, 1926”; and E. H. Coit to W. S. Brooks, May 4, 1927. Folder “Corr. Bishop W. S. Brooks, 1927.” Both SCRBC, AME CR, box 43. 112 F. H. Gow to E. H. Coit, June 28, 1929. SCRBC, AME CR, box 45, folder “Corr. F. Herman Gow + L. B., 1929.” 113 “Interpretative Thinking,” 3. 114 F. H. Gow to E. H. Coit, June 28, 1929. SCRBC, AME CR, box 45, folder “Corr. F. Herman Gow + L. B., 1929.” 115 The following is based on Jonathan Gill, Harlem: The Four Hundred Year History from Dutch Village to Capital of Black America (New York, 2011); Robert M. Dowling, Slumming in New York: From the Waterfront to Mythic Harlem (Urbana, 2007); Gilbert Osofsky, Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto, Negro New York, 1890–1930 (New York, 1966); and Sacks, Before Harlem. 110

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“noble black man’s home and Motherland,” implying that black Americans would have to return there.116 The NAACP, which had an equally strong base in Harlem, used similar language to criticize the United States as a nation that neglected descendants of Africa as members of the national family. While the two organizations worked toward different ends, activists in both camps represented the continent as an idealized motherland. With its female connotation, Africa mobilized men in the black public to act as her courageous protectors, and it encouraged women to retreat into the private sphere, as helpmates and nurturers of men and boys.117 When a vision of Africa as a motherland went beyond political rhetoric, it became a theme of plays produced for Harlem’s many stages, ranging from theaters to schools and the streets. In these productions, the idea of female Africa created an avenue for women to enter the public sphere as embodiments of the raped continent, who wept and grieved endlessly for her lost children in the United States.118 The dramatic artistic representations intersected with the imagery developed by groups devoted to overcoming black youngsters’ alienation from Africa. Carter G. Woodson’s Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH) attempted to give children a positive sense of their black past by constructing a lineage from Negro life in Africa through slavery, the struggle for freedom, and emancipation to the battle for social justice. The youth sections of many local organizations – as well as editors and publishers – joined in. Such knowledge, they believed, would encourage young people’s racial pride, uplift, political zeal, and affiliation, and thus serve as a precursor to a broadbased coalition premised on antiracist and anticolonial politics.119 Like most activities in Harlem, black history lessons took place ad hoc on the streets.120 AME churchgoers had long been part of this thriving political and cultural landscape. St. Mark’s AME Church on 138th Street was listed as a main attraction in the Harlem Directory, and Greater Bethel AME Church, founded in 1901 in the Harlem Library building on West 123rd Street, was widely known as one of New York’s oldest black parishes.121 Harlem was also the birthplace of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (AMEZ), the AME Church’s sister denomination, which became independent from the New York-based Methodist Church in 1820 based on discriminatory practices similar to those that led Richard Allen to found the AME Church in Philadelphia in 1816. From that Qtd. in Corbould, Becoming, 18. Ibid., 22. 118 Ibid., 35. 119 Ibid., 106. 120 Ibid., 94. 121 “Harlem Directory: Where to Go and What Do When in Harlem,” Harlem, November, 1, 1928, repr. in Voices from the Harlem Renaissance, ed. Nathan Irvin Huggins (New York, 1995), 46. 116 117

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point on, the Mother AMEZ Church in West Harlem was a leading voice in the local black community.122 Due to their proximity, members and officials of the local AME congregations were often involved in Harlem’s political and cultural activities. Racial uplift, philanthropic work, and civil rights activism constituted traditional fronts around which AME Church women and men joined their secular counterparts. Many held memberships in the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), the NAACP, and the National Urban League (NUL), a civil rights organization focusing on urban living conditions.123 The position of the missionary department in these environs at once strengthened and complicated the existing loyalty and cooperation. After the opening of the new headquarters, Coit invested his department’s publicity funds to support the Joint Committee for the Employment of Negro Workers and the NUL’s “Harlem Employment Campaign.”124 He also helped to promote Woodson’s Journal of Negro History, the ASNLH’s monthly paper, and reprinted political programs and proclamations of local activists in the Voice.125 Reports about the AME Church’s missionary work circulated, in turn, in the NAACP’s Crisis and the NUL’s Opportunity.126 William T. Vernon, the freshly returned bishop of South Africa, was invited to address an NAACP annual meeting in Indianapolis, where he talked about Jim Crowism, social equality, and unjust judges.127 At the same time, the department’s insertion into local politics blurred its representational dominance regarding the church’s foreign activities. Once the AME Africa mission made it into the black press, the department increasingly had to defend it against unauthorized and defaming third-party reporting. In 1927, the Afro-American, one of the most widely circulated newspapers in the mid-Atlantic states, claimed to be in possession of cablegrams from West African AME workers, and revealed that “missionaries are starving with no relief from the mission board.”128 In addition, word got out that their superintendent While the two African Methodist churches never merged, they had a shared agenda and were in close – and for the most part, favorable – contact. The unification remained difficult for administrative reasons. For the purpose of this study, it is important to note that the AME and the AMEZ Church had the same discipline and doctrine, and together they orchestrated their mission work in Africa. On the AMEZ Church, see David Henry Bradley, A History of the AME Zion Church, 2 vols. (Nashville, 1956–1970). 123 Wright, Bishops, 32. 124 Ira De Reid to E. H. Coit, October 20, 1926. SCRBC, AME CR, box 43, folder “Corr. Ra-Re, 1926.” 125 Carter G. Woodson to J. W. Rankin, January 23, 1924. SCRBC, AME CR, box 42, folder “Corr. W-Y, 1923.” 126 See, for instance, Richard R. Wright Jr., “Wilberforce in South Africa: Forty Years [sic] Missionary Work of the A. M. E. Church,” Opportunity (October 1937): 306–10. 127 “Address Delivered Before National Association for the Advancement of Colored People,” Christian Recorder, June 30, 1927, 12. 128 E. H. Coit to Carl Murphy, December 4, 1926. SCRBC, AME CR, box 43, folder “Corr. 122

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W. Sampson Brooks, one of the church’s most efficient missionary fundraisers, had gone to jail in Monrovia. Such reporting was delicate, for it compromised not only the department’s reputation but also its status as the sole provider of accurate information. Although Coit demanded rectification, the Afro-American insisted that “there was no error in the AFRO story” and continued to talk about AME missionaries’ starvation and neglect.129 A similar conflict emerged in the January 1929 issue of the Crisis. In it, editor and race leader W. E. B. Du Bois criticized the department for its treatment of Charlotte Manye Maxeke (1874–1939), a missionary from South Africa, upon her visit to the United States as a delegate to the AME General Conference. Du Bois, who knew Maxeke from her time as a student at the AME Church’s Wilberforce University, blamed the department for having failed to grant her absences from the field, as well as appropriate funding for her work. “To cap the climax,” he wrote, the Missionary Department of the A. M. E. Church is sending her back in the steerage all the way to Africa! Twenty-two days of travel, – nearly as many days as the years which she has given to the Church and its cause! She goes back grey-haired, stricken, poor but serene.

Du Bois’s assault amounted to further suspicion. “Somebody standing between the members and the missionaries has kept back or stolen the money which should go to support Charlotte Manye,” he ventured.130 With this story, the Crisis intimated that Coit was making money off an allegedly altruistic missionary project. Although both papers eventually apologized, the effects of such negative publicity were not easy to contain. Coit considered bringing the matter to court.131 But this, as he wrote to other African missionary representatives, would not change the fact that Maxeke would “[n]ever be received by the good women of this nation with the same spirit … that she was received last year.” In addition, he warned that the disclosure of Maxeke’s complaints “make it hard for those who may come here [from Africa] to represent our Church to be decently entertained by our Church.”132 For the church, underneath these debates lay a basic question about emerging race leadership. In the early 1920s, black independent churches acutely felt the rise of secular movements along with dropping numbers in membership. Mo-Mu, 1926.” 129 Carl Murphy to E. H. Coit, April 9, 1927. SCRBC, AME CR, box 43, folder “Corr. Bishop W. S. Brooks, 1927.” 130 W. E. B. Du Bois, “Charlotte Manye,” Crisis (January 1929): 22, emphasis original. 131 E. H. Coit to Mary F. Handy, January 17, 1929. SCRBC, AME CR, box 45, folder “Corr. Mary F. Handy, 1929.” 132 E. H. Coit to H. F. Gow, February 27, 1929. SCRBC, AME CR, box 45, folder “Corr. Herman F. Gow +LB, 1929.”

African American Missionaries at Home

Between 1916 and 1926, AME Church membership stagnated at about half a million, with a decrease of 0.5 percent compared to the years between 1906 and 1916.133 To approach the problem constructively, it invited debates about race leadership. In 1921, the Mother Bethel AME Church in Philadelphia reasserted its role as a century-old religious organization dedicated to the social and spiritual needs of black Americans, and asked its competitors Du Bois and Garvey, the renowned heads of the NAACP and the UNIA, to appear on stage for two nights in a row and to juxtapose their leadership styles. According to the Christian Recorder, both of them represented a “blanket type – to ‘advance the race’ [i. e., NAACP], or to ‘improve the race’ [i. e., UNIA].” With their focus on economic and social betterment of colored people, the Recorder argued, they indeed created “the prospect of political leadership.” At the same time, the paper asserted that “blanket types” did not sufficiently represent the race. Leadership “among our people,” it argued, had to become “more and more diverse as our development becomes more complex.” It saw religious organizations in possession of this feature, unlike the two men it analyzed. Neither “Mr. Garvey nor Mr. Du Bois is much bothered with religious leadership,” the paper concluded, “except occasionally to criticise it.”134 With its understanding of different leadership styles, the church emphasized the possibility of variety within the race as much as the necessity to differentiate between the representatives of any one group encompassed by such variety. This was particularly crucial for the mission project, which was often mistaken for a “militant Negro religious organization” aligned with Garvey’s back-to-Africa campaign.135 As the department’s correspondence underscores, it regularly received misdirected requests about Garvey’s Black Star Line, the ship company he operated to facilitate black remigration to Africa in the early 1920s.136 While the department was happy to clarify the difference between its own cause and Garvey’s anticolonial propaganda to re-conquer “Africa for the Africans” in its communication, the confusion was less easy to clear up with the U. S. State Department and the colonial administrations. In 1919, for instance, the consul of British Guiana rated the church’s Christian Recorder together with Garvey’s Negro World among the black papers that adopted “a policy of antagonism to the white race … which [is] causing the British Guiana Government some anxiety.”137 The problem was exacerbated in 1924, when special agents U. S. Bureau of the Census, “Religious Bodies,” 49. “Race Leadership,” Christian Recorder, April 14, 1921, 1. 135 Qtd. in Vinson, Americans Are Coming, 91. 136 J. W. Rankin to Floyd L. Lawson, June 30, 1921. SCRBC, AME CR, box 41, folder “Corr. L, 1921.” 137 C. E. Chamberlain to Secretary of State, May 3, 1919. Theodore Kornweibel, Jr., ed., Federal Surveillance of Afro-Americans, 1917–1935: The First World War, the Red Scare and the Garvey Movement (Frederick, 1986), reel 12, frame 0405. 133 134

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of the U. S. State Department reported that Garvey had publicly declared that “all colored clergy throughout the world were working for Free Africa and that they had ‘Ambassadors’ located in every important section.”138 After all, Garvey’s radicalism moved the AME mission into the focus of U. S. and British government surveillance across the Caribbean, South America, and West and South Africa. Since most AME missionaries, particularly in the Caribbean, could agree with Garvey’s nationalist scheme of racial uplift, the department enforced their strict exclusion whenever they overtly supported the movement.139 Any alignments with Garvey, it warned, could bring the church “into disrepute and suspicion on the part of the Government officials.”140 The policy ensured that black missionaries would be admitted to British colonial territory and it carved out a terrain for their religious leadership in the landscape of black political activism during the 1920s and 1930s. As Bishop William W. Beckett (1859–1927) clarified in 1923, the department did not only criticize ‘GARVEYISM’, but we unqualifiedly oppose, denounce and repudiate it as a fraudulent organization, utterly unrepresentative of the Negro people of the world; misleading to the ignorant and easily devised, and positively detrimental to the best interest of the Negro race.

Acting on behalf of the best interest of the race, Beckett thereby implied, did not necessarily mean to assert racial essentialism or representing people, above all, as blacks.141 While missionary leaders grappled with race leaders, the Voice brought the integration of its Atlantic missionary community to fruition. The magazine featured reports about the new home in Harlem with increasing regularity, supplying images and information about its clerks, worth, furniture, insurance, and mortgages. The wide coverage of the reporting was in part due to a campaign, called “Lifting the Load,” that the department launched during the Great Depression. While the department actually aimed at balancing its decreasing budget for the work overseas, it presented the financial crisis as an issue that

Frank C. Higgins to R. S. Sharp, March 18, 1924. Federal Surveillance of Afro-Americans, reel 18, frame 0744. 139 S. M. Jones to R. R. Downs, January 1, 1923. SCRBC, AME CR, box 42, folder “Corr. I-J, 1923.” For Garveyists in the AME Church, see Burkett, Garveyism as a Religious Movement. 140 Clerk to W. A. Fountain, January 19, 1922. SCRBC, AME CR, box 42, folder “Corr. Bishop W. A. Fountain, 1922.” 141 W. W. Beckett to S. M. Jones, January 10, 1923. SCRBC, AME CR, box 42, folder “Corr. I-J, 1923.” The AME Church was stricter than other black mission boards. For African American missionaries active in the UNIA, see Randall K. Burkett, Black Redemption: Churchmen Speak for the Garvey Movement (Philadelphia, 1978). 138

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primarily concerned the maintenance of the headquarters at home.142 In response to its call to support the house in Harlem, donations poured in from South and West Africa, in particular. H. M. Steady from Freetown, for instance, readily transferred what he called a “humble contribution to help in ‘Lifting the Load’ of the Missionary Home,” along with his assertion that the Sierra Leone-based church had “long desired to make this contribution.”143 To continue encouraging such transatlantic solidarity, the Voice printed on its cover page Steady’s statement, followed by an invitation to all delegates traveling in 1936 to the United States for the General Conference in New York to visit the Harlem headquarters. “This will be the first opportunity,” the Voice announced, “to see this much talked about and criticized department of the church. … It is your property, and we want you to see it and get an idea what your public servants are trying to do for you and with your property.”144 That the Atlantic missionary community came to rescue a home in Harlem, rather than fight a political cause in Africa, suggests that its formation evolved around a concrete location, a house they could visit in real life. Widely discussed and fleshed out in AME Church periodicals and correspondences, the home in Harlem gained more than transatlantic recognition. It gathered adherents in a transatlantic community of black people who wanted to distinguish themselves from political agitation that propagated Africa as the homeland of the black race. By moving its core institution to Harlem, the AME Africa mission claimed its place in the black metropole and brought its non-pan-African views to the core of the diaspora, two trajectories that were not strategic essentialisms but a counterculture that emerged alongside the dominant notions of race, home, and Africa in interwar black agitation. ◆◆◆ In this chapter, I discussed how concepts of home crystallized a counterculture of diasporic pan-Africanism within AME missionary circles. This cultural formation began with the contacts missionary travelers established between Africa and the black American community. Whether immediate or intermediated, these contacts triggered effects at different locations and on differing scales in black America. Levi J. Coppin, an Africa missionary, conceptualized his own home around the ideal of forming modern egalitarian relationships between men and women. Along a somewhat parallel track, the Men’s Missionary League advocated an ideal of male leadership in the family that was modeled upon female qualities. It also tied in with black visions of reconstructSee all issues of the Voice of Missions published in 1936. I. C. Steady, “A Letter,” Voice of Missions (January 1936): cover page. 144 “An Invitation to the General Conference to Visit the Headquarters of the Missionary Department,” Voice of Missions (April 1936): 5. 142 143

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ing, through a focus on love and care, the black family. Along these lines AME Africa missionaries often began to problematize black masculinities, where they were overbearing toward women, where they were imperial, and where they were pan-African in the sense of appealing to a female vision of the continent. Through a revision of this image, the AME community could develop concepts of home and the family that sustained notions of race, but were not anchored in Africa. On the level of the semipublic and the public spheres, which emerged around the missionary department, concepts of home were shaped in interaction with the Atlantic missionary community, on the one hand, and the black American community, on the other. The restructuring of the missionary department’s operation was modeled upon foreign missionaries’ movements and demands. The drift of missionary experiences resulted in intensifying communication structures then involving visits, inspections, and surveys of the field – all of which helped to make the mission a fact. Information gained from the same structures helped the department to position itself within Harlem, its immediate neighborhood and the black metropole of the time. Ideas of home played a role in this localization. As the department tried to establish itself as a provider of reliable information about Africa, it found adherents and adversaries in the local community and was drawn into conflicts with the pan-Africanists. At the same time, its assertion of a home in Harlem appealed to transatlantic audiences and helped to reverse the pan-African logic of home in the AME missionary community. While somewhat constrained by the necessity of distinguishing itself from pan-Africanism, the black missionary counterculture of home was shaped by transatlantic interactions much larger than an imagined black nation. During the interwar period this distinction of the AME mission made it well known beyond the black community. The department interacted with international philanthropic organizations, such as the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, the World League Against Alcohol, the American Red Cross, the International Committee of the YMCA, the mission boards of the Methodist Episcopal and Baptist Churches and, as we will see in the following chapters, the International Missionary Council.145 By including the latter in the study of the formation of the AME Africa mission, Part II will explore where it transcended the principle of racial solidarity so often assumed to be the basis of all AfroAtlantic relations.

145

This list is drawn from my overall analysis of the AME CR.

Part II. Encountering the World: The ‘American Negro’ and the Ecumenical Missionary Movement

Figure 2. “Bishop Gregg delivering his address, August 8th, on Christian Brotherhood which was interpreted by Dr. P. Stolpman, General Secretary of the German C. E. Union.” Source: Voice of Missions (May 1931): 6.

T

he scene depicted here is an unfamiliar one. A black and a white man in clerical robes stand next to each other, facing microphones and a mass audience, while a bright banner with a Christian slogan waves over their heads. As opposed to highlighting their racial differences, the picture stages unity, cooperation, and shared evangelical ambition. According to the Voice, in which the photograph appeared in May 1931, it shows “Bishop Gregg delivering his address, August 8th, on Christian Brotherhood which was interpreted by Dr. P. Stolpman, General Secretary of the German C. E. Union.” The picture was taken the previous year at the World’s Christian Endeavor Convention, an international event held in Berlin, which brought together eighteen thousand representatives of Protestant youth societies. Out of many possibilities, the organizers had chosen John A. Gregg’s speech for a live radio broadcast. As they pointed out, they wanted the “Negro Bishop” to be “in touch with the whole world.”1 International mass conventions like this one were frequent in the aftermath of the First World War. Conscious of the role Christian religion had played in entrenching hostilities that unraveled in worldwide conflict, American and European congregations broadened their zeal from proselytizing ‘heathens’ to reconciling the world’s Christians. To this end, they drew upon the worldwide infrastructures of imperial nation-states: transportation and communication networks, modern science and technology, and colonial and international organizations.2 While it had become an imperative among postwar Protestants to build bridges across ingrained denominational, political, and cultural boundaries, there was still one feature that distinguished the Berlin convention. As the Voice noted, the event “was the first occasion when the spotlight had been so focused on a Negro bishop.” Other commentators agreed. The appearance of a black bishop in such international gatherings, they argued, might tip the scales toward the “realization of real human brotherhood.” After all, Gregg’s speech demonstrated not only that black voices were rarely heard on the inter-

“Bishop Gregg Tells the World,” Voice of Missions (May 1931): 6. Christopher Clark and Michael Ledger-Lomas, “The Protestant International,” in Religious Internationals in the Modern World: Globalization and Faith Communities Since 1750, ed. Abigail Green and Vincent Viaene (Basingstoke, 2012), 23. 1 2

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national religious stage. It also showed that black church representatives could make powerful claims about interracial cooperation.3 Gregg’s call to Christian brotherhood is a clue to an international dimension in the formation of the AME Church’s Africa mission that will be the subject of what follows. While Gregg presented himself as an exponent of the Christian ethics of human fellowship, the organizers used the black churchman to demonstrate to worldwide audiences how overcoming the race problem was key to a new vision of world evangelization. Since the turn of the century, with marked acceleration after the First World War, black and white churches and missionary societies in Europe and North America began to consider their religious enterprise as building an ecumenical community – a unified group of Christians who hailed from the global variety of denominations covering the inhabited earth. One driving force behind this effort was a contestation of the binary worldview, in which the West with its racial superiority, advanced civilization, and Anglo-Saxon Christianity, stood opposed to the rest. To achieve a greater degree of integration within and beyond its own ranks, the Western missionary movement pushed its internationalization. As Abigail Green and Vincent Viaene argue, such modern religious internationalism tended to cluster around international organizations, addressed issues such as war, racism, or nationalism, and aimed to project reconciliatory energies of Christian fellowship into modern society and the global arena.4 All this, to use Dana L. Robert’s words, made it difficult to distinguish “internationalism from the mission impulse itself.”5 Part II analyzes the formation of the AME Africa mission in the context of the ecumenical missionary movement. It retraces the connections that black and white ecumenicists established, or failed to establish, in their attempt to unify the Christian varieties of the world. To forge a connection between African Americans and Africans, I argue, was a central element of this vision. As we will see, by looking into the role the AME Africa mission played within the movement, ecumenicists pictured the ‘American Negro’ as a missionary that could both bridge racial divides and defy imperialist undercurrents in missions. While this image implied the notion that African Americans had developed an alternative civilization in the U. S. South and that they had neither imperial nor anticolonial aspirations, it indeed helped pave the way for AME missionaries to British African territory. But utilizing this image did not mean that AME missionaries simply got, as Hastings puts it, immersed in a “Westernizing orientation.”6 As the aforementioned speech by John A. Gregg indicates, black “Bishop Gregg Tells,” 7. Abigail Green and Vincent Viaene, “Rethinking Religion and Globalization,” in Religious Internationals, ed. Green and Viaene, 1–2. 5 Robert, “First Globalization,” 50. 6 Hastings, Church in Africa, 418. 3 4

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church representatives, by talking about ecumenism in the same way as their white counterparts, could still convey a very different message. The analysis that follows proceeds from two angles. The first, presented in Chapter 5, introduces the ecumenical movement as a new texture in the traditional vision of world evangelization. It shows the role that new patterns of missionary communication and cooperation played in re-examining missionary methods and worldviews after the symbolic power of the West had collapsed. A special focus is on the International Missionary Council (IMC), the ecumenical movement’s intellectual nerve center. In the 1920s, the IMC defined missionary approaches to ‘indigenize’ Christianity and to the modern race problem that involved ideas of the ‘American Negro.’ The second angle, introduced in Chapter 6, discusses the formation of the ecumenical movement from the perspective of the AME Church. It traces the AME Church’s engagement with black ecumenical initiatives and ecumenical thought, and shows how both shaped its Africa mission. In doing this, Chapter 6 emphasizes that the AME Church had a strong and persistent ecumenical self-conception and that it, therefore, considered its projects as being compatible with the IMC’s hegemonic vision. Chapter 7 synthesizes the two angles by exploring the specific institutional and discursive entanglements that helped construct the South Atlantic as a black region in the ecumenical worldview. One aspect in this construction was that European and American philanthropists, who surveyed international missionary efforts, began to recognize the AME Church as a mission that was active and successful in this particular region. Another one was that ecumenicists increasingly investigated the religious and educational institutions blacks had built in the U. S. South. Reviewing their racially segregated development, they argued, promised to offer alternative concepts of civilization for ecumenicists to adopt in their mission. The ecumenical idea of the ‘American Negro,’ Chapter 7 shows, prompted the IMC to lobby for the admission of African American missionaries to colonial territory in Africa. While this intervention helped African American missionaries to defy the negative image colonizers had of them as anticolonial troublemakers, it also offered new instruments for the IMC and the British Colonial Office to control AME missionaries’ movements and projects. On a broader scale, this argument engages with a constellation of three historiographical frameworks of the interwar period, which all neglect the history of religious internationalism. One is the historiographical framework on African American missions, which views them as a precursor to the pan-African project and thus loses track of the international attention black church people claimed in the ecumenical movement.7 A second frames the interwar years as 7

For a compilation of key texts on the interwar period, see African American Religious Thought:

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a period of religious depression, in which ministers and churches across the United States struggled with the spread of religious apathy, skepticism, and secularism.8 Such accounts emphasize dwindling popular support for the social gospel and foreign missions, the divisions among mainline Protestant churches caused by religious fundamentalists, and the abrupt collapse of the Interchurch World Movement, which began in the early 1920s when thirty North American churches had pushed to form a Protestant League of Nations.9 The interwar period thus appears, at best, as marked by a curiosity among scholars about how world religions were socially constructed.10 Both of these frameworks concur with accounts by historians of globalization that show how the sequence of two world wars interrupted the peaceful cross-border interactions that had flourished – in part, through missions – in the previous century. According to this view, sovereign nation-states came to replace old imperial formations and thus led to an unprecedented fragmentation of the globe. The rise of national consciousness enhanced the disaggregation of European empires as it furnished anticolonial movements in the periphery with a new language to demand autonomy, self-determination, and modernization. While some scholars describe the period as a “phase of deglobalization,” others point out that the “Atlantic crossings” of progressive welfare-state ideas and institutions, as well as racial identities, forged new forms of regional integration.11 However, the role of ecumenical internationalism in shaping such regional formations awaits investigation. The following analysis focuses on the highly interconnected world ecumenicists created and emphasizes the active and integral part the AME Church’s Africa mission had in its making. My argument here complements the analysis in the previous chapter of the black Atlantic dimension of AME missionary work. By placing the black Atlantic missionary tradition in the context of ecumenism, we can understand how discontentment with Western civilization was not, as Gilroy suggests, the sole product of a black tradition of reflecting

An Anthology, ed. Cornel West and Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., 477–676 (Louisville, 2003). 8 Lynn Dumenil, The Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s (New York, 1995), 170. 9 George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture, 2nd ed. (New York, 2006), 164; and Eldon G. Ernst, “The Interchurch World Movement and the Great Steel Strike of 1919– 1920,” Church History 39 (1970): 212. 10 Dumenil, Modern Temper, 171. 11 Osterhammel and Petersson, Globalization, 81; Daniel T. Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Cambridge, MA, 1998); and Paul A. Kramer, “Empires, Exceptions, and Anglo-Saxons: Race and Rule Between British and United States Empires, 1880–1910,” Journal of American History 88 (2002): 1315–53.

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upon slavery, colonialism, and racism, but an issue that aligned blacks with the international missionary movement and colonialism in Africa in the interwar period.12

12

For my analysis of black Atlantic studies, see Section 1.2.

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5. “For the Field Is the World”: The Formation of the Ecumenical Missionary Movement

5.1. The Theory and Practice of Ecumenism

I

f pressed to pinpoint an exact date on the calendar, one could argue the ecumenical missionary movement began on April 21, 1900, in New York City. On that day, two thousand representatives of North American and European missionary societies and foreign staff based in Asia, Africa, and South America came together for the first conference that was called “ecumenical.”1 According to one of the conveners, the name was chosen because the meeting aimed to propose a plan that “covers the whole area of the inhabited globe.” “Ecumenicity” in foreign missions, he specified, was to develop “some method of concerted action” that would bring together “people interested in a common object who desire to compare notes.”2 The first part of this definition was not unusual. The basic approach to missions in the nineteenth century, which corresponded to European and American economic and political expansion, was seen as the geographical radiation of the faith outward from the alleged core of Christendom – Europe, North America, and white settler colonies – into the non-Christian portions of the world.3 Also, the effort made by the conference to coordinate activities was not For a standard account, see William Richey Hogg, Ecumenical Foundations: A History of the International Missionary Council and Its Nineteenth-century Background (New York, 1952). 2 Ecumenical Missionary Conference, New York, 1900. Report of the Ecumenical Conference on Foreign Missions Held in Carnegie Hall and Neighboring Churches, April 21 to May 1, 1900, Vol. 1 (New York, 1900), 10. 3 One particularly useful perspective that goes beyond this extremely common reading is Andrew F. Walls’s The Cross-cultural Process in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission and Appropriation of Faith (Maryknoll, 2002); and The Missionary Movement in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission of Faith (Maryknoll, 1996). 1

“For the Field Is the World”

entirely new. A number of organizations had formed during the Great Awakenings of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to facilitate consultation among individual mission boards. Among them were the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions (ABCFM) and the Foreign Missions Conference of North America (FMCNA). Their attempt to orchestrate missionary efforts was the first sign of what William Richey Hogg describes as “that growing consciousness in all churches of the church universal conceived as a missionary community” that formed the foundation of ecumenism.4 What distinguished the ecumenical conference form these institutions – and what thus may justify viewing it as the beginning of what some historians call the “ecumenical century” – was not so much the plan as the method it proposed.5 As suggested above, the gathering did not take as its sole aim conversion. Instead, it was about reorganizing the missionary project itself: the conference aimed to ground it in issue-based cooperation and in the knowledge missionaries could pool from around the world.6 The course of the ecumenical movement since 1900 illustrates how these new elements in the mission materialized. The first follow-up event was the World Missionary Conference, held in 1910 in Edinburgh. The organizers, John R. Mott (1865–1955) and Joseph H. Oldham (1874–1969), two major figures of Anglo-American Protestantism, had at the last minute dropped the word “ecumenical” from the title.7 Although the roughly 1,200 attendants hailed mainly from Europe and North America, and with a much smaller delegation from Asia, they claimed to have organized “the most notable gathering in the interest of the worldwide expansion of Christianity ever held.”8 The enthusiasm echoed that of the eager young evangelicals, coming from universities in Britain and America in the 1890s, who aimed at “the evangelisation of the world in this generation” – a slogan later taken up, to some degree, by the missionary movement as a whole.9 Yet the results of the conference were broader than a Hogg, Ecumenical Foundations, 141. David M. Thompson, “Ecumenism,” in The Cambridge History of Christianity, Vol. 9, World Christianities c.1914 –c.2000, ed. Hugh McLeod (Cambridge, UK, 2006), 50. 6 For a good analysis of ecumenical knowledge production, see Heidemarie Winkel, “Christliche Religion und ihre Sinnformen der Selbstbeschreibung: Mission und Ökumene als Grundpfeiler des Wandels religiöser Wissensformen,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 36 (2010): 285–316. 7 Thompson, “Ecumenism,” 50–51. For a comprehensive analysis, see Brian Stanley, The World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh, 1910 (Grand Rapids, 2009). 8 Qtd. in C. Howard Hopkins, John R. Mott, 1865–1955: A Biography (Grand Rapids, 1979), 342. A table listing the origins of attendants can be found in Peter Kallaway, “Education, Health and Social Welfare in the Late Colonial Context: The International Missionary Council and Educational Transition in the Interwar Years with Specific Reference to Colonial Africa,” History of Education 38 (2009): 225. 9 Brian Stanley, “Africa Through European Christian Eyes: The World Missionary Conference, Edinburgh 1910,” in African Identities and World Christianity in the Twentieth Century, ed. Klaus Koschorke (Wiesbaden, 2005), 165. 4 5

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mere push for evangelization. Two more World Missionary Conferences, in Jerusalem in 1928 and in Tambaram in 1938, followed. In 1912, the movement launched its own periodical, the International Review of Missions, which declared that “[i]nterchange of thought and counsel [was] essential” and aimed to further both “the serious study of the facts and problems of missionary work among non-Christian people” and “the building up of a science of missions.”10 In 1921, delayed by the Great War, former Edinburgh delegates founded the International Missionary Council (IMC). According to its constitution, the IMC served to relate “missionary conferences in the ‘sending’ countries with one another and with the … ‘receiving’ countries” and thus paved the way for all to work “unitedly for the evangelization of the world.”11 As Hogg notes, the focus here lay on activities that “could be done only on an international basis.” As such, the IMC allowed members to talk about world problems and, more significantly, to each other.12 Along with these core institutions, the internationalization of the ecumenical missionary movement shaped a host of new contacts across longstanding global divides. The FMCNA, for instance, considered its seventeen thousand missionaries, who cooperated with sixty-six thousand local workers in ninety-six countries, “so closely knit together” that “now there is nothing foreign.”13 Conventions and conferences were either called “interdenominational and international” or simply contained the term “world” in their titles, such as the World Evangelical Alliance or the World’s Parliament of Religions.14 At the same time, international missionary activities transformed traditional church structures in the domestic domain. For instance, the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America (FCC), founded in 1908 as a “reflex action from foreign missions,” transformed thirty black and white denominations into the voice of American Protestantism.15 A general trend in the internationalizing “The Editor’s Notes,” International Review of Missions (January 1912): 1. L. S. Albright, The International Missionary Council: Its History, Functions, and Relationships (New York, 1946), 6. 12 Joseph H. Oldham, “International Missionary Cooperation: A Statement of Fundamental Questions of Policy for Consideration by the Committee of the International Missionary Council, January 11–15, 1925.” Qtd. in Hogg, Ecumenical Foundations, 219. 13 For the numbers, see Committee of Reference and Council of the Foreign Missions Conference of North America, ed., The Contemporary Foreign Missions of the Protestant Churches of North America: A Digest of Statistical Summaries, Agencies, Policies and Methods (New York, 1930), 25–26. For quotes, see Charles H. Brent, “The Situation at Home,” in The Foreign Missions Convention at Washington, 1925, ed. Fennell P. Turner and Frank S. Knight, 30. 14 James L. Barton, “The Opening Address,” in Foreign Missions Convention, ed. Turner and Knight, 1. 15 Charles S. Macfarland, ed., The Churches of the Federal Council: Their History, Organization and Distinctive Characteristics and a Statement of the Development of the Federal Council (New York, 1916), 246. For the FCC’s own account, see Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America and Commission on Interracial Cooperation, ed., Toward Interracial Cooperation: What Was Said and Done at the First National Interracial Conference … (New York, 1926). 10 11

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ambition of churches and missionary societies was the way in which scientific methods and modern management was used to keep track of and improve their activities.16 In the process of building networks of exchange, expertise, and cooperation, ecumenical intellectuals brought to the table a number of new topics. Their discussion engaged problems “not affected by doctrinal difference,” such as international relations, education, medicine, and community and economic development. In the mission field, non-Christians were as much a concern as issues such as narcotics, labor, industrialism, and racism. With regards to the missionary project itself, ecumenicists convened about practical issues, including how to deal with immigration laws, secure religious liberty, expand databases, and investigate educational methods.17 A distinct set of themes that drove the postwar ecumenists was grouped under the heading of the “modern world” – sometimes summarized as “the many-sided problems of human progress.”18 Many believed that the Great War was a powerful expression of the overemphasis on science, technology, nationalism, and capitalism in Western societies, and belied the fear that this signaled the triumphal advance of a “secularized civilization.”19 Many pointed out that missionaries had contributed to this development, insofar as they had driven the “violent globalization in the form of colonialism.”20 One response was the embrace of the pacifist ideas of postwar internationalism, emphasized by Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points, the League of Nations, and the right to self-determination for all peoples, in missionary practices.21 Another one was the re-examination of earlier missionary aims and methods in view of the condescending overtones of the notion of planting Western Christianity in heathen lands. As one official of the ABCFM argued in the Christian Century, the new imperative was to end “missions imperialism” through the creation

Kallaway, “Education, Health and Social Welfare,” 222. Resolution on Missionary Cooperation in View of Doctrinal Differences, adopted by the International Missionary Council in 1923, repr. in John R. Mott, Cooperation and the World Mission (New York, 1935), 48. 18 Ecumenical Missionary Conference, Report, 1900, 9. 19 Michael Adas, Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance (Ithaca, 1989), 346–48; the phrase is quoted from Reinhold Niebuhr, “Our Secularized Civilization,” Christian Century, April 22, 1926, repr. in The Christian Century Reader: Representative Articles, Editorials, and Poems Selected from More Than Fifty Years of the Christian Century, ed. Harold E. Fey and Margaret Frakes, 22–18 (New York, 1962). 20 Masuzawa, Invention of World Religions, 41. 21 On the global impact of postwar internationalism, see Manela, Wilsonian Moment; Jonathan Rosenberg, How Far the Promised Land? World Affairs and the American Civil Rights Movement from the First World War to Vietnam (Princeton, 2006); and Roderick D. Bush, The End of White World Supremacy: Black Internationalism and the Problem of the Color Line (Philadelphia, 2009). 16 17

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of relationships across divides among religions, nation-states, and economic systems.22 A change in religious actors’ perception of their fields of labor was a concomitant effect of this reorientation. Ecumenical missionaries no longer conceived of the non-Christian world as a passive receiver, but as a witness to the variety of God’s creation. In this perspective, “indigenous faith” and “its ethical achievements and possibilities” became valuable sources of knowledge and spirituality.23 Missionary encounters were also reconceptualized as a means to gain, and benefit, from such insights. As the Negro Journal of Religion, the first black interdenominational periodical of the United States, noted, to acquaint oneself with “new individuals furnishes a source of enjoyment and enlightenment. New worthwhile contacts are formed, and new friendships are begun. False concepts concerning conditions in different localities are corrected.”24 Others stressed that “points of contact and of contrast in the great faiths of men appeal to us in a manner widely different from that which our fathers understood,” indicating that encounters transformed their understandings of what “once ha[s] been esteemed … consonant with loyalty.”25 By extension, as one AME representative noted, the missionary was no longer “usually a White person.”26 Under the banner of ecumenism thus emerged a new texture of contacts related to a loose network of institutions, conferences, worldviews, and practices. All of these contributed to what contemporaries began to conceptualize as a mission for the modern world, a project with a new set of topics beyond world evangelization as its agenda and the intensification of contacts among its own actors as its effect. The prime theory and practice of the ecumenical movement was “concerted action,” thus implying that the movement could not exist unless it was many-voiced. With these features, it did not fall apart in the age of deglobalization. The disaggregating forces that marked the twentieth century had just set the stage for ecumenical ambition and prompted missionary networking to an unprecedented extent.27 Hugh Vernon White, “End Missions Imperialism Now!” Christian Century, February 14, 1934, repr. in Christian Century Reader, ed. Fey and Frakes, 19–22. 23 Edward Caldwell Moore, The Spread of Christianity in the Modern World (Chicago, 1919), 84–85. 24 Pearlie Mae Gasaway, “The Value of United Movements,” Negro Journal of Religion (August 1937): 7. 25 Moore, Spread of Christianity, 84–85. 26 Josephus R. Coan, The Missionary Presence in Africa (Atlanta, [1971?]), 1. 27 Several studies date the beginning of such networking to 1910. See, for instance, Dana L. Robert, Wiley Blackwell Brief Histories of Religion, Vol. 9, Christian Mission: How Christianity Became a World Religion (Oxford, 2009), 53–66; and Klaus Koschorke, “Die Weltmissionskonferenz in Edinburgh 1910 und die Globalisierung des Christentums,” Pastoraltheologie 100 (2011): 215–26. 22

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5.2. The IMC, Indigenization, and the Race Problem

The IMC was one institution that powerfully expressed the ecumenical ambition of the postwar period. During this time, it maintained the only network of its kind, and focused primarily on relating missions across the globe to one another. This setup was initially in response to immediate pressures. As one observer later remarked, it was “obvious that … after the war missionary leaders had to face the clamant need for rebuilding the bridges and restoring the mutual confidence with a view to creating a true international co-operation.” But the structure was also meant to carry the postwar mission beyond its imperial legacies. Observers clarified that what they meant by “true international co-operation” was not “exclusively Anglo-Saxon.”28 The IMC’s constitution was formulated accordingly. “It is understood,” the document announced, “that the Council … will function internationally.”29 Defined as a provider of worldwide contacts, the IMC was in no case allowed to determine missionary policies, but, as the constitution stated, it was “entirely dependent on the gift from God of the spirit of fellowship, mutual understanding and desire to co-operate.”30 Based on these premises, the IMC took on a number of responsibilities that aimed to facilitate contacts and communication, such as making results of missionary investigations available, publishing the International Review of Missions, and convening world missionary conferences, when necessary. Only one function, defined as “help[ing to] unite the Christian forces of the world in seeking justice in international and interracial relations,” called upon its creative intellectual capacity.31 In performing this function during the interwar period, the IMC came to develop indigenization as the new approach to missionary expansion and the race problem as the key issue of the modern world. As the following sections will demonstrate, both of these intellectual enterprises involved a consideration about the place that African American missionaries had in the modern world mission, although none of them resulted in cooperation. The IMC and Indigenization

The IMC had specific notions about the internationalization of its mission. In John R. Mott’s terms, its basic structure was the “supra-nationality” of the church. This structure comprised a church community committed to social Kenneth Maclennan, Twenty Years of Missionary Co-operation (London, 1927), 44. Constitution of the International Missionary Council, repr. in Albright, International Missionary Council, 30. 30 Ibid., 26. 31 Ibid., 28.

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justice, education, and humanitarian relief.32 For the IMC, the concept of supranationality specifically involved bringing together so-called Older and Younger Churches, as long as they qualified as “missionary,” namely, if their work involved “presenting the Gospel to non-Christian people.”33 The difference indicated by their age also implied their location. Older Churches typically were located in the imperial metropoles or white settler colonies, including the Anglophone areas of Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Britain, Ireland, Canada, and the United States. Younger Churches, by contrast, were a kind of offspring in the mission fields and located in the Congo, India, the Philippines, and elsewhere. The IMC drove the internationalization of the interwar mission by primarily reaching out to the Younger Churches. Almost half of the twenty-six recognized founding members of the IMC were from the mission field, and provisions had been made for admitting twenty-three more members from Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America. To this end, the IMC encouraged the foundation of Christian councils, which represented several churches and missionary societies from the same region. By 1921, the IMC focused this effort on Africa, where thirteen such units were planned.34 Judging from its initial composition, the IMC thus kept its commitment to transform a once “exclusively Anglo-Saxon” missionary enterprise into one in which Christians from the colonial South had a strong presence.35 The impetus to represent the Younger Churches soon prompted the IMC to develop categories of difference, in addition to the generational divide. In 1928, when accessions from the mission field materialized, the IMC devised its concept of indigeneity to underscore that newcomers were culturally distinct due to their geographical origins in the Southern Hemisphere. According to the World Missionary Conference in Jerusalem, a church could be called “truly indigenous” when its “expression in worship and service, in customs and in art and architecture incorporate[d] the worthy characteristics of the people, while conserving at the same time the heritage of the Church in all lands and all ages.”36 While this definition obligated new churches to conform to certain pre-existing Christian traditions, it also legitimized their special treatment. As the conference suggested, missionaries were supposed to promote the growth of indigenous churches by translating the bible into vernacular languages, by devolving responsibilities to “an indigenous leadership of men and women,” and by encouraging them to undertake “adventure[s] in service and selfMott, Cooperation and the World Mission, 13; and James C. Kennedy, “Protestant Ecclesiastical Internationals,” in Religious Internationals, ed. Green and Viaene, 295. 33 Albright, International Missionary Council, 26. 34 Ibid., 6–7; and Maclennan, Missionary Co-operation, 46–47. 35 Stanley, “Twentieth-century World Christianity,” 82. 36 Albright, International Missionary Council, 11. 32

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expression.” A similar ‘othering’ by indigenizing was said to apply to “members of every race.” The conference argued that those who wished to “express their [racially specific] missionary convictions” could refer to the example of the “desire of the Negro Christians of America to witness for the Gospel in the homeland of their forefathers,” which, as the proceedings emphasized, gave reason for “profound satisfaction.” Along these defined spatial and racial trajectories of internationalization, the IMC hoped to see Christian beliefs grow “more deeply in the soil,” for once they became “thoroughly naturalized” the indigenous churches would bear testimony of God “more naturally, more adequately and more extensively.”37 Arguably, although the IMC’s approach rejected assimilation, it did not defy contemporary Western imperialism. By the early 1920s, colonial powers used very similar strategies to establish a system of indirect rule, a form of governance that co-opted existing social and political structures of the colonized and that turned indigenous customs into hard prescriptions. The IMC’s involvement with developing such indigenized systems of rule was most conspicuous in British Africa.38 For instance, IMC Secretary Joseph H. Oldham was instrumental in devising concepts of indigeneity during his tenure as a member of the British Colonial Office’s Advisory Committee on Native Education in Tropical Africa, created in 1923, and as a cofounder of the Institute of African Languages and Tribal Culture, founded in London in 1926.39 In addition, the IMC closely cooperated with the Phelps-Stokes Commission on Education in Africa. Between 1920 and 1924, this American philanthropist initiative investigated schools in several parts of British Africa in order to advise missionary societies and governments on how to achieve their “adaptation” to the presumably specific needs of the “native” African.40 Less prominent, International Missionary Council, The World Mission of Christianity: Messages and Recommendations of the Enlarged Meeting of the International Missionary Council Held at Jerusalem, March 24th to April 8th, 1928 (London, 1928), 44–45 and 32–33. 38 John W. Cell, “Colonial Rule,” in Oxford History of the British Empire, Vol. 4, The Twentieth Century, ed. Brown and Louis, 239; and Terence Ranger, “The Invention of Tradition in Colonial Africa,” in Perspectives on Africa: A Reader in Culture, History and Representation, ed. Roy Richard Grinker and Christopher B. Steiner (Cambridge, MA, 1997), 597–98. Some scholars have observed a similarly oppressing dimension in the invention of national identities. See, for instance, Adrian Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism (Cambridge, UK, 1997), 148. 39 The institute was founded by the German ethnologist Herman Diedrich Westermann. Its purpose was to foster Africa-related research internationally and to deliver its findings to people in the metropole. 40 Hogg, Ecumenical Foundations, 231–33. The commission was comprised of British and African researchers, led by Thomas Jesse Jones, an expert on black education in the United States. On the impact of the commission, see Edward H. Berman’s articles “American Influence on African Education: The Role of the Phelps-Stokes Fund’s Education Commissions,” Comparative Educational Review 15 (1971): 132–45; and “Tuskegee – In – Africa,” Journal of Negro Education 41 (1972): 99–112. 37

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though no less important, was the IMC’s involvement with American philanthropic organizations, such as Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Jeanes, for similar matters.41 By cooperating with a diverse body of institutions that were located in Britain and the United States and concerned with indigenization, the IMC shaped a North Atlantic conversation about how the South differed and thus legitimized, rather than contested, imperial interventions in Africa since the collapse of the symbolic power of the West. On the other hand, the IMC had trouble seeing Western initiatives of indigenization fulfilled. As John R. Mott observed in the 1930s, the Younger Churches increasingly took “their separate roads” from the “older Churches that have been fostering them.”42 A few years later, the IMC’s Interpretative Statistical Survey of the World Mission of the Christian Church substantiated Mott’s impression. According to IMC analysts, statistics revealed a strong development of Christianity at its “geographic frontiers,” especially in “Negro Africa,” where indigenous churches had grown in “maturity, size and leadership.” Such growth, however, could not be credited to IMC provisions. Somewhat perplexed, analysts remarked that the indigenization of African Christianity was most vigorous when European and American churches had lost their influence due to the war, the Great Depression, and the “major political disturbances” that had occurred as anticolonial aspirations intensified in Africa.43 Their puzzlement cloaked the extent to which African Christianity was itself an expression of anticolonial discontentment, and it denied that African American churches, including the AME Church, had gained influence and membership precisely during this period.44 This bias notwithstanding, IMC analyses confirmed that concepts of Christianity had, in fact, changed. As one observer put it, the “center of gravity” was no longer “America, but the Church in … Africa.”45 The IMC and the Race Problem

The second approach to internationalization that the IMC pursued was the improvement of interracial relations. According to John R. Mott, “race feeling or prejudice” became “a very real obstacle to cooperation … on virtually every mission field” and thus threatened to erode the foundation of the modern world mission as “a great interracial movement” by the “very nature of Cf. Kallaway, “Education, Health and Social Welfare,” 222. Mott, Cooperation and the World Mission, 13. 43 Parker, Survey, 240; Wilber C. Harr, “The Christian Mission Since 1938: Africa South of the Sahara,” in Frontiers of the Christian World Mission Since 1938: Essays in Honor of Kenneth Scott Latourette, ed. Wilber C. Harr (New York, 1962), 84; and Walls, Cross-cultural Process, 49–71. 44 On the African AME Church, see Section 9.1. 45 “What Is the New Strategy for the World Mission?” Voice of Missions (April 1936): 7. 41 42

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the case.”46 The Jerusalem Conference of 1928 reiterated Mott’s contention. The proceedings conceded “with humiliation” that “we in the Christian churches are still far from realizing this principle [i. e., interracial cooperation] even within our own borders.”47 In view of its racial double standards, the IMC renewed its determination to make missions an “instrument of God” and which had the “power to be the most creative force working for world-wide interracial unity.”48 The key suggestion for ways to develop such creative force, in churches and in missions, came from IMC Secretary Joseph H. Oldham. Commissioned by the United Council for Missionary Education, Oldham composed the widely read study, Christianity and the Race Problem, published in New York in 1924. The purpose of the book was to present “the Christian ideal for human society” in contrast to “the existing relations between the different races” and to investigate the “historical causes” to which they owed their present form.49 Oldham identified two different, yet related, histories of the race problem, namely, the longstanding colonial doctrine of racial domination, and the capacity of modern science to “justify and support such doctrines and make their acceptance inevitable.” Reinforcing one another, Oldham argued, colonialism and science shaped a “doctrine of racialism” that called people to war and violence while creating “an atmosphere, in which the solution of racial problems may become impossible.”50 An important aspect of this finding was that the modern race problem was constituted not by racial diversity but by its historical interpretation. As Oldham emphasized, race was a “real and unalterable dividing line between men” but its racist implications could be altered if Christians dismantled the authority of colonial and scientific doctrines.51 He suggested that Christians could do this because the principles that governed their attitude and conduct were “the supremacy of moral values, reverence for human personality and the dedication of life to the service of mankind.”52 From this perspective, humanity would appear as marked by three core qualities: the “plasticity of man’s nature,” the “value of the individual,” and “the common social purpose” of racially different people. These qualities, when enacted, could reshape human society into one in which “[d]ifferences need not divide; they may enrich.” The Christian ideal of human society, Oldham theorized, was that of a “body” that was “constituted

46 47 48 49 50 51 52

Mott, Cooperation and the World Mission, 49. International Missionary Council, “The World Mission of Christianity,” Jerusalem 1928, 40. Ibid., 45. J. H. Oldham, Christianity and the Race Problem (New York, 1924), vii and 1. Ibid., 10 and 11–12. Ibid., 12–13. Ibid., 15–30; quote on page 20.

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by the difference of its parts. … No organ can claim superiority to another since all are necessary … and … indispensable to the rest.”53 Oldham first clarified this ideal by pointing to the shortcomings in the contemporary state of humanity: the rise of scientific racism, a “de-humanizing” modern mass society, and a “world politics,” in which rigid racial and national interests clashed.54 But he also found encouraging developments in this modern, secular civilization. The improvement of means of communication, often discussed as the “shrinkage of the world,” for instance, had done much to bring the peoples of the world physically closer together and lacked only a “corresponding achievement in bringing about moral and spiritual unity.”55 He intimated elsewhere that, similarly, mercantile connections, while certainly grounded in exploitative imperial economies, related people as diverse as British Lancashire mill owners and cotton growers in Africa. To diminish the race problem, Christianity had to follow the routes of such connectivity. As much as missionaries paid attention to “physical continents,” he argued, they also had to discern “new continents of human life and human activity.”56 The missionary doctrine that Oldham derived from these observations was one that correlated race and space. On the one hand, this echoed the IMC’s indigenization approach. If, Oldham argued, missionaries were guided by the view that racial particularities served the “enrichment of mankind,” they had to preserve the “peculiar genius and soul of the African people” by safeguarding their “native soil” – especially since they came under the tutelage of European colonial powers.57 On the other hand, the assumption that race and space were correlated also vindicated, to certain extents, the utility of segregation. To make his case, Oldham drew on ideas from Booker T. Washington, the African American educator from the Jim Crow South, who had made the famous analogy of segregation as a concept in which the races “can be as separate as the five fingers, and yet one hand in all things essential to mutual progress.” In Oldham’s interpretation of this statement, racial separation was not “the ultimate ideal” but it was still a means to furnish individual races with a space in Ibid., 218–31, passim. Ibid. 55 Ibid., 5. 56 Joseph H. Oldham, “His Message to Nations and Races,” in Foreign Missions Convention, ed. Turner and Knight, 47. Oldham’s focus on human characteristics is also reflected in J. H. Oldham and B. D. Gibson, The Remaking of Men in Africa (London, 1931). 57 Oldham, Christianity, 226–27. Like Oldham, prominent Christian spokespersons such as Reinhold Niebuhr and Raymond Fosdick assumed that industrial societies were by nature globally interdependent so that their technologies and ideologies would drift into everyday life standards and the very psychology of the individual. In Christian ecumenical thought, concepts of indigeneity and modernity had in common that they reflected a concern for individuals and their character development in relation to their environment. David Ekbladh, The Great American Mission: Modernization and the Construction of an American World Order (Princeton, 2010), 43. 53 54

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which they could bring to bear their “integrity and distinctive character” in the development of their “respective civilizations independently,” and by doing so, make their “special and unique contribution to mankind.”58 For Oldham, the world Booker T. Washington had created in the American South was the best example. While it developed under the infamous conditions of racial segregation, it constituted a highly valuable “region of experience” that gave “satisfying meaning to equality” and demonstrated a kind of magnanimity in blacks that, “if it were more common, would soon put a new face on many of our racial problems.”59 When Christianity and the Race Problem appeared in 1924, Oldham was not alone in his praise of Washington and the southern American Negro. IMC records reveal that many IMC representatives visited black communities in the region to explore their alternative civilizations and that all of them returned full of enthusiasm for the black character and institutions they had found. In “contrast to national and racial situations elsewhere,” one traveler pointed out, the U. S. South appeared to be characterized by the “extraordinary sanity … of the Negro leader” and the “absence of any kind of sourness of disposition.” Many saw Booker T. Washington at the core of the “magnificent tradition” of industrial education. Others viewed him as an expression of the “very admirable and valuable racial qualities” that one “cannot help recognizing in [the South].”60 Through the works of Oldham and others, the IMC’s engagement with the modern race problem thus came to involve specific considerations of the relationship between African American ways of life and the American South. Emphasizing human plasticity and a correlation of race and region, these considerations both contested the colonial and scientific doctrine that blacks were inherently racially inferior, and gave them a new role as representatives of an alternative civilization in the ecumenical world mission. ◆◆◆ The rise of the ecumenical movement reconfigured the traditional concept of world evangelization along several lines over the first decades of the twentieth century. Regarding its mode of operation, the ecumenical movement was distinctive in its creation of a loose network of communication and exchange between otherwise disparate religious actors and in its attention to ideas and problems of the modern world, which subsequently broadened the purpose of Christian missions beyond proselytizing. The effort to organize missionary cooperation around certain issues of the modern world crystallized in the IMC. Oldham, Christianity, 169–70. Ibid., 229. 60 N. n. to Lionel Curtis, c/o Committee of Reference and Council (FCC), November 2, 1921. SOAS, IMC Archives, FBN 94, 267021. 58 59

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While the council’s concern for indigenization aligned it with colonial and philanthropic organizations, rather than with African American and African churches, its search for solutions to the race problem restored the American Negro from the South to an integral and indispensable part of the Christian ideal of human society. In the following pages, I explore how these two dynamics corresponded to each other. By narrowing the focus to the AME Church’s role within the ecumenical movement, I show how, as a black American denomination, the AME Church took paths onto the ecumenical stage that accentuated the ambiguities involved with Christian indigenization and the race problem in relation to the American Negro.

6. Moving onto the Ecumenical Stage: The AME Church and Ecumenism

6.1. “A United Front”: The Formation of Black Ecumenism

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e may date the beginning of black ecumenism to that same, first, ecumenical conference in 1900 in New York City. Among the two thousand delegates that came to compare their notes and enrich their knowledge about the world’s mission fields was Henry B. Parks, the AME secretary of missions. His presentation was scheduled for a panel on Africa called “A Work for American Negroes,” which he shared with two representatives of the major black denominations of the United States, the AMEZ Church and the National Baptist Convention. In his address, Parks emulated the general enthusiasm of the evangelical movement of the time. He argued that the contemporary religious developments in Africa signaled “the opening of the door.” He then picked up on the prevalent racial discourse. “It has been remarked,” he stated, “that the Negro of America will have to do much with the evangelization of Africa.” Parks confirmed this expectation by emphasizing that he did not “hesitate to admit” that AME Church operations, which had only just begun in Africa, had rapidly drawn a discipleship “numbered by the thousands.” For the future, he hoped to give “educated missionaries of the negro race to that continent, and put the work in their hands.” Parks then concluded by asserting that God had “reserved” the black Americans to “plead with his heathen brother on the dark continent.”1 His assertion certainly echoed the old providential beliefs about the African American mis-

H. B. Parks, “A Work for American Negroes,” in Report, 1900, by Ecumenical Missionary Conference, 471–72. 1

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sionary movement.2 But it also fit the newly emerging ecumenical worldview. Along different institutional trajectories, pursuing various missionary agendas and mobilizing diverse doctrinal discourses to defend them, the AME Church came to recognize its Africa mission as integral to a worldwide network of missionary thought and practice. The AME Church had indeed a quite solid institutional footing in the ecumenical movement. In 1867, AME representatives participated in the Evangelical Alliance meeting in Amsterdam. They also participated in the World’s Parliament of Religions (held in 1893 in connection with the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago), and they attended the World’s Ecumenical Conferences of Methodism, which convened in London and Baltimore in 1881, 1891, 1901, and 1921– events that are currently considered the prelude to the ecumenical movement in the twentieth century.3 Perhaps most significant for the AME Church to become aligned with the ecumenical movement was that its delegates attended the Edinburgh conference of 1910, as well as the subsequent World Missionary Conferences.4 In this way, AME representatives were involved in the construction of major ecumenical institutions. In 1908, they helped to found the FCC, and in 1921 they helped, as a members of the FMCNA, establish the IMC.5 Along with maintaining these institutional relations, the AME Church incorporated ecumenical thought and practice into its self-conception. In its Centennial Retrospect of 1916 the AME Church assessed the African Methodist principles, which it had developed earlier in order to provide a black response to fundamental human needs, regarding this convergence. Similar to the ecumenical impulse to apply scientific approaches to religious contexts, the Retrospect claimed that AME intellectuals were at the forefront of a contemporary effort to understand “Old Faiths in New Lights.”6 The ecumenical plan to cover the inhabited earth resonated with the notion that the AME Church’s sense of “industrialism” had become “a world plan under the new name – ‘Vocational training,’ which is now sought to be grafted into the systems of popular education nearly the world over.”7 The ecumenical focus on cooperation was expressed by the church’s assertion that its “hand of help and fraternal heart” had extended far beyond black denominations, namely, in “Union and Cooperation with the Methodism of the World.”8 The entry in the FCC handbook on Jon Sensbach, “African-American Christianity,” in Cambridge History of Christianity, Vol. 8, World Christianities c.1815–c.1914, ed. Gilley and Stanley, 441. 3 Jenifer, Centennial Retrospect, 329–37; and “The Ecumenical Conference,” Christian Recorder, October 6, 1921, 1 and 4–5. 4 Stanley, “Twentieth-century World Christianity,” 79. 5 F. P. Turner to J. W. Rankin, August 17, 1921. SCRBC, AME CR, box 41, folder “Corr. F, 1921.” 6 Jenifer, Centennial Retrospect, 311. 7 Ibid., 154. 8 Ibid., 333 and 329. 2

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the AME Church in that same year confirmed the church’s new self-image. It located its origin in “the doctrine and practice of industrial education …, before there was a Hampton or a Tuskegee” and claimed its agenda as grounded in the virtues of “industrial thrift through self-help and friendly aid,” as well as principles of “fealty, loyalty, self-respect, manly independence and cooperation.” The handbook summarized that all of this was happening “in union and cooperation, in sentiment and effort with all churches and bodies which labor for the evangelization of the world and the uplift of mankind.”9 The AME Church, as such descriptions suggest, considered its own historical purposes compatible with the contemporary ecumenical striving for interracial and international Christian fellowship. By adopting the ecumenical perspective, it even gained the leverage to represent its long-marginalized religious principles as globally relevant in the context of spreading Christianity. In the United States, the AME Church entered the ecumenical stage most conspicuously through the FCC. Because the FCC owed much of its credibility as an institution promoting the “spirit of fellowship, service and coöperation” to having black churches in its membership, it was quick to declare the “recent race conflicts” in the United States as the primary “Challenge of the Postwar Situation.”10 The FCC’s effort to start a “constructive program for just interracial relations” had a national and a global purview. According to the FCC, the United States was the “foremost exponent of the ideals of democratic government” and was therefore the central role model for “the settlement of race relations in other parts of the world.”11 To harmonize race relations by Christian means, and by so doing garner more credibility for the gospel abroad, the FCC founded a Commission on Race Relations in 1921, drew up “International Ideals of the Churches of Christ” in the following year, and in both instances included the AME Church.12 Such initiatives asserted that the FCC could not take an active role in pacifying international relations without working toward its internal desegregation. A “divided Church,” the argument ran, could hardly “convince a divided world.”13 In step with this agenda, AME and AMEZ representatives raised their voice against the racial divide, which they felt was encroaching into the ecumenical community. AME Secretary of Missions E. H. Coit criticized the FCC Macfarland, Churches of the Federal Council, 83 and 84. Constitution of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, repr. in Macfarland, Churches of the Federal Council, 248; and Federal Council of the Churches of Christ, Report of the Committee on Negro Churches, 1919. UTS, MRL Pamphlets, Misc. 1499, 46–47. 11 Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, “A Statement and Recommendations on the Present Racial Crisis,” September 26, 1919. UTS, MRL Pamphlets N. Am. 1974, 1. 12 “International Ideals of the Churches of Christ,” in A. M. E. Year Book, 1922–1923, ed. Charles Spencer Smith, John R. Hawkins, and Reverdy C. Ransom (Philadelphia, 1923), 64. 13 Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, Annual Report, 1922 (New York, 1922), 8. 9

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for neglecting African Methodist churches “among other evangelical churches operating in the same territory” and admonished them that this not only contradicted cooperative principles, but also compromised productive contacts with AME ministers – especially since the problem did not appear “among those of our Group who are affiliated in membership with white churches.”14 W. Sampson Brooks, the church’s resident bishop of West Africa, made similar observations in 1932 at the Sixth Ecumenical Conference of Methodism. While “righteousness, justice and human brotherhood” were “significantly emphasized,” he noted that he was “accorded the same courtesy and consideration as all other churches of the Methodist family” only after “some delay and parley.”15 Raising their voices on behalf of ecumenical cooperation, AME members could renew their demands for sharing conferences and pulpits, and they could demand a more efficient proclamation of the “teachings of brotherhood.”16 At the same time, however, it was precisely the power of such demands that made them aware of how the brotherhood of man was, as the Voice put it, at best being “slowly realized” – and that it only posed anew the question as to whether or not churches were “in Reality Beginning to Place Christ Above Color and Race.”17 The difficulty in overcoming racist undercurrents and (un)cooperative practices within U. S.-based ecumenical institutions eventually resulted in the formation of a black ecumenical community. The fusion began in the early 1920s with the AME Church and the AMEZ Church, both of which aimed to avoid “duplication of missionary and educational work” by splitting their responsibilities in Africa. The AME Church took over Liberia, Sierra Leone, and South Africa, while the AMEZ Church concentrated on the Gold Coast. Technically, the cooperation was built on the two churches’ “similarity of methods of government, modes of observation and system of doctrine.” But the AME Church mainly considered their collective effort a promising sign of the contemporary “trend of thinking along missionary lines.”18 Another source of inspiration was the profound reconfiguration of AME and AMEZ missionary territories. According to an AMEZ official, the war “worked the dissolution E. H. Coit to Charles E. Vermilya, January 16, 1926. SCRBC, AME CR, box 43, folder “Corr. I-H, 1926.” 15 Episcopal Address by Bishop W. Sampson Brooks to the Bishops, General Officers and Members of the Twenty-ninth Quadrennial Session of the General Conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Cleveland, Ohio, May 2–16 (Philadelphia, 1932), 49. 16 Conference of Moderators and Presiding Officers of the Denominations Held at the Invitation of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America at 600 Lexington Avenue, New York, May 3, 1922. SCRBC, AME CR, box 44, folder “Misc., Corr., Minutes, Reports, South Africa, Cuba, US,” 5. 17 “Are the Churches in Reality Beginning to Place Christ Above Color and Race?” Voice of Missions (June 1932): 8. 18 W. A. Fountain to the Tri Council of Bishops of the AME, AMEZ and CME Churches, February 10, 1922. SCRBC, AME CR, box 42, folder “Corr. Bishop W. A. Fountain, 1922.” 14

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of kingdoms, created new nations, established new geographical border lines for states, and introduced the doctrine of world democracy.” These changes seemed to shape “a new horizon for our national life, … new interpretations of national relationships,” and a new consciousness of “racial groups to assert the right of self-determination.”19 Out of the need to “readjust … to the task of meeting the requirements of the changing world” some hoped to draw “lessons of unity in variety” from worldwide missionary cooperation that would pave the way for unification among the segregated American churches.20 The postwar enthusiasm, however, did not prevail. The establishment in 1934 of the Fraternal Council of Negro Churches (FCNC) underscored substantial and enduring discrepancies between black expectations and white intentions within ecumenical frameworks.21 Initiated by the AME Church, the FCNC incorporated the six largest black American denominations at the time. For them, the FCNC projected a notion of church unity based on cooperative action. “We propose,” the council stated, “that the Negro religious denominations shall cooperate on all questions touching the spiritual, moral, social, political, economic and industrial welfare of our people.”22 Four years later, the AME Church launched, with a similar goal, the formation of a “Denominational Union” of black Methodist churches. Finally, the cooperation that the AME and the AMEZ Churches had settled upon in their foreign work was redefined as a “united front” among black missionaries, a front that had to “protect and safeguard the interests of Negroes around the world.”23 By the late 1930s, the ecumenical moment of the postwar situation thus had become an internationalizing practice for black American churches, while the race problem continued to divide ecumenical institutions.

Bishop J. L. Blackwell, Quadrennial Address of the Bishops of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, 1920. NABWH, Josephine Humbles Kyles Papers, 045 S01 B01, 1–2. 20 L. L. Berry to D. H. Sims, June 1, 1936. SCRBC, AME CR, box 37, folder “Corr. Bishop David H. Sims, 1936–1938”; and Blackwell, Quadrennial Address, 6. On unification, see Robert Bruce Mullin, “North America,” in A World History of Christianity, ed. Adrian Hastings (London, 1999), 443. 21 Mary R. Sawyer, “The Fraternal Council of Negro Churches, 1934–1964,” Church History 59 (1990): 54. 22 “The Fraternal Council of Negro Churches in America,” in Year Book of Negro Churches, ed. Ransom, 24–25. 23 W. A. Fountain to L. L. Berry, April 7, 1938; and W. A. Fountain to L. L. Berry, April 11, 1938. Both SCRBC, AME CR, box 37, folder “Corr. William Alfred Fountain, 1936–1938.” 19

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6.2. “God’s Last Reserve”: The AME Church’s Ecumenical Self-representation

Historians have long contended that black American churches had a muted voice –if they had a voice at all – in most ecumenical forums during the interwar years.24 To trace black ecumenism solely within organizations and conventions designated as “ecumenical” is thus prone to eclipse blacks from the ecumenical movement altogether. The AME Church was indeed marginalized in the FCC and the IMC, when considered in terms of its membership, which was comparatively small. However, its representation within ecumenical institutions at the same time powerfully suggests that the black church shared key assumptions and ambitions with its white counterparts. An AME secretary of missions pinpointed the church’s ecumenical self-understanding as at once falling “in line … with this [i. e., ecumenical] program through the several agencies” and retaining the “leadership in the realm of African Methodism.”25 This claim can be brought into view through a series of public statements in which the church addressed audiences beyond the black community. Analyzing these accounts helps us to understand the place AME people envisioned for African Americans in the ecumenical movement and, once they considered themselves as an integral part of the movement, the new rhetoric available to them. One of the first black ecumenical voices heard throughout the white American church was that of Charles S. Smith, the AME Church’s pioneering Africa traveler. As early as 1915, Smith discussed the involvement of North American denominations in the outbreak of the First World War. His widely distributed article “Racianity and Nationalism in the Acid Test” outlined how the contemporary prevalence of racial and national categorizations offended more than just the “golden rule” of treating others as oneself. He argued that the Christian church had conflated ideas of race and nation into an “acid of belligerency,” which was leading the (presumably) superior Western Christian nations to war against each other. That the same churches began to proclaim the war as an “acid test of Christianity” fueled his discontent. To Smith, their rising sorrow about the international violence exemplified, at best, the confusion of “Christianity and Churchianity” and, at worst, the “quintessence of cynicism.” “Say not then that it is permissible for the propagandists of war,” he warned these churches in the Methodist Episcopal Church’s Christian Advocate, to take the agony of the wounded, the groans of the dying, the wail of the widow and the plaintive cry of the orphan to furnish the composites of the acid in which Christianity Stanley, “Twentieth-century World Christianity,” 54. L. L. Berry to D. H. Sims, June 1, 1936. SCRBC, AME CR, box 37, folder “Corr. Bishop David H. Sims, 1936–1938.” 24 25

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is to be tested – an acid surcharged with the rancor of racial hate and international jealousy.26

Smith’s article anticipated the problems – international and racial hostility – that would become core themes in the formation of the ecumenical movement a few years later. But his condemnation of the church’s role in both of these contexts also implied that the black church had to depart from its traditional role as the mouthpiece of the black people and as a vision of their imagined nation. This line of reasoning was confirmed shortly after in the Centennial Retrospect, a key document of the AME Church’s self-representation. Its opening paragraph stated that only “a narrow, or prejudiced mind would entertain the thought that … [the AME Church] could result other than from correct motives and most vigilant toil, Divine aid and guidance.”27 The demand helped to highlight the church’s Christian principles instead of its origins in racial discrimination and separatism. The Retrospect developed the new perspective by illustrating how the church’s features, such as organizational autonomy, the guarantee of religious liberty, as well as the application of Methodist doctrines for community and economic development, were blueprints for bending Christian doctrines to the benefit of people the world over. It compared the “functions of the Methodist economy” to those of a “graded school,” which equipped disciples with practical skills in community development and “industrialism.” If “wisely directed,” the Retrospect argued, this economy could serve as “the foundation of prosperity, both of the social unit and the social group of all peoples.” Because the formula at hand concerned “the entire man,” namely, “hand, head and heart,” the Retrospect specified that it concerned the training of people of all backgrounds in “the highest and broadest degree of scholastic culture,” as opposed to solely referring to the well-known idea of blacks’ vocational training.28 Smith’s article and the Retrospect articulated the foundations of the new leadership role that the black church came to claim for itself after the war. In 1921, when the Protestant missionary movement launched its crusades against “missions imperialism” and “secular civilization,” the AME Church Review picked up similar themes to define its own.29 In an editorial on “Africa, and the Americans of African Descent,” the author argued that the war illustrated that “there are roles which, in the scheme of things, certain nations and peoples were never meant to play.” Accordingly, white Westerners were unable to refrain “from destructive wars, from greed for alien territory, the cruel oppression of the weak and the lust for power” and had failed to build a civilization 26 27 28 29

Smith, “Racianity and Nationalism in the Acid Test,” 3–5. Jenifer, Centennial Retrospect, 1. Ibid., 118–19 and 153, emphases original. White, “Missions Imperialism”; and Niebuhr, “Secularized Civilization.”

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based on more than physical infrastructures. The critique, however, did not address whites alone. The Review discredited black propagators of empire for the same reasons, maintaining that Marcus Garvey, in particular, encouraged blacks to enter into a flawed competition with Western powers for economic, political, and imperial strength. Contrary to both, the Review constructed a third position. “Out of the debris of empires, with their wreckage of thrones and implements of war,” it declared, let us count ourselves to be God’s last reserve among the races of men to establish forever upon earth the Supremacy of Human Unity, Equality and Concord. Thus shall the black hand of Africa lift its curtain to flood the whole earth with the light of a new civilization where men shall forever abide in plenty and peace.30

The statement placed Africa at the center of the AME Church’s ecumenical worldview. But rather than reclaim the continent as an ancestral fatherland, it described Africa as the source of a new civilization that could be developed only by those descendants who had not been involved in the building of empires, wars, and the erosion of Christian principles from modern civilization. The self-asserted status as God’s last reserve designated the integral place the AME community claimed for itself in the course of human development. Picturing themselves as the sole remaining agents that could help a new civilization in Africa to emerge, AME members were thus not becoming African Americans who defended Africa against white encroachment by any means necessary, but were acting as a reconciliatory force in the unification and pacification of mankind. While the African Methodist ecumenical vision vibrantly developed in the church’s publications since Henry B. Parks had made his appearance at the first ecumenical conference in 1900, it was not until the 1930s that AME representatives re-entered the stages of interdenominational and international gatherings. Once it resumed, however, it became all the more noticeable. It began in 1930, with John A. Gregg’s “Call to Christian Brotherhood” at the World’s Christian Endeavor Convention in Berlin.31 In his speech, Gregg first assured his international mass-audience that their notions squared to the extent that “we all acknowledge the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man”; he continued by voicing his discontent with the contemporary international, financial, and racial crises, for they showed how Christian doctrines had not yet been “woven into the fabric of mankind.”32 The reproach itself was hardly surprising. The significance of Gregg’s speech lay, instead, in the racial bias that 30 31 32

“Africa, and the Americans of African Descent,” AME Review (April 1922): 201–202. See my discussion in the introduction to Part II. “Gregg Tells the World,” 7.

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only a black man was able to pinpoint among those who considered themselves reformers, if not builders, of a global ecumenical community. As reactions to the speech confirmed, Gregg’s address was in this regard deemed thought provoking. The Berliner Tageblatt reported that the black bishop revealed how the doctrine of “man’s Christian duty to his fellow man” was still a racist canard, and the South Bristol Endeavourer confirmed that Gregg’s “outstanding service” in demonstrating as much broke new ground for the future internationalization of Christian agendas. The International Society of Christian Endeavour, which had invited Gregg as a keynote speaker, also welcomed the worldwide stir he had created. As one organizer of the conference explained to the AME Church, he continued to receive reactions “constantly and from all quarters of the globe.” Ultimately, all of the comments Gregg summoned dovetailed in the way they singled out his “dominating influence at the Convention,” for the appearance of a black bishop was “key to the realization of real human brotherhood.” The AME Church agreed. The Voice of Missions happily reported that Gregg had “heralded [a] world challenge” by raising the Christian church from its “lethargic attitude in regard to transmuting its precepts into practical, daily living.” However, the message the AME Church took from Gregg’s impact on the conference was slightly different. Talking about “Christian brotherhood,” the Voice wrote, apparently not only meant talking about one of the most salient themes of interwar ecumenism. It also formed a potent strategy for the black church to “hold up its head a little higher.”33 Gregg’s speech was followed by the invitation of three AME Church speakers to the 1933 International Congress of the World Fellowship of Faith in Chicago, which was held in conjunction with the second World’s Fair, also called the Century of Progress.34 The convention was designed to seek “spiritual solutions for man’s Present Problems – such as War, Prosecution, Poverty-Amidst-Plenty, Antagonistic Nationalisms, Ignorance, Hatred, Fear.” As a result, it focused on topics that concerned people across racial, national, and religious divides, while prioritizing speakers from outside the white, Western world. According to the conference proceedings, it was “the first time in history [that] people of All Faiths, Races and Countries are drawing together.”35 Among them were Mary Church Terrell (1863–1954), Richard R. Wright Jr. (1878–1967), and Reverdy C. Ransom (1861–1959), the AME Church’s most vigorous proponents of the social gospel.36 Their speeches engaged with the “ColIbid., 6–7. The congress continued the Parliament of Religions held in Chicago in 1893. Subsequent meetings convened with the name World Congress of Faiths. 35 Charles Frederick Weller, ed., World Fellowship: Addresses and Messages by Leading Spokesmen of All Faiths, Races and Countries (New York, 1935), v. 36 S. P. Fullinwider, “Racial Christianity,” in African American Religious Thought, ed. West and Glaude, 477–94. 33 34

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ored Woman’s Problem,” “Racial and Religious Prejudice,” and the Negro’s role in Christianity, which in turn brought to the attention of a global audience the problematic intersections of race, sex, and religion.37 Wright, for instance, argued that because prejudices originate “within the realm of emotions” they “outrun judgments, defy facts, and close one’s eyes to reason.” The problem was related to religion. Wright explained, “people think they are serving God, when they are serving race prejudice,” as illustrated by the prevalent ideologies of white supremacy and the civilizing mission. Instead of putting a “Greek-Roman theology before the races of the world,” he pleaded for the Christian mission to adopt a “world point of view.” The proposition intended to overcome racial and religious prejudice by acknowledging the particularities of individuals that added up to a variety of churches, races, and religions across the world. Broadening people’s perspective, Wright held, captured the “universality” of religion as a human phenomenon, while it also deconstructed the racial stereotypes religious parochialism supported and thus worked toward “join[ing] hands with the other men of the world” from two ends.38 Complementing Wright’s global perspective, Ransom’s speech, “The Negro, the Hope or Despair of Christianity,” was grounded in the assumption that the United States presented the testing ground for the spiritual and social future of humanity. “If the Gospel of Jesus has the power to transform men and bring them into brotherhood and love across the differences of colour and race,” he averred, the “laboratory of our American life” held all necessary elements to complete the experiment. Ransom indicated the ecumenical criticism of a secular civilization. It was neither U. S. military and economic power nor political, scientific, or philosophical progressiveness that made the country the “pathway of humanity.” Most important was the “spiritual reserve” its people of African descent held for the world. He continued: It may be that nations, now empty in the midst of their wealth, weak through the strength of their armies, and now the bewildered prey of the magnificence and the wonders which their genius has created, shall remain in their social, economic and spiritual valley of dry bones until … the question comes to some Negro prophet, ‘Can these bones live?’ Then out of the depths of his highly spiritual emotional nature, he shall prophesy to the dry bones of our civilisation until they are united, clothed with flesh that knows no distinction of race, pulsating with the warm blood of our common human brotherhood and made alive by the spirit of God dwelling in their hearts. The visions of prophets, the dreams of poets, the hopes and longings of the poor and oppressed, shall find fulfillment Reverdy C. Ransom, “The Negro, the Hope or Despair of Christianity,” in World Fellowship, ed. Weller, 316–19; Mary Church Terrell, “Solving the Colored Woman’s Problem,” in ibid., 304– 16; and R. R. Wright Jr., “Overcoming Racial and Religious Prejudice,” in ibid., 319–22. 38 Wright, “Overcoming,” 320–22. 37

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in the rebirth of society in which the spirit of God inspires and hallows all forms of human intercourse among the races and nations of earth.39

Ransom’s speech put together the elements of a black ecumenical worldview, which had emerged since the beginning of the century. Like the ecumenical movement as a whole, he dismissed notions of superiority as grounded in the benefits of a secular civilization. In their place, he asserted the indispensable role of African Americans for restoring human brotherhood, with a specific emphasis on the impossibility of otherwise reproducing or replacing their contribution. The argument thus redefined the racial prejudice of the spiritual, emotional nature of blacks as a unique, key resource to achieve the rebirth of a truly Christian world society. That AME members such as Henry B. Parks, Charles S. Smith, Richard R. Wright Jr., and Reverdy C. Ransom advocated the acknowledgement of the specifics of black spirituality as a “last reserve” revealed the ecumenical grounds on which they constructed their church’s self-conception. African Methodism was part of this spirituality to the extent that it was rooted not only in racism but in the ongoing conflation of Methodist, African American, and African religious practices as well.40 As a result, the AME Church had long struggled against a reputation of practicing emotionalism, revivalism, and mysticism, all of which were commonly seen as indicating black inferiority and backwardness.41 Only the ecumenical setting, with its appreciation of racial and geographical particularities within and beyond Christianity, allowed the AME Church to publicly embrace its enduring black Atlantic religious tradition. 6.3. The AME Church’s Ecumenical Africa Mission and the IMC

In addition to the engagement with ecumenical institutions and worldviews, the AME Church entered the ecumenical stage on another site: its foreign mission. By 1927, it reported to maintain one hundred fifty ordained ministers outside of the United States, who provided for about twelve thousand communicants in six countries.42 Adopting ecumenical language, the AME missionary approach emphasized “that there are no frontiers in the Redeemer’s Kingdom, Ransom, “Negro,” 318–19. Case, Unpredictable Gospel, 160. A useful compilation of AME theology and its critique of segregation, nationalism, and social Darwinism is in Social Protest Thought, ed. Angell and Pinn, 131–94. 41 Curtis J. Evans, “The Social Sciences and the Professional Discipline of Black Religion” in The Burden of Black Religion (Oxford, 2008), accessed October 1, 2014, doi:10.1093/acprof: oso/9780195328189.001.0001. 42 E. H. Coit to Gertrude Brawner, January 7, 1927. SCRBC, AME CR, box 43, folder “Corr. Bo-By, 1927.” 39 40

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no ‘home’ and ‘foreign’ fields, for the field is the world.”43 This creed explicitly required dismissing the attitude “that all the religious customs of the people to whom we go are heathen and antagonistic to the Christian message.” In addition, AME missionaries were supposed to distinguish the Christian message from the “particular wrapping” it had adopted within American culture, such as forms of nationalism, war, capitalism, industrialism, and materialistic philosophy. Missionaries themselves were conceptualized as carriers and receivers of the gospel and functioned as its “medium of exchange.”44 Following this approach, AME leaders cast the church as a full product of the mission. Its “Organic Origin and Growth,” a church official based in West Africa intimated, was owed “mainly to the spirit of Missions both in the Home and the Foreign Fields.”45 On the other side of the Atlantic, the AME Church held similar notions of missionary exchange. In the late 1930s, after AME Africa missionaries had established regular contacts, African American and African church members agreed that the South African AME Church was the paramount incarnation of the home church. In particular, the establishment of schools, informed by the “doctrine and practice of industrial education,” was said to evidence this South Atlantic crossing.46 AME officials in the United States celebrated the South African educational work as “a monument” of the church’s own origins, as well as of the prospects that resulted from its “industrial thrift through self-help” that drove African Methodist expansion in Africa. The exchange fortified a sense of unity between the two geographically disparate black churches. They had not, in the language of missionaries, ‘planted’ one another, but they shared a similar idea of independence. The gospel, righteously applied, provided the bond for a transatlantic community of people based on “Self-Confidence, Self-Help and Self-Reliance.”47 Another ecumenical aspect of the AME Africa mission was that it often began with incorporating independent African churches. This was most clearly illustrated by the AME Church’s merger with the Ethiopian Church of South Africa. Accomplished in 1896 by Bishop Henry McNeal Turner, the unification of the two churches helped to draw large parts of its membership from white mission churches.48 According to Case, the amalgamation exhibited A Call to Week of Prayer by the Missionary Department of the AME Church, March 7–13, 1927. SCRBC, AME CR, box 45, folder “Financial Reports, 1927.” 44 Report of the Commission on Survey of Missionary Activities of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, 1930. SCRBC, AME CR, box 44, folder “Misc., Corr., Minutes, Reports, South Africa, Cuba, US,” 5. 45 Episcopal Address by Bishop W. Sampson Brooks, 33. 46 Macfarland, Churches of the Federal Council, 84. 47 Wilberforce Institute Bulletin of Information, n. d., [Evaton, Transvaal?]. MARBL, Emory University, Josephus Roosevelt Coan Papers, box 47, folder 11, 1. 48 See Campbell, Songs, 222–26. 43

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black evangelism’s distinct feature, namely, that it grew most rapidly in situations in which white Christians faced limits in their appeal to blacks. While typically achieving larger numbers of conversions among blacks than their white counterparts, African American churches also tended to preserve African culture in their religious practices so that, gradually, they confounded Western, Anglo-Saxon concepts of Christianity. The AME Church’s Africa mission was thus a key episode not only for African American religious history. It also belonged to the history of world Christianity, in other words, a history accounting for the centuries-old processes in which the faith crossed cultural boundaries and was thereby continuously transformed.49 The first researchers interested in recording this history were ecumenicists, driven to observe and utilize Christian variety. Among the ecumenical institutions that acknowledged the AME Church’s Africa mission in this way were the Committee of Reference and Counsel of the FMCNA, the Missionary Research Library (MRL), founded in 1914 in New York City as result of the first World Missionary Conference, and the World Missionary Atlas, published in 1925 by the Institute of Social and Religious Research.50 As the AME Church Missionary Department’s correspondence reveals, requests from these organizations for information and statistics on activities in Africa frequently poured in. Their letters asserted that, officially, it was the growing “anxiety” to “keep on hand a complete file of the current reports of all the various Missionary Societies of the world” that sparked this interest.51 But the purpose of many inquiries went beyond completeness. Correspondents were, for instance, curious about the AME Church’s strategies to encourage Africans’ self-support in the field and its opinion on the IMC’s constitution.52 In addition, they emphasized how the AME Church’s help was “greatly desired,” particularly “for purposes of research.”53 In the realms of “world Christianity,” the AME mission was thus approached as a research object of the IMC’s project to build a science of missions rather than as an equal partner. Its Atlantic crossings served as an example, according to which the IMC hoped that lessons on adapting Christianity

Case, Unpredictable Gospel, 159–60. Harlan P. Beach and Charles H. Fahs, eds., World Missionary Atlas … (New York, 1925). 51 Charles H. Fahs to J. W. Rankin, May 27, 1922. SCRBC, AME CR, box 42, folder “Corr. Committee of Reference and Counsel of the Foreign Missions Conference NA, 1922.” 52 J. W. Clinton to J. W. Rankin, June 17, 1921. Folder “Corr. Y, 1921”; and F. P. Turner to J. W. Rankin, August 17, 1921. Folder “Corr. F, 1921.” Both SCRBC, AME CR, box 41. 53 F. P. Turner to J. W. Rankin, April 16, 1923. Folder “Corr. Committee of Reference and Counsel of the Foreign Missions Conference NA, 1923”; Frances Cummings to J. W. Rankin, July 12, 1922. Folder “Corr. C, 1923”; F. P. Turner to J. W. Rankin, April 16, 1923. Folder “Corr. Committee of Reference and Counsel of the Foreign Missions Conference NA, 1923”; and Charles H. Fahs to J. W. Rankin, May 27, 1922. Folder “Corr. Committee of Reference and Counsel of the Foreign Missions Conference NA, 1922.” All SCRBC, AME CR, box 42. 49 50

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to the “exigencies of a new time and in the conditions of a new environment” could be drawn.54 The period in which ecumenical libraries, archives, and maps began to tell the history of the AME mission coincided with its entrance into ecumenism’s geographic frontiers, namely, the Christian councils the IMC founded in the mission field to drive its internationalization. By the late 1930s, AME mission staff appeared on the membership lists of such IMC organs in Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast, and South Africa. In the IMC’s perspective, these councils belonged to the Younger Churches that were raised in the mission field. To be represented on these councils, churches had to have congregations that were both of a statistically significant size and mainly indigenous. The fact that the IMC acknowledged AME members as representatives testified to their impact on African Christianity and, in particular, on issues of indigenization. Nonetheless, this acknowledgment meant that the IMC classed the AME Church, the oldest independent black church in the United States, as a Younger Church from the mission field.55 The trajectories along which the AME mission entered into the IMC’s hegemonic project of ecumenism confirmed that it was the demographic development of African Christianity, rather than a drive for interracial cooperation, that paved its way into the council’s ranks. Due to its accession into Christian councils from the mission field, the AME Church kept the rise of African churches noticeable, while its mergers with independent African churches emphasized the IMC’s failure to grant the Younger Church satisfying representation. Whereas only very few ecumenical thinkers officially acknowledged the connection between the breaking-away of Younger Churches from the IMC’s indigenization project to African American evangelism, such a connection was inevitably reflected in the IMC’s ambitious project to keep complete and worldwide records. IMC statistics revealed the presence of AME missionaries in hotspots of religious internationalization where indigenous Christians could opt for unity in variety, or religious independence. In addition to formal memberships and black ecumenical self-conceptions, the AME mission’s move into these crossroads became an important facet of its idiosyncratic role as an ecumenical actor within the modern world mission. ◆◆◆ The sections above have shown that while black and white churches agreed that postwar missions needed to be re-examined regarding aims and methods, the Moore, Spread of Christianity, 86. The Christian Council of the Gold Coast, 1939, box 267; Report of the United Christian Council Sierra Leone for the Year 1937, box 268; and Christian Councils in Africa in Relation to the International Missionary Council 1934/1935, box 203. All SOAS, CMBS/IMC. 54 55

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same did not lead to balanced racial representation in ecumenical arenas. To interpret the absence of AME officials as a silence, however, would be to deny a long and complex history of ecumenism within independent black American churches. Throughout the internationalization of the missionary movement in the early twentieth century, the black church was pushed to the forefront of major ecumenical concerns along several lines: international and interracial relations, and the institutional integration of black and white, younger and older, and Western and indigenous churches. All of these were sites at which the AME Church could assert its distinctive religious tradition. By negotiating it with ecumenical aspirations, the AME Church even broadened its self-conception from a national warrior for black people’s concerns to an indispensable spiritual reserve for a declining Western civilization – a reserve that likewise stood at the core of the newly developing vision of an ecumenical community. As we will see in the following chapter, much of the interplay of missionary internationalization and Christian indigenization rallied around a similar shift in assumptions. In opposition to a course along ingrained religious, national, or imperial boundaries, part of the ecumenical project was to discover, as Oldham put it, “regions of experience” correlating in new ways race, space, and human spirituality. The South Atlantic was one expression of the making of this new ecclesiastical geography. Another one was the construction of the figure of the American Negro. AME missionaries indigenized Christianity in Africa not solely as a pan-African impulse, but also as a consequence of adopting the ecumenical plan to cover the inhabited globe.

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7. The ‘American Negro’ and Africa: Blackening the South Atlantic

7.1. Indigenizing Black Christianity in the South Atlantic

T

he AME Church conducted the first systematic survey of its foreign missionary activities in 1930, nearly one hundred years after the first missionaries had gone abroad. While the survey found that the church’s missionary expansion took the shape of a “conflicting maze,” rather than an organized plan, the analysis identified a pattern in the church’s geographical outreach. Within “a wide expanse of territory on three continents and several islands of the sea,” AME missions, it noted, were located “particularly [in] the South Atlantic.”1 The ecclesiastical geography of AME missions was built on the migration of black populations in the Americas, including Canada, the Caribbean, Mexico, and South America, as well as to West and South Africa, where it was partly the result of ACS repatriation efforts and back-to-Africa movements of the turn of the century. The South Atlantic, to the contrary, was a region that encompassed the West Indies, the Virgin Islands, and South Africa. As the survey explained, these areas were distinguished by specific challenges. One challenge was the fierce “competition with the organized efforts of the strongest Christian Churches.” Another one was that the surroundings were “relatively civilized,” as indicated by a large number of “native workers,” as well as by populations, who were “in no sense heathens, illiterate or barbarians.” AME missionary staff, the survey stated, presented therefore “an important prerequisite Report of the Commission on Survey of Missionary Activities of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, 1930. SCRBC, AME CR, box 44, folder “Misc., Corr., Minutes, Reports, South Africa, Cuba, US,” 1–2. 1

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of effective operation.” Their “character qualifications and duties,” the survey commanded, had to answer the locals’ high expectations for the missionary to have a “fine spirit” and profound training “both in secular and ecclesiastical fields.”2 The AME survey was not the only one to note this pattern. A few years later, William David Schermerhorn, a scholar of the American Society of Church History and author of The Christian Mission in the Modern World, observed the AME Church in the South Atlantic. Unlike the AME survey, Schermerhorn provided a “full world-view” and a complete record of the lines along which Western civilization was then being “‘rethought’,” including the state, the school, the home, the church, social and economic ideals, as well as most recent scientific findings. At the end, Schermerhorn argued, stood a “picture of the ‘World Christian Mission’.”3 Such a picture contained typical notes on increased missionary proficiency within medical and educational work, as well as with translations of the bible into vernacular languages. Added to this were the missions’ problematic outcomes, which consisted primarily in the thrust of indigenous churches toward nationalism and independence.4 What distinguished Schermerhorn’s global observations, however, was their inclusion of African American evangelism. His findings on black American mission work more or less matched those presented by the AME survey. Schermerhorn argued that the AME Church was an undeniable force in the West Indies, South America, and South Africa. He viewed it as particularly effective, for it had created a large number of self-supporting and self-sustaining congregations. Unlike the myriad of short-lived and uncoordinated independent church movements, AME Churches held the promise of “permanent worth and strength.” What made the AME mission so powerful, Schermerhorn explained, was its appeal to the local people. He noted “the entire cordiality with which members of independent Ethiopian Churches mingle with those of the native Christians belonging to older missionary groups.” He did not deny, of course, that the same cordiality “considerably distresse[d] the European Christian groups” and hence exacerbated interracial competition. Notwithstanding certain uneasy complications, Schermerhorn saw the AME mission in the black South Atlantic as having been fulfilled: “It is quite possible that this irregular breaking away from early leading strings may be the forerunner of a really African church, toward which the missionaries have worked and prayed through all their course.”5 Coming from very different perspectives and institutional backgrounds, the AME survey and Schermerhorn’s book shared the notion that AME mis2 3 4 5

Ibid., 4. Schermerhorn, Christian Mission, 9. Ibid., 48. Ibid., 246–47.

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sions indigenized Christianity in the South Atlantic in ways that others could not. It was no coincidence that this notion had traveled into mission surveys from both sides of the racial divide. In different ways, each side related to an episode in the transatlantic history of missions and colonialism that, on the one hand, was located at the intersection of black and white churches’ contestation of Western concepts of civilization, missions, and Christianity. On the other hand, it lay within the attempt to grapple with the contradictions of religious independence, racial competition, and missionary ecumenism. This intersection was the joint effort of American, European, and African ecumenists’ to correlate racialized practices from the U. S. South with philanthropic efforts in the South Atlantic region, which in turn projected a line of convergence along which the connection between African Americans and Africa could be redrawn. This joint effort began about a decade before the AME Church and Schermerhorn conducted their surveys with a group of North American and European missionary boards. They aimed to provide “definite data as to educational conditions and needs” for those interested in “improving the status of the Natives of Africa.” To this end, they requested the Committee of Reference and Counsel of the FMCNA to take up their proposal with other boards working in Africa, and after some negotiation, these societies agreed to appoint a “Commission on Education in Africa” to tour through West, South, and Equatorial Africa in 1920. 75 percent of the commission’s budget came from the PhelpsStokes Fund, an American philanthropic organization that had fostered “the education of Negroes both in Africa and the U. S.” Taking the “Negro” as its target group, the fund advised that the commission could apply “the same methods to study that had been proven helpful in improving educational conditions among American Negroes to the members of their race in Africa.”6 The project was led by Thomas Jesse Jones, a former Hampton teacher and officer of the U. S. Department of Education, and involved a number of American and European missionaries, who had done medical and educational work in African colonies before they joined the commission.7 In addition, there were specialists for education, one American who focused on industrial education, and one African, who was an expert for African American education. The African was a man named James E. K. Aggrey (1875–1927). He was included in the commission not only to help investigate African schools, but also, and perhaps more significantly, to “act as a mediator” between Africans and their white governments.”8 Aggrey was born on the Gold Coast and had spent much of his life Thomas Jesse Jones, Education in Africa: A Study of West, South, and Equatorial Africa by the African Education Commission Under the Auspices of the Phelps-Stokes Fund and Foreign Mission Societies of North America and Europe (New York, 1922), xii. 7 Ibid. 8 Edwin W. Smith, Aggrey of Africa: A Study in Black and White (London, 1932), 148. 6

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as a student, minister, and teacher of the AMEZ Church’s Livingstone College in North Carolina.9 This background paved the way for him to both become a member of the commission and to formulate and implement the commission’s recommendations for developing a system of colonial education all over British Africa.10 Under the impression of the commission’s findings, Aggrey helped found the Prince of Wales College and Achimota School in 1924, which by then was one out of two institutions of higher education in British West Africa.11 In view of the great impact that the commission had on colonial education, the FMCNA asserted later that “this review … has been probably the most stimulating ever undertaken and has encouraged revision of … African education in a marked degree.” Widely received in “influential circles” of British administrators and missionary societies, the FMCNA and other outside parties strongly encouraged the commission to continue its survey in East Africa in 1924.12 With its attempt to deliver suggestions for what was called the “adaptation of education” that Africans received at the time, the commission wove AME mission schools into its vision to establish a coherent system of black education spanning the United States to across the Atlantic. The report of 1920 found that all AME mission schools that had been inspected by the commission in Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast, Liberia, the Union of South Africa, as well as in Basutoland and Rhodesia, were well established in the respective local systems of African education. Also, it found that these schools comprised a wide variety of forms and levels education, including elementary schools, industrial training institutes, colleges for higher education, as well as religious schools for the training of teachers and ministers.13 Although not fully honored in the report, AME missionary education in Africa overall qualified as “adapted education,” as the commission would come to understand the concept. Many of the survey’s recommendations centered on developing a focus on the specific needs of the individual and the commuFor full biographies, see Sylvia M. Jacobs, “James Emman Kwegyir Aggrey: An African Intellectual in the United States,” Journal of Negro History 81 (1996): 47–61; and L. H. Ofosu-Appiah, The Life of Dr. J.E.K. Aggrey (Accra, 1975). 10 On the commission’s impact in East Africa, see Kenneth King, Pan-Africanism and Education: A Study of Race, Philanthropy and Education in the Southern States of America and East Africa (Oxford, 1971). 11 Before Achimota, the Church Missionary Society’s Fourah Bay College in Freetown (founded in 1827) was the only school offering higher education in the area. On Aggrey’s role in colonial education, see Thomas C. Howard, “West Africa and the American South: Notes on James E. K. Aggrey and the Idea of a University for West Africa,” Journal of African Studies 2 (1975/76): 445–65. 12 Foreign Missions Conference of North America, Preparation of Missionaries for Africa: A Statement Prepared Under the Direction of the Missionary Personnel and Africa Committee as Revised in 1935 (New York, 1935), 2. 13 Jones, Education in Africa, 16. For the results of AME Church schools by country, see for Liberia, 8; Freetown, 111; Sierra Leone Protectorate, 117; and the Gold Coast, 140. 9

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nity instead of introducing Western book learning, which was the prevalent approach in missionary education. The AME mission’s method differed. It included practical elements and thus a more adaptive approach, as evidenced by schools, such as the AME Girls’ Industrial and Literary Institute in Freetown, the Monrovia College and Industrial Training Institute in Liberia, and the Wilberforce Institute, an industrial and teacher training school in Evaton, Transvaal.14 With these and other institutions, each year they offered combinations of vocational, religious, and teacher training for girls and boys, and often included medical care, for approximately two thousand students above the day and elementary school level.15 However, that the AME mission transcended the realms of book learning, as the commission report would suggest, did not mean that it took on its recommendations. It was a convergence between international philanthropic interests and the black American church’s prior understanding of Christian religion as a practical training for life and self-determination that contingently gained significance and a new meaning in colonial Africa.16 Another line of convergence between the commission’s recommendations and AME mission practices was the provision of Christian literature in vernacular languages. In South Africa, the AME Church published the South African Christian Recorder, an Afrikaans version of the AME Church’s Christian Recorder in the United States. In addition, many AME Church documents and hymns were translated into the Sesuto, Xhosa, and Pedi languages, thus forming the nucleus of its South African publishing business. Many AME missionaries held memberships in corresponding ecumenical institutions. Josephus R. Coan, a key figure in setting up the South African Wilberforce Institute, for instance, was actively involved with the FCC, the IMC, the Interdenominational Council of Religious Education and the American Society of African Culture, while his local engagements involved the South African Council for the World Sunday School Convention, the South African Christian Council (the local representative in the IMC), the South African Institute of Race Relations, the Bantu Men’s Social Center, and the Non-European Affairs Committee of the Witwatersrand Church Council.17 These convergences suggest that the indigenization of Christianity that major ecumenical institutions imagined, worked hand in hand with African Descriptions of various schools are provided in Berry, Century of Missions; and “Views of Wilberforce Institute in South Africa,” Voice of Mission (July 1939): 20. 15 E. H. Coit to Gertrude Brawner, January 7, 1927. SCRBC, AME CR, box 43, folder “Corr. Bo-By, 1927.” 16 On the AME Church’s self-understanding in the context of ecumenism see Section 6.2. 17 Outline of Autobiography of Reverend Josephus Roosevelt Coan, 1957, folder 9, 4; and Biographical Sketch of Josephus Roosevelt Coan, B. A., B. D., M. A., D. D., folder 9, 5. Both MARBL, Emory University, Josephus Roosevelt Coan Papers, box 61. 14

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American missions. Various surveys conducted by black and white ecumenicists in different institutional contexts and for different purposes observed this feature. In their accounts, the finding served to project a regional concept of race onto the South Atlantic that conceptualized the U. S. South and Africa as a single black region. At the same time, these surveys demonstrated that the AME mission was a racially and spatially distinctive mission that operated in the South Atlantic and thus within the larger project of the modern world mission. Unlike most old mission churches, however, the AME Church did not have to adapt its practices to live up to ecumenical ideals. In the context of the ecumenical mission in the modern world, it thus remained an uneasy reminder that the ingrained notion of the missionary as “a foreigner, an imported, and usually a White person” had not yet been redefined.18 7.2. The Search for Alternative Paths to Civilization: Black and White Missionaries View the ‘American Negro’

Alongside the ecumenical exploration of the ways in which racial varieties defined missionary practices and fields of labor, ideas of the ‘American Negro’ entered into a number of key documents. In 1926, Joseph H. Oldham’s analysis of the race problem had identified Booker T. Washington as a role model for missionaries to end racial competition, and William David Schermerhorn’s study on the world mission confirmed this notion by suggesting that James E. K. Aggrey, the African member of the Phelps-Stokes Commission, had gained a popularity before white audiences that was “second only to that of Booker T. Washington.” At the same time, Washington and Aggrey were understood to provide much needed connections concerning both the “link between European and African peoples” and between “Negroes both in Africa and in the United States.”19 Such fragments indicate that part of re-examining the methods and aims of the modern world mission went beyond improving interracial relations and Christian indigenization. It specifically involved the re-examination of the American Negro. The image that Oldham and Schermerhorn entertained of the American Negro was shaped in a number of interdenominational publications and analyses. One of the first attempts to give a comprehensive survey of the Negro in ecumenical missionary contexts was presented by the Missionary Review of the World, an interdenominational journal of American missionary bodies. In a 1922 special issue, the paper investigated the question of whether or not “Negro Americans” were “an Asset or a Liability.” While taking the infamous 18 19

Coan, Missionary Presence, 1. Schermerhorn, Christian Mission, 231.

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“caricatures” of African Americans as a starting point, the paper underscored that the goal was “not to exalt the Negro, to discount his limitations or to advocate a closer social fellowship between the races”; it was, rather, to bring out “facts” and to relate them to “present day problems” in order to explore how “Negroes can be encouraged to fill most satisfactorily the place … which God intends [for] them.” By doing so, the editors aimed to contribute to the rapidly growing number of studies on Negro Americans. The mere increase of such publications, the editors averred, proved that the topic had become of “pressing importance” for “thousands of men and women.” In their own account, they compiled articles written by renowned black and white American representatives of the educational and religious system, who had contributed in “some special way to the solution of the problem of the Negro.” As a whole, the editor’s selection illustrated the intellectual circles and the lines of reasoning along which the figure of the American Negro could start to cross the color line by means of enormous appeal.20 The picture that emerged in the Review focused on constructing a narrative of “Negro progress,” which was broadly understood as a black exodus from the “environments and conditions” in the American South.21 One prominent element of this story was “Negro Education,” which was discussed as an ever more widely proliferated trademark of the South. As Fayette A. McKenzie, president of Fisk University, noted, black educational institutions such as Hampton and Tuskegee had “won … the world to the need for Negro education through the specialized industrial type, thereby opening the door for a generalized education for the race.”22 In his analysis, he underscored “adaptation” as the model’s distinguishing feature. By this, he meant that Negro education took the “environing natural conditions” into account, as well as the “psychology of the individual student.” Because it helped graduates to “adapt themselves” in later life to all kinds of living conditions and environments, McKenzie argued that industrial education was in the first place of “practical” value. As such, Negro education was a phenomenon of the South, but it was not limited to the South in its application. Training of the industrial type could be adapted to local specificities and people the world over, and could thereby provide an alternative to conventional forms of Western book learning.23 A second key element discussed in the Review’s narrative of black progress was “Negro Character.” In the article, “Negroes’ Work at Home and Abroad,” Kelly Miller, a black sociology professor at Howard University, declared that “Negro Americans: An Asset or a Liability,” special issue, Missionary Review of the World (June 1922): 421–22. 21 Ibid. 22 Fayette Avery McKenzie, “Practical Ideals for Negro Education,” Missionary Review of the World (June 1922): 458. 23 Ibid., 461. 20

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Negro Americans displayed “the galaxy of the Christian graces, loving kindness and forgiveness of spirit.” As such, they were unique for having entered into the “inheritance of civilization” not by force, but as a “reward of meekness.” That not “selfishness and greed” but “altruism” informed their approach to building a civilization, Miller argued, was tangibly expressed by their potent religious affiliations. Considering that approximately five million black Americans were good churchgoers who almost always built their own independent denominations, Miller did not hesitate to claim that “the evangelization of transplanted Africa is the greatest triumph of missionary endeavor since Columbus.” In this view, the black church typified a form of progress that could not be achieved by people who pursued “personal acquisition and gratification of selfish aims.” The same argument underscored the distinct role only African Americans could play as missionaries in colonial Africa. Because the mission of black Christians was pure and altruistic, Miller stated, it prepared people under alien tutelage “to do without the benefactors,” as opposed to making them dependent colonized subjects.24 To support the analysis, the editors provided a photograph of the AME Church’s Girls’ Industrial and Literary Institute in Freetown along with the article. Showing a group of fifty female African students and a teacher in white school uniforms, the picture portrayed that women, doubly colonized subjects, could be emancipated if furnished with training in self-help. According to the editor, the AME school epitomized all “the conditions, achievements and work among Negroes and of Negroes.”25 In the national frame, the image the Review constructed of the American Negro as a missionary for the Negro resonated with the increasing popularity of the so-called Hampton-Tuskegee model, a form of education devised for blacks to help themselves through training in manual labor. Northern philanthropists and white Southern educational reformers considered this model a means to enhance the social control and productivity of black workers, while the same interests could be cloaked as benevolent attempts to enable black advancement in racially segregated environments.26 Black intellectual leaders were divided on the question of whether the model educated blacks to challenge or to accommodate the oppressive Southern political economy. African American churches, which claimed their independence based on similar notions of self-help, positioned themselves in a middle ground. African Methodists, for instance, were inclined to embrace the South as the “home of the Negro” and the Hampton-Tuskegee model as their core religious practice. NotKelly Miller, “Negroes’ Work at Home and Abroad,” Missionary Review of the World (June 1922): 476–78. 25 Delavan L. Pierson to J. W. Rankin, April 19, 1922. SCRBC, AME CR, box 42, folder “Corr. P, 1922.” 26 James D. Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935 (Chapel Hill, 1988), 77–78. 24

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withstanding the model’s ambiguous use, as an AMEZ Church representative explained, this self-assertion had become attractive. Since, he argued, the “eyes of the world” were turned toward black education in the U. S. South, blacks could use this attention to present their contribution to the “moral, industrial and economic advancement” of both the “New South” and the “New Negro.” This argument did not solely advocate racial accommodation to the dominant white society. It also claimed that the Negro and the South were shaping each other, and it thus presented a source of innovation and progress that could not be attained by white society.27 Outside of the United States, the debate was different. International audiences were interested in emulating the type of progress that the Negro came to embody in diverse environments. Notions of adaptation and transplantation, drawn from the African American example, began to inform missionary education and its orchestration with colonial development plans. In 1936, the Voice of Missions noted that missionaries from Uganda, Nigeria, Nyasaland, Tanganyika, Northern Rhodesia, and India were coming to study industrial schools in the U. S. South. According to the Voice, they aimed to “observe what ideas may be implanted in their work upon their return.”28 Another IMC-related researcher affirmed that “there is only one thing for West Africa education: it must be done on the spot, and with as much help as possible from the experience of Negro Education from the South lands of the U. S.”29 Educational borrowing between the U. S. South and British colonial Africa had been the purpose of the Phelps-Stokes Commissions in the early 1920s, as well. By extension, Alexander G. Fraser and Frederick Gordon Guggisberg, both colonial functionaries of education on the Gold Coast, took the “development of the American Negro” as a model for their considerations of the design for the future of the Africans. Like many others, what they had in mind when talking about the American Negro was the American Negro from the South. They celebrated Booker T. Washington as the representative of the type that was marked by a “spirit of progress, self-help and cooperation, and a tradition of the dignity of manual labour.”30 As Oldham put it in his influential study Christianity and the Race Problem, the American Negro inhabited a particular “region of experience” instead of inheriting unchangeable racial traits.31 Adopting this angle, the international conversation constructed the image of the southern Negro’s plasticity to designate the notion that positive developL. W. Kyles, “The New Negro and the New South: Address at Monroe Park Negro Day,” n. d. NABWH, Josephine Humbles Kyles Papers, 045 S01 B02, 4 and 6. 28 “Missionaries Study Industrial Schools in the South,” Voice of Missions (February 1936): 6. 29 G. W. Morrison to J. H. Oldham, re: A Tour Among Some Negro Schools in the Southern States of the USA, 1921. SOAS, IMC Archives, FBN 94, 267021. 30 Gordon Guggisberg and A. G. Fraser, The Future of the Negro: Some Chapters in the Development of a Race (London, 1929), 25–26. 31 Oldham, Christianity, 218 and 228. 27

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ments could emerge within the oppressive environments of a dominant white society but not be led by that same society. As Fraser and Guggisberg argued, What makes the advance all the more remarkable is that [the American Negro] was living in a state of abject subjection [in which no] opportunities for anything but the most elementary forms of education and training were available. Nor is it made any less remarkable by the fact that he has been living in contact with a race that was better equipped for life by education, heredity, and environment. Against the good example set by that race must be set the bad effect of acts of cruelty, injustice, inhumanity and the bad influence on half-informed minds of the examples of vicious living not uncommon among the lower grades of the white population. The American Negro owes much to the fact that he has, on the whole, preserved that insight into humanity and that power of judging men which characterize today the African races from which he has sprung.32

While this construction correlated the shape of black character and oppressive environments of the United States, it meant that in the final analysis, the American Negro could move out of such environments and thus perform the role as a harbinger of his own civilization. In this way, African Americans could also move beyond the confines that were implicit in the stereotype of blacks’ inherent racial inferiority. Nonetheless, the new social and spatial mobility was not granted unconditionally. The ecumenical assumption that certain races could shape certain spaces carried the American Negro into the South Atlantic, the region in which ecumenicist wanted to see their capacities, as builders of an alternative civilization, invested. 7.3. Paving the Way to Colonial Africa: The ‘American Negro’ Missionary, the IMC, and the British Empire

The time in which the ecumenical movement began to promote the ‘American Negro’ as a missionary capable of counteracting the drawbacks of Western civilization coincided with a time in which anticolonial movements made it increasingly difficult for blacks to enter British African colonies. Marcus Garvey mobilized millions with his slogan “Africa for the Africans,” while the ANC in South Africa and the National Congress of British West Africa (NCBWA) drove Africans to coordinate their resistance across colonial boundaries.33 Colonizers and missionaries saw the AME Church as sympathetic to these moveGuggisberg and Fraser, Future of the Negro, 21–22. For an African perspective on the connections that emerged between African and African American agitators, see Jonathan Derrick, Africa’s ‘Agitators’: Militant Anti-colonialism in Africa and the West, 1918–1939 (New York, 2008); and Rina L. Okonkwo, The Emergence of Nationalism in British West Africa, 1912–1940 (New York, 1979). 32 33

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ments as they pertained to independence in the religious domain. According to the Phelps-Stokes Fund, the AME Church had become the strongest “Native church” in the Union of South Africa, and thus encouraged Africans to “feel that in church matters they can walk by themselves.”34 Similarly, Alexander G. Fraser noted that the AMEZ Church was a “growing party” on the Gold Coast, noticeable mainly because it began to trigger social conflicts.35 The accumulation of religious and political movements in colonial territory contributed to the postwar anxieties of the British. As Joseph H. Oldham noted in his leaflet, The Missionary Situation After the War, the colonial power increasingly intervened in the domain of mission work by issuing stricter immigration regulations and by expanding state systems of education into mission schools.36 These tensions crystallized in particular around the African American missionary. In 1923, a secretary of the Student Volunteer Movement in Great Britain noticed that although “there are no rules against the admission of Negro missionaries to Africa … we know that in practice the various colonial governments do not welcome them.”37 A few years later, the interdenominational journal the Foundation specified the reasons for this precaution on three grounds. First, as “[t]he unrest caused by certain movements believed to be dangerous [f]or order and government and to be encouraged from America”; second, as the “antagonism to government … of certain American Negroes in Africa resulting in serious disturbances in some cases”; and third, as “the failure of certain American Negroes in Africa in the past.”38 The repulsion of African Americans was felt rapidly in the ranks of the Christian mission. In 1929, the visibly shaken Foundation noted that out of the about one thousand five hundred American missionaries then in Africa, merely twelve were black, which meant that in most American missionary societies there was “not a single American Negro!”39 Black observers shared this indignation. In 1931, W. E. B. Du Bois censured the Christian church for acquiescing in “a new and strict drawing of the color line,” arguing that “[n]othing illustrates this better than the attitude of white churches today toward Christian missions in Africa.”40

Charles T. Loram, “Native Progress and Improvement in Race Relations in South Africa,” in Twenty Year Report of the Phelps-Stokes Fund, 1911–1931. . . , ed. James H. Dillard, et al. (New York, 1932), 89. 35 Circular, Alexander G. Fraser to friends, May 23, 1929. Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies, Rhodes House, Oxford, Wraith Papers (MSS.Afr.s.1563), file 11, 3. 36 Joseph H. Oldham, The Missionary Situation After the War: Notes Prepared for the International Missionary Meeting at Crans, near Geneva, June 22–28, 1920 (New York, 1920), 15 and 54. 37 “Negro Missionaries in Africa,” Foundation (March–April 1923): 12. 38 “American Negroes and Africa,” Foundation (May 1927): 19. 39 “The American Negro as a Missionary,” Foundation (July 1929): 7. 40 W. E. B. Du Bois, “African Missions,” Foundation (September 1932): 17. 34

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As American and European mission boards simply refrained from hiring black personnel as demanded, the IMC began to negotiate new admission terms for black Americans with the Colonial Office. At that time, the official rule for non-British subjects “desiring to undertake missionary, educational or other philanthropic work” built upon the Indian case, in which applicants were required to obtain written permission to enter and to declare their “loyal co-operation with the Government.”41 The same rule, as the IMC had been confidentially informed, was used in Africa to bar the entry of African Americans in particular. With this information in hand, the IMC first accommodated the Colonial Office’s aim by agreeing to hold back applications by African American missionary bodies in the immediate future. Nonetheless, as IMC Secretary Oldham insisted in a letter, barring African Americans altogether was not a long-term solution, as the question of the “Negro American in Africa” was expected to remain on the table.42 By putting African American applications on hold, Oldham won time in order to develop a different angle on the problem. In several personal consultations with representatives of the Colonial Office, he expounded on “the distinction between Dr. Moton [Booker T. Washington’s successor at Tuskegee] and Marcus Garvey” as a potential basis for modifying the existing immigration regulation, and eventually persuaded colonial officers that it was “a novel and interesting idea.” According to Oldham, it was “[o]nly their past experience with my judgement and sanity in such matters [that] made them willing to accept it.” But there were also other reasons for colonial officers to favor the distinction. The proposition to “not bar negroes trained in Tuskegee” was supported by West African colonial administrations, which were generally “willing to avail themselves of the help of this type of negro,” as IMC representatives pointed out. The Gold Coast was even “anxious to have out negroes trained at Tuskegee.” Others argued that the “Tuskegee-type” could easily be contrasted with the “Garvey-type,” whose “undesirable propaganda” troubled colonial governments. Although the Colonial Office remained suspicious of African American missionaries, the IMC’s proposal to distinguish African Americans based on their educational, political, and regional backgrounds helped to obtain a number of admissions. Among them was that of James E. K. Aggrey, the Tuskegee-style trained African AMEZ minister who needed the permission to travel in 1924 throughout East Africa with the second Phelps-Stokes Commission on Education, the initiative that would help lay the foundation for industrial education to be introduced all across British Africa.43 Colonial Office, Memoranda A, B, and C, Revised September 1921 Regarding the Admission into India of Aliens Desiring to Undertake Missionary, Educational, or Other Philanthropic Work in India After the War. TNA, CO 323/899/443. 42 J. H. Oldham to Herbert J. Read, June 15, 1923. SOAS, IMC Archives, FBN 37, fiche 3+4. 43 Negroes in Africa. Memorandum of Interview with Mr. Batterbee at the Colonial Office, March 41

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As the two “types” were applied to process immigration admissions, the IMC also used them to define characteristics and qualifications desirable for mission staff in Africa. According to an IMC paper, Tuskegee founder Booker T. Washington and his successor Robert Moton (1867–1840) were to serve as these missionaries’ role models.44 Their “spirit of meekness” was deemed both comparable to Jesus’s and was “most needed by all workers in Africa.” In addition, the paper suggested that Moton and Washington had the “strength in character” that workers in Africa ought to have to be able to endure the “temptations of life in a primitive community,” especially when these communities were racially similar. Next to their character, the IMC found that the training Washington and Moton developed was useful for missionaries in their daily life, which often involved growing their own food and making their own tools and utensils from wood and iron. The IMC’s paper recommended that these survival skills be complemented with education in history, economy, sociology, physical science, and religion. Finally, it expected potential Africa workers to have explicit “extended experience” with educational and religious institutions in the U. S. South. The purpose of these institutions, it argued, was “directly related to African needs.”45 The IMC’s precise construction of the Tuskegee-type missionary was followed by the attempt to displace such missionaries into Africa. In 1926, when the IMC convened a World Missionary Conference on “The Christian Mission in Africa” in Le Zoute, Belgium, it started a public campaign on the matter. To speak of the Christian mission in the singular, the conference proceedings emphasized, was the main political intervention. It meant that professional missionaries and “Christian people as [a] whole, whatever race, nationality or function,” should be brought together – and they were. Among the attendants were missionaries, scholars, intellectuals, philanthropists, educators, physicians, churchmen, and colonial officials, as well as representatives of IMCrelated organizations such as the Institute of African Languages and Tribal Cultures and the Phelps-Stokes Fund.46 The group’s most distinctive feature, a consultative member’s report pointed out, was that “Negro leadership from America, as well as from Africa” was represented almost as much as white leaders. Their “speeches, presence and personal talks,” the report emphasized, kept the members “face to face with living realities” and at the same time demonstrated that the “American Negro” finally claimed “his place among the leaders

22, 1923; n. n. to F. P. Turner, March 27, 1923; and Under Secretary of State to J. H. Oldham, July 21, 1923. All SOAS, IMC Archives, FBN 37, fiche 3+4. 44 On Moton, see Marable Manning, “Ambiguous Legacy: Tuskegee’s ‘Missionary’ Impulse and Africa During the Moton Administration, 1915–1935,” in Black Americans, ed. Jacobs, 77–94. 45 N. n. to F. P. Turner, n. d. SOAS, IMC Archives, FBN 37, fiche 3+4. 46 Smith, Christian Mission in Africa, 25–28.

The ‘American Negro’ and Africa

of the world.”47 The official proceedings enhanced this notion by stating that “adaptation,” “co-operation,” and a “genuine altruistic concern … in the welfare of the people,” the features that had been defined as characteristics of the Tuskegee type, were a topic in nearly every speech.48 The press followed suit with this assessment. The Belgian Notre Colonie, the Friend of the Free State, the North China Herald, and the Svenska Dagblacht reported unanimously with the Johannesburg Sunday Times that “[y]oung and old, African, American and European … were united in their belief in the high destiny of Africa.”49 The conference placed its demand for African American missionaries along with such international praise of interracial cooperation. In order to present what “American Negroes” might be able to do for Africa as “right minded well educated men and women,” one session was dedicated specifically to “the American Experience in Educational and Philanthropic Effort in the Southern States.” The scheduled speakers reconstructed the history of independent black churches and their educational institutions in the U. S. South. That black Americans presented a form of leadership that was “unselfish” and dedicated to the purpose of “prepar[ing] their people rather than … advanc[ing] their own ends,” they argued, was the result of the distinct “spirit of service” these institutions conveyed. Speakers prompted the audience to imagine the massive power this group could unfurl in the “gigantic” African field, especially considering that there were potentially twelve million of them in the United States. The panelists maintained that to most black Americans, missionary work in Africa would seem a “healthy reaction which comes from unselfish effort” and an expression of the “nobler life that comes through Christian devotion.”50 By casting Africa as an “outlet” for the alleged unselfishness of the black Americans, the panel inverted turn-of-the-century schemes of black colonization. Instead of vindicating the history of their enslavement, African Americans were now presented in their mission work as an illustration of what it meant to be Christian in a secularized world. This laudatory analysis was followed by action. Drawing on the perspective the IMC had developed on African American missions based on its surveys, its negotiations with the colonial immigration authorities, the public outcry about the black mission’s declining numbers, as well as the profound merits people like Aggrey had earned for their work, the conference issued a resolution on John L. Dube, Report on the International Conference in Le Zoute Belgium, from September 14 to 21, 1926. SOAS, CMBS/IMC, box 217, folder “Consultative Member Reports,” 2 and 28. 48 Smith, Christian Mission in Africa, 92. 49 J. Bruce Gardiner, “Notable Mission Compilation,” Johannesburg Sunday Times, January 23, 1927. SOAS, CMBS/IMC, box 217, folder “Press Cuttings Conference on Africa Missions Le Zoute.” 50 John Hope, “Sixth Session: American Experience in Educational and Philanthropic Effort in the Southern States,” September 16, 1926. SOAS, CMBS/IMC, box 217.1, folder “Speeches,” 1–8. 47

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the “American Negro in Africa.” The resolution declared that black Americans had a “zeal to render unselfish service, and aid[e] in a natural and important way the cause of African evangelization, education and general welfare.” The IMC then went on to explain how it intended to support black missionaries in Africa. More precisely, it offered to assist with immigration permissions and promised to strengthen the cooperation between white and black mission boards. In addition, the IMC expressed its intention to approach the colonial powers to convince them to keep certain gates open for black clergy. The idea was to bring African Americans in through “recognized” missionary societies. Such societies had obtained permissions and preselected their black workers according to colonial requirements regarding their character and sense of cooperation.51 After all, the IMC’s resolution had thus devised several new instruments for missionary societies and colonial governments to jointly channel African Americans of the so-called Tuskegee-type into British colonies. The first AME representative who traveled to Africa along the regional boundaries in the making was Bishop John A. Gregg. Gregg attended the Le Zoute conference in place of Missionary Secretary E. H. Coit, who had been invited because the IMC considered the representation of the AME Church’s “great missionary enterprise” of “great importance.”52 Originally on his way to South Africa, the bishop stopped over in Belgium to accept the invitation, and he ended up as an attendant “in favor of admitting the Negroes, under certain conditions, to a larger share of missionary work in Africa.” What the conference considered a great step toward “Co-operation with the American Negroes,” however, turned out to be quite restrictive for AME missionaries.53 Because they could pass for what the IMC defined as Tuskegee-type Negroes, they had faced British immigration regulations that were stricter in this regard. The results of the IMC’s vision of making the South Atlantic borderless for African American missionaries was reflected in AME people’s passports: “not valid for travel outside the Western Hemisphere except the Union of South Africa … for missionary work.”54 In the late 1930s, the AME Church reacted to the constraint in an official missionary statement. Signed by AME bishops who had served in Africa, the statement disparaged the “universal confusion … which reflected itself in the general missionary movements throughout the world” and resolved that AME foreign mission work should not be investigated by “anyone” other than its own Resolutions and Recommendations of the Conference on the Christian Mission in Africa Held at Le Zoute, Belgium from September 14th to 21th, 1926. SOAS, CMBS/IMC, box 217, folder “Resolutions and Draft Resolutions.” 52 J. E. East to E. H. Coit, June 10, 1926. SCRBC, AME CR, box 43, folder “Corr. E, 1926.” 53 Smith, Christian Mission in Africa, 101 and 100. 54 Passport Josephus R. Coan issued 1938. MARBL, Emory University, Josephus Roosevelt Coan Papers, box 60, folder 17. 51

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officials.55 The refusal to cooperate with the IMC showed that AME missionaries had moved away from considering the Le Zoute resolution as in service to their interests and that they reinforced, instead, their leadership in the field of African Methodism. In the course of the 1930s, the resolution thus marked the point at which shared ecumenical ambition began to drive its agents into different directions. It also indicated that a new image of the American Negro, rather than interracial cooperation, played a key role in the IMC, for this image helped to relate ventures in Christian indigenization to European systems of indirect rule – the two new regimes of power that came into place in Africa during the interwar years. Since this connection involved the aim of making missions “the designated work of the black man as well as the white man,” it overlapped with the AME Church’s “greatest missionary effort” in Africa and with the “greater missionary civilization” it claimed to have established in the South Atlantic region. Moving into this intersection, the AME community did not gain much from interracial cooperation. It became recognized by the IMC for “do[ing] this work successfully,” and for making African Methodism the most potent factor of a missionary’s “own deliverance.”56 While this deliverance went almost unheard in pan-African and anticolonial movements, it echoed loudly in the Tuskegee-type Negro that was constructed as integral to the global ecumenical community. ◆◆◆ The sections above have shown that the ecumenical movement entailed visions about race and space that correlated in the South Atlantic region. The AME Africa mission was both active in this area and shared two aspects of the ecumenical vision. On the one hand, AME missionary practices involved selfhelp, industrial education, and vernacular translation, all of which were measures the IMC had designed for Christian indigenization. On the other hand, they matched with the image of the American Negro that was constructed in ecumenical discourse in order to designate Southern origins and alternative paths to civilization. In the context of the re-examination of missionary practices with regards to their imperial overtones, ecumenicists thus started to reconsider the role of the American Negro. From their accounts, the figure resurrected the ideal of a nonimperial Africa missionary and soon prompted the IMC to take concrete steps in their favor, as the resolution to involve African American missionaries in larger shares in the missionary project in Africa made clear. The ambition to establish interracial cooperation, however, failed. Missionary Statement by the Bishops of the AME Church, n. d. SCRBC, AME CR, box 35, folder “Corr. J. S. Flipper, 1936–1938.” 56 Quadrennial Report (Draft). SCRBC, AME CR, box 44, folder “Quadrennial Reports (Draft), 1920,” 1. 55

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Based on the IMC’s measures, AME missionaries were cast as ‘other’ blacks called Tuskegee-type Negroes, who were expected to be loyal to the British crown and to set in motion the kind of non-Western progress ecumenicists and colonizers constructed to vindicate their interventions in Africa. Overall, Part II demonstrates that the AME Africa mission was not motivated by pan-African visions but by a distinct mixture of asserting its relation to the American South and global ecumenical imperatives. Part of its ecumenical self-fashioning as “God’s last reserve” intersected with the modern world mission, its focus on the American Negro, and its emphasis on adapted education and indigenized Christianity. Another part of AME ecumenism was informed by the contradictions AME missionaries marked in the international missionary movement: the failure to grant equal representation to black Christians within ecumenical institutions, the growth of independent African churches, and the racial segregation that persisted within the Older Churches – all of which put at a distance the IMC’s vision of the unity in variety of Christianity. With its close relationship to independent African congregations and its ancient models of racial self-help from the U. S. South, the AME Africa mission took root in the contradictions that the internationalization of the interwar missionary movement entailed. On a broader scale, these contradictions exposed the difficulty of asserting the ideal of ecumenism against the entangled history of Christian missions and Western imperialism. The IMC sought to withdraw from the imperial stage by relying on modern science and technology, by following human geographies, and by adapting the Christian message within the purview of the modern world. Its dedication to adaptation and indigenization, however, kept race at the forefront of the ecumenical movement, and drew it back into the rhetoric and practices of colonial regimes. Over the course of the interwar years, the racial undercurrents of the modern world mission thus limited the routes for carrying AME missionaries beyond the South Atlantic and for carrying interracial missionary cooperation beyond Western imperialism.

Part III. Encountering the Colonial Subject: African American Missionaries and the ‘Natives’

Figure 3. “Miss Lydia Moroe, 2nd Year Normal, and Miss Victoria Teffo, 1st Year Industrial, at Wilberforce Institutte [sic]. Note the Hair Style and Uniforms – Are They Proud?” Source: Voice of Missions (August 1939): 9.

T

he scene depicted here seems familiar. Two blacks stand in a cotton field ripe for harvesting. While invoking the image of American slavery in the plantation South, the photograph was taken in a township in Evaton, Transvaal, some time near the outbreak of the Second World War. In this context, it delivered visible accounts of Africans’ assimilation to Western forms of progress: bodies, postures, and surroundings display discipline, manual labor, and monocultural farming techniques – all of which was harnessed to produce cotton, one of Africa’s (and America’s) most important export commodities for the global market.1 To underscore the notion that the image showed Africans’ social advancement, the caption declared that they were students of an industrial school; in other words, they had been trained to work with their hands so that they could generate economic profits. While it was usual for missionaries and Westerners to use this strategy of representation to celebrate their achievements on the ‘dark continent,’ this photograph contains an important new detail: the African women twiddle with the cotton blossoms and smile brightly back at the camera, exuding verve, joy, beauty, and unabashed sensuality. “Note the Hair Style and Uniforms,” the caption instructs the reader and suggests that these Africans had not accommodated colonial demands but were “proud” to present the fruits of their work and education.2 The image confounded the colonial situation in several ways. It cast women as protagonists of modern agricultural production, summoned the old American plantation South as their setting, and challenged the notion that these environments affected their contemporary subordination. With teeth-bearing smiles at the camera, the photograph to some extent even emulated the strategy of self-representation African Americans developed at the time to assert their humanness. This opposed the science-and-technology-focused civilization of the West that had cast them as slaves and industrial workers, and by doing so it challenged white superiority. During the interwar period, the peak The end of American slavery after the Civil War required a global restructuring of regimes of cotton growing and plantation labor. See Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History (New York, 2014); and Andrew Zimmerman, “Cotton Booms, Cotton Busts, and the Civil War in West Africa,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 10 (2011): 454–63. 2 The picture was used in Charlotte C. Wright, “A House by the Side of the Road,” Voice of Missions (July 1939): 27; and Luella G. White, “Sea, Mountain, Sky and People – Capetown to Durban and Zululand,” Voice of Missions (April 1939): 9. 1

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of pan-African identity and agitation, such smiling faces were important visual codes for expressing black pride, indicating that African heritage did not render blacks inferior.3 The ambiguity of pride and progress that is captured in the motif is a clue to the AME Africa mission’s local dimensions, which is the subject of the following pages. As historical studies have shown, industrial education became quite popular in both missionary and British colonial education in the first decades of the twentieth century. Schools in Africa liked to adopt Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute in Alabama in particular as their role model because it seemed to be the tried and tested method for jump-starting blacks’ development without questioning racial segregation in the Jim Crow South. However, operating on the imperial stage in Africa, AME missionaries picked up the same method primarily to divert its white supremacist implications.4 In Africa, the focus on industrial education was part of a much larger transformation of the British colonial apparatus that peaked between the world wars. To cut back on administrators and expenses while securing their supremacy, the British established a system of indirect rule. This system devolved government responsibilities to African authorities that enforced British policies while cloaking such policies as “native customs.” According to the British, indirect rule encouraged Africans to develop “on their own lines,” instead of assimilating them to a European model.5 As much scholarship has shown, however, indirect rule was rather premised on the preservation of constructions of what Europeans believed was “native.” Colonizers invented folklores, historical traditions, and customary laws for Africans that divided them up into tribes, obligated them to obey their chiefs, and thus denied them equal participation in the colonial state.6 To Africans, the colonial category of the native brought constraints and leverages. As scholars argue, constructions of nativity projected old “ideological assumptions, justifications and [a] sense of inferiority” upon colonial subjects.7 But the category can also trace the part Africans had in developing social institutions that were linked to contexts much broader than the colonial state. Their role in propagating Christianity, civilization, and commerce, Olúfémi Táíwò argues, helped inaugurate African modernity.8 The following pages take into account the African colonial subject in the analysis of the formation of the AME Church’s Africa mission. Part III reconstructs the connections that AME missionaries established, or failed to estabWatson, Harlem Renaissance, 109. Cf. Zimmerman, Alabama in Africa; and King, Pan-Africanism and Education. 5 Michael Crowder, Colonial West Africa: Collected Essays (London, 1978), 199. 6 Ranger, “The Invention of Tradition,” 604; and Mahmood Mamdani, “Beyond Settler and Native as Political Identities: Overcoming the Political Legacy of Colonialism,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 43 (2001): 654. 7 Young, Postcolonialism, 164. 8 Táíwò, How Colonialism Preempted Modernity, 8. 3 4

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lish, with and through ‘natives,’ thereby emphasizing how indirect rule played out in their missionary cooperation. I argue that the encounter between African Americans and the colonial subject reveals inconsistencies of colonialism that question its image as a solely negative structure. Consequently, the cooperation of AME missionary staff cannot be viewed as pan-African resistance or an indigenous response to racialized oppressive power structures that spanned the Atlantic. By looking at how African Americans and Africans met and grappled with each other, this part seeks to capture AME missionaries’ “generic” ability to act in different domains of the colonial process.9 To understand the role the African – as an object and as an agent of the AME mission – played in its formation, this part considers how the mission shaped notions of African nativity in two different, yet related, domains of British indirect-rule society, namely, in its cultural life and its political institutions. Chapter 8, which examines the AME missionaries in the cultural domain, starts with a discussion of the ways in which the AME Church viewed the native question and shows that notions of nativity designated a transatlantic division of labor between its African American and African staff. In order to illustrate how this division figured in missionary practice, the chapter uses a number of succinct examples. The first section analyzes the lifestyle of African Americans as nonnatives in colonial society, focusing on the emergence of an African American bourgeois culture that was characterized by detachment from the local African population. As its second step, the chapter looks at the contact that emerged between African American and African AME staff and their respective object: the colonial subject. Here, I show that African AME staff entertained hopes and aspirations related to an image of the ‘American Negro’ that differed from the church’s aims, and that transatlantic missionary cooperation in the field was structured by gender rather than pan-African or racial solidarity. Juxtaposing these examples brings into view the intricate mechanisms AME people used to both differentiate themselves from Africans and nonetheless generate intimacy in nonnative-native interactions. Chapter 9, which focuses on the influence African AME people had in the domain of colonial institutions, looks at AME institution building. I begin by presenting the emergence of the African AME Church and its place in African Christianity. The chapter then looks at the postwar debate about new Africa regarding the institutions that were discussed as making the continent’s future social and spiritual development possible, with a focus on the role Africans wanted African Americans and the AME Church to play in this renewal. To underscore how such visions were put into practice, the chapter provides a case study on AME institution building in Sierra Leone. The chapter concludes by broadening the scope to South Africa in order to indicate how the Sierra 9

Cf. Comaroff and Comaroff, “Christianity and Colonialism,” 2.

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Leonean example also reflects broader patterns in AME mission work under indirect rule. By considering the role the colonial subject played in shaping the AME Africa mission, Part III reveals that AME people were capable of utilizing cultural and political structures of indirect rule and were not passive objects of these structures. This, however, is not to say that AME missionaries acted imperially because they civilized Africans or collaborated with the colonizers. Nor does this argument aim to determine whose side AME missionaries were actually on – the question central to those historians who inquire into how similar experiences of oppression forged shared aims and cooperation between Africans and African Americans.10 Instead, we will see that, by examining the African American encounter with the colonial subject, tensions and inconsistencies in British rule informed their critical engagement. The self-fashioning of the black missionary – whether an African or an African American – thus provides insights into the margins of empire where colonial rule did not simply oppress people. The coexistence of several categories of blackness also broadened the scope of their self-representation, and thus of the connections and disconnections they were able to forge within colonial society and across the Atlantic. By tracing the AME Church’s ambiguous encounter with the colonial subject, this part serves as a contribution to the transnational history of African Americans and offers a critique of the historiography that presents colonialism as an exclusively negative structure of race and power.

On the collaborator argument, see Katja Füllberg-Stolberg, “African Americans in West and Central Africa in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries: Agents of European Colonial Rule?” in Empires and Boundaries: Rethinking Race, Class, and Gender in Colonial Settings, eds. Harald Fischer-Tiné and Susanne Gehrmann, 195–211 (New York, 2009). The comparative perspective has been proposed by George M. Fredrickson, Black Liberation: A Comparative History of Black Ideologies in the United States and South Africa (New York, 1995). 10

8. Meeting the ‘Native’: Black Missionary Self-fashioning in Colonial Everyday Life

8.1. The Native Question in Indirect-rule Africa

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he colonial stage upon which AME missionaries encountered the colonial subject was shaped in the first decades of the twentieth century. At that time, European empires reached their apogee based on the partitioning of Africa, which brought economic well-being along with the challenge for colonial rulers to move from military occupation to formal colonial administrations. Much of the attempt to enter this “next phase of the new colonial presence” focused on establishing civilian governments and economic development plans.1 The prime challenge lay in finding a way – in the imperial vocabulary – to bring millions of subjects of diverse races, ethnicities, tribes, and levels of development under the purview of colonial states.2 A basic feature of colonial rule in Africa was that subjects heavily outnumbered European administrators. As A. H. M. Kirk-Greene argues, the British colonial apparatus was merely a “thin white line.”3 The ratio of Africans to Europeans in the population of British Sierra Leone in 1935, for instance, was about two million Africans to hardly more than seven hundred Europeans.4 Numerical disparities led to a number of other problems. In British West Africa, the climatic conditions and endemic diseases often precluded white settlement alA. H. M. Kirk-Greene, “The Thin White Line: The Size of the British Colonial Service in Africa,” African Affairs 79 (1980): 26. 2 Rudolf von Albertini and Albert Wirz, European Colonial Rule, 1880–1940: The Impact of the West on India, Southeast Asia, and Africa, trans. John G. Williamson (Westport, 1982), 309–19. 3 Kirk-Greene, “Thin White Line,” 26. 4 William M. Hailey, An African Survey: A Study of Problems Arising in Africa South of the Sahara (London, 1938), 108–109. 1

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together, leaving the hinterlands of Gambia, Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast, and Nigeria with almost no colonial control.5 In Southern Africa – encompassing the Union of South Africa and the protectorates of Basutoland, Bechuanaland, Swaziland, and the Rhodesias – ethnic divides in the white settler population and the denial of citizenship to the much larger segments of people classified as colored or native frequently led to political instabilities. Ethnic conflicts also threatened to undermine British access to the much needed mineral and gold resources located in the same region.6 Formally, Britain’s rule in its African holdings was organized into crown colonies, protectorates or mandated areas, and self-governed dominions. Each had different constitutional ties with the metropole, alongside the intricate web of relations that settlers, merchants, industrialists, soldiers, immigrants, and missionaries had established.7 The Union of South Africa, founded in 1910, belonged to the British Commonwealth. As such it was one of the “autonomous communities within the British Empire” that were sovereign in their domestic and external affairs.8 Crown colonies and protectorates, in contrast, were ruled and represented by governors or high commissioners responsible to the British crown. These “formal provisions for control by the imperial government,” a renowned British administrator stated in his African Survey of 1938, were, however, only half of the story. Another important part of colonial rule was “the degree of representation accorded by law and practice to local communities.”9 The representation of local communities was of special importance to African conditions, as well as one of their peculiarities. According to the African Survey, such communities had taken a “developed form” called “native administration” in the course of the nineteenth century. Such administrations arose at first in South Africa as a way for European settlers to make special provisions for dealing with locals. From there they spread throughout the British colonies until they became characteristic of a government system “under which traditional authorities are entrusted with the discharge of a wide range of executive and judicial functions.”10 In part, native administrations in Africa reflected the British policy of progressive devolution, as practiced with the dominions of the Commonwealth. More importantly, however, they gave rise to a system of “indirect rule,” a distinct variant of devolution that was legitimized as a policy of noninterference with native life and traditions and celebrated as a humane Toyin Falola and A. D. Roberts, “West Africa,” in Oxford History of the British Empire, Vol. 4, The Twentieth Century, ed. Brown and Louis, 517. 6 Shula Marks, “Southern Africa,” in Oxford History of the British Empire, Vol. 4, The Twentieth Century, ed. Brown and Louis, 547–63. 7 Cf. Comaroff, “Images of Empire,” 165. 8 Hailey, African Survey, 144. 9 Ibid., 160. 10 Ibid., 345. 5

Meeting the ‘Native’

and farsighted alternative to French and Portuguese policies of assimilation. Introduced with considerable variations across British territory in the 1920s and 1930s, indirect rule became the hallmark of British Africa.11 In theory, indirect rule was exercised by native authorities selected and appointed by the governors or high commissioners of the respective colonies. These African rulers were authorized to exert executive, legislative, and judicial functions over their tribes based on their locally specific “customs.” This system of rule, the British believed, minimized Africans’ sense of being under alien tutelage and at the same time enhanced their loyalty to presumably indigenous traditions, which helped the British to divide the African population into distinct and manageable portions.12 Colonial officials liked to call such units “trusteeships.” This term designated native authorities’ responsibility to facilitate “the development of the land for the benefit of the people and the development of the people themselves.”13 While diminishing British allowances, Frederick Lugard, a key developer of indirect rule, argued that such dual mandates had a “primarily educative” purpose. African chiefs were supposed to learn how “to exert and to maintain authority” and to instill an interest in education, sanitation, forestry, disease prevention and so on in their tribes. As such, Lugard explained, indirect rule afforded “both rulers and people the stimulus of progress and interest in life.”14 According to Mahmood Mamdani’s analysis, the educational tone of indirect rule policies masked a system of “decentralized despotism.” Based on the unconstrained powers of chiefs, the system imposed a “regime of differentiation” that relegated ethnically defined natives to the realm of customs and racially defined subjects to the rule of law. According to this regime, nonnatives like Europeans, Indians, and African Americans were guaranteed the civil rights that were understood to form the basis of modern civilization.15 The cultural and legal implications of the indirect rule system thus far transcended its purpose of compensating for a shortage of administrative staff. As Mamdani argues, indirect rule established a “bifurcated” form of power that mediated racial domination through tribally organized local authorities while reproducing the racial identity of citizens and the ethnic identities of colonial subjects.16 This bifurcation placed the native question not only at the core of

11 12 13 14

29.

Cell, “Colonial Rule,” 242. Mamdani, “Beyond Settler and Native,” 654. Guggisberg and Fraser, Future of the Negro, 63. Frederick J. D. Lugard, The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa (Edinburgh, 1922), 228–

Mamdani, “Beyond Settler and Native,” 654; and Reo Matsuzaki, “Placing the Colonial State in the Middle: The Comparative Method and the Study of Empires,” Comparativ 19 (2009): 112. 16 Mahmood Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton, 1996), 16–18; quote on page 18. 15

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every colonial state. It also defined the encounter between African Americans and Africans in the context of the AME Africa mission. 8.2. The AME Church and the Native Question

In the transatlantic compound of AME missionaries, the native question crystalized the church’s basic structure of operation. It assigned responsibilities, ranks, and fields of labor in a hierarchical way, thus setting aside racial unity as a prime organizing principle. African American (i. e., nonnative) church personnel as a rule took on high-ranking posts in the field, always forming a numerical minority in the local setup of the church. Between 1918 and 1939, the AME Church sent eleven bishops to the 14th and the 15th Episcopal Districts, located in West and South Africa. Each one served an average of four years.17 Some assumed their new posts only reluctantly, as they imagined Africa to be “a land of cannibals and savages.”18 Locals, in contrast, tended to perceive African Americans as their true leaders, calling them the bishops of “non-European … Africa.”19 Most African American church officials brought their wives and families, as well as small delegations of missionaries from the United States, to settle in their area of operation.20 In addition to the residents, the African American AME presence consisted of the missionary secretaries or staff members of the AME Church women’s auxiliary bodies, who came to “travel,” “inspect,” or “visit” the field for shorter periods.21 Whether lasting a few months or several years, African American sojourns in Africa typically involved supervision and travel, two activities that brought all visitors across both Africa’s ethnic diversity and the varying political systems of dominions, protectorates, and crown colonies. While the number of African American AME missionaries remained small and comparatively constant, the missionary department reported a continuous increase of so-called native workers. By 1940, the department could rely on about two hundred African missionaries in the 14th Episcopal District, encompassing Liberia, Sierra Leone, and the Gold Coast. In the 15th Episcopal District, a much larger area that stretched northward to the Belgian Congo and Nyasaland and from Southwest to Portuguese East Africa, the indigenous African Methodist presence had even swollen into a body of about a thousand Jordan, African Methodist Episcopal Church in Africa, 16–17 (West Africa) and 52–53 (South Africa). 18 Wright, Bishops, 345. 19 Berry, Report, 1940, 42. 20 Berry, Century of Missions, 183. 21 As mentioned in Section 4.3, these visitors included Missionary Secretary L. L. Berry and the presidents of the women’s missionary societies Christine S. Smith and Lucy M. Hughes. 17

Meeting the ‘Native’

functionaries. These workers consisted not only of missionaries but included ordained ministers, preachers, church officers, and teachers.22 With African Americans traveling and supervising, and with locals ministering to their respective African communities, the AME mission imbued the native question with its own particular purpose. This purpose was conceived of most conspicuously in 1932, the peak of the Great Depression, when AME Secretary of Missions E. H. Coit noted that “the Church now has no missionaries sent direct[ly] from the United States to the Foreign Field.” According to Coit, the shortage occurred because African Americans were facing “extensive unemployment, reduction in the standards of living and conditions bordering upon famine or a bread war.” The same circumstances revived longstanding debates about the necessity of doing foreign work, a topic on which the church was “apparently divided.” Coit was convinced that AME missionaries “must remain on the firing line,” no matter how meager their funding and popularity were. In support of his view, Coit threw in the example of African “local workers,” whom he defined as “persons who were natives of the sections in which they are operating.”23 Coit’s depiction of the “natives” centered on the notion that local workers pushed the work overseas despite there was no African American personnel. He estimated their number was about four hundred and thus much higher than the African American staff had ever been. Moreover, their numerical strength was multiplied by their greater efficiency. Coit averred: “These workers have so impressed their personality upon their communities” that they effected a wider and more lasting expansion of African Methodism “than would have been possible by continuing the policy of sending missionaries from America.” To underscore the case, Coit described how local workers broadened the church’s reach beyond the traditional target groups of exhorters, probationers, worshipers, churchgoers, mission school students, etc. African AME missionaries, he claimed, could extend the church’s “self-reliant spirit” and “missionary borders in their respective homes.”24 Because they reached out to individuals’ domestic spheres, Coit asserted, they were making an original and indispensable contribution to the department’s effort to carry African Methodism “beyond the surges of the Atlantic.”25 Coit’s characterization of the African AME missionary suggests that notions of nativity had become meaningful to church operations on both sides of For numbers, see in Berry, Report, 1940, 38 (West Africa) and 42–58 (South Africa). E. H. Coit, Twenty-ninth Quadrennial Report of the Home and Foreign Missionary Department of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, 1928–1932 (New York, 1932), 7, 10, and 13. 24 Ibid., 13–14. 25 Ibid., 7. AME statistics tend to underestimate the number of African employees because the department counted only those workers who were on its own pay roll and excluded workers funded by AME congregations in Africa. 22 23

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the Atlantic. Local workers were considered added potential, rather than substitutes. The growing number of African missionaries increased the mission’s efficiency and spatial reach by means that African Americans did not otherwise have available. That AME staff used the term “native” to designate such specific tasks and potentials indicates that their mission was shaped much more by local conditions than is commonly accepted.26 By incorporating African staff, the church validated a transatlantic division of labor that was premised upon the different constraints and leverages indirect rule provided for people classed as natives and nonnatives and used them in a productive way. As a result, the Africans and African Americans who met, interacted, and cooperated in the AME Africa mission began relating the notion of nativity to the concepts of mobility, authority, and belonging that the mission implied in colonial society. 8.3. Moving into Empire: The Construction of the Nonnative Black Missionary

The following section addresses notions of nativity that emerged in the AME mission from the perspective of African American missionaries. To this end, it offers three vignettes, each representative of the ways in which African American missionary subjects constituted themselves in their everyday life in indirect-rule Africa. The first concerns the colonial immigration procedure each of them went through. The second deals with the forms and effects of the colonial mobility African Americans experienced once they entered British territory; and the third looks at the construction of their public role as representatives of a black American church in colonial society. A focus on these three aspects of African Americans’ life in Africa can, of course, not detail the full history of their mission work. It brings into view three instances in which most of them encountered empire. These instances highlight where race ceased to be the most important rule of colonial difference. The occurrence of nativity as a category of difference in AME missionaries’ self-fashioning illustrates instead where colonialism was inchoate, producing conditions in which people of African descent encountered each other as others. The African Americans’ Colonial Immigration

The first situation in which AME missionaries from the United States were marked as nonnatives was colonial immigration. Since the First World War, Most works focus on black missionary ideology rather than activities. See, for instance, Little, Disciples; Williams, Black Americans and the Evangelization of Africa; and Jacobs, “Three African American Women Missionaries.” 26

Meeting the ‘Native’

diffuse British anxiety about “alien” missionaries complicated the African Americans’ process of entering African colonial territory. British authorities were generally reserved about philanthropic activities that were conducted by citizens of nonallied countries. As a circular of the British government made clear in 1917, the British crown wanted “closer supervision” of “all persons, other than British subjects, who desire to undertake either missionary or educational work.”27 To this end, the Colonial Office ordered that non-British subjects had to obtain written permission from the British consulate in their country of residence. In addition, local governors were licensed to “prescribe,” “vary,” and “cancel” granted permissions and conditions “without assigning any reason.”28 Although the new regulation explicitly prohibited governors from drawing a “colour distinction on such a matter,” it affected the admission of African American mission staff in a peculiar way.29 Without race-based exclusion, governors could construct the undesirability of applicants on the grounds of their reputation as troublemakers, which in most cases was related to Marcus Garvey’s anticolonial agitation. During the interwar period, the number of black missionaries in Africa therefore reached its historical low, leaving only a few who had royal permission to enter.30 The ample exclusion of African Americans from the British Empire was felt by AME missionaries in each of their African fields of labor. In 1921, an AME bishop was detained by immigration officers in Cape Town as an “undesirable alien,” despite having a valid visa, possessing letters of recommendation from respected Americans, and having held a position in Roosevelt’s second administration.31 In West Africa, an AME report noted, “every effort is exerted to block [the Negro Churches’] orderly progress.” Even Liberia, the state that was not under European rule and had long served the AME Church and the AMEZ Church as a “gateway to West Africa,” was no exception.32 As Solomon Porter Hood, the American consul in Monrovia, warned the AME Church Missionary Department in 1923, black missionaries desiring to “travel, visit or Walter H. Long, Circular Letter, January 16, 1917. TNA, CO 323/759, no. 140. Draft, “Law,” October 10, 1917. TNA, CO 323/759, no. 138. 29 Colonial Office Circular. Re: “Admissions of Coloured Missionaries into Cols+Protects.” January 9, 1923. TNA, CO 323/759, 4. 30 Seraile, “Black American Missionaries,” 201; and James T. Campbell, “African American Missionaries and the Colonial State: The AME Church in South Africa,” in Christian Missionaries and the State in the Third World, ed. Holger Bernt Hansen and Michael Twaddle (Oxford, 2002), 234. For my discussion of admissions for so-called Tuskegee-type missionaries, see Section 7.3. 31 Johnson, “Missionary-Government Relations,” 203. 32 The quote refers to the Organization of Foreign Mission Secretaries of Negro Churches. Founded in 1921 by the AME Church, the AMEZ Church, and the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, this institution also comprised the National Baptist Convention and the Lott Cary Baptist Convention. Report of L. L. Berry, Secretary Treasurer of the Missionary Department of the AME Church, 112 West 120 St., New York, NY from April 11, 1933 to March 1, 1934. SCRBC, Llewellyn L. Berry Papers, box 1, folder “AME Church Reports, 1933–1952,” 7–8. 27 28

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locate in places under British Dominion” were experiencing “great difficulty in doing so.”33 When British consuls refrained from issuing visas upon immigrants’ arrival, AME people had to refer to the British Passport Control Office in New York to obtain the required missionary permits. As the Instructions Concerning the Application of Missionaries Desiring to Proceed to British Territory specified, this alone could mean a wait of three to five months. The first step toward Africa was filling out an application together with the responsible missionary secretary, who then forwarded the materials along with three recommendations by “responsible persons residing in the United States” who could not be relatives, officers of the respective mission board, or pastors of the applicant. The same set of references was required for spouses, dependents, and delegations, in separate versions. If granted, permits were valid for six months and could be renewed for a maximum of twenty-four months exclusively for the “purpose of inspecting their various stations.”34 Permissions for “resident missionaries,” by contrast, fell under the jurisdiction of the respective colonial authorities in Africa. The Union of South Africa, for instance, required missionaries with destinations in the provinces of the Cape of Good Hope, Natal, Transvaal, Orange Free State, and the South West Protectorate to apply via the respective head of the mission board under the control of which they were supposed to resume their work. Similar regulations existed in the High Commission Territories of Southern and Northern Rhodesia, Basutoland, Bechuanaland, and Swaziland. On average, it took about one year for AME people to become “desirable” alien missionaries.35 Two celebrated AME missionaries who frequently traversed the colonial Atlantic had to follow these regulations as well: John A. Gregg, born in 1877 in Eureka, Kansas, and W. Sampson Brooks, born in 1865 in Calvert County, Maryland. Their backgrounds and later lives were typical of the interwar generation of black American evangelists. Both grew up in large families in rural areas during the nadir of American race relations. Both went to public schools and state colleges at the turn of the century. Both were married, and both had served as pastors for many years before they were finally able to go to Africa as representatives of the AME Church. Because Brooks and Gregg were especially eager to work overseas, and because they lived abroad longer than most Solomon Porter Hood to R. R. Downs, May 9, 1923. SCRBC, AME CR, box 44, folder “Passports and Visas, 1920.” 34 British Passport Control Office, New York, NY, Instructions Concerning the Application of Missionaries Desiring to Proceed to British Territory, April 1920. SCRBC, AME CR, box 44, folder “Passports and Visas, 1920.” 35 The regulations were widely discussed in AME correspondences. See M. Jeffes to J. W. Rankin, December 29, 1921; M. Jeffes to J. W. Rankin, March 8, 1921; and M. Jeffes to J. W. Rankin, August 1, 1921. All SCRBC, AME CR, box 44, folder “Passports and Visas, 1920.” 33

Meeting the ‘Native’

of their colleagues, they exemplify how AME missionaries remade themselves in a number of instances in view of Africa, which gradually came to include a view of colonial power structures and new notions of nativity alike. Similar to the pioneers Henry McNeal Turner, Charles S. Smith, and Levi J. Coppin, who went to Africa before British anxieties peaked, Gregg and Brooks had humble origins, which sparked their dreams of adventure and their keen interest in foreign countries at an early age. Gregg credited his “Wanderlust” with prompting him to make “little excursions” throughout Kansas to satisfy his “dreams for travel” when he was a boy.36 Brooks’s fascination with traveling started with textbooks and continued with trips to Norway, Sweden, and Britain, where he temporarily worked for the British Museum in London in a welcome break from his life as a farmer.37 Both shared an ambition, as Gregg put it, to see “much of the world,” believing that this ambition was one of the “prophesies of [a man’s] abilities.”38 Their abilities materialized within the social world the AME Church had created. Both went abroad as church officials for the first time in 1904. Gregg was sent to South Africa as an educator and presiding elder, and Brooks represented the church at the Fourth World Sunday School Convention in Jerusalem. After their first foreign experiences, both increasingly invested their energies in the home church. Gregg continued to focus on black education. Between 1913 and 1924, he headed the AME Church’s Edward Waters College in Florida, Wilberforce University in Ohio, and the AME Church’s Association of College Presidents; in 1926, he was finally offered the presidency of Howard University, a distinguished black university.39 Brooks built a reputation as an unparalleled fundraiser. Between 1904 and 1920 he was the minister for some of the most debt-ridden AME Churches in the country and was able to put them back in the black. As one admirer remarked, “the sentiment all over the church” was to “let Dr. Brooks tackle it.”40 These backgrounds and qualities paved the way for both of them to become bishops in Africa. Brooks was elected to supervise the work in West Africa in 1920, and Gregg assumed the post of resident bishop of South Africa in 1924. Unlike most of their contemporaries, Gregg and Brooks had urged the AME Church’s General Conference to assign them to bishoprics abroad. Gregg, who had already worked in South Africa in 1904, explained in his memoirs that he Gregg, “Land of the Southern Cross,” 9. On Brooks’s experience in Scandinavia, see W. Sampson Brooks, What a Black Man Saw in a White Man’s Country: Some Account of a Trip to the Land of the Midnight Sun (Minneapolis, 1899). 38 Gregg, “Land of the Southern Cross,” 9. 39 “Bishop and Mrs. J. A. Gregg in South Africa.” SCRBC, AME CR, box 44, folder “Misc., Corr., Minutes, Reports, South Africa, Cuba, US,” 2–3. 40 Wright, Bishops, 108. 36 37

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declined the job offer from Howard University because of his “prior promise” to continue helping people build an AME Church in the racially segregated environments of South Africa in 1924.41 Brooks was elected to the West African bishopric for two successive quadrennials, in 1920 and in 1924, because he was reputedly “not afraid of the ocean,” as well as on account of his understanding of African Methodism as a “world mission” and his fundraising talent.42 Having built their missionary self-fashioning on a lust for adventure, practical skills, and acknowledgments of the merits of their church, Brooks and Gregg established their first contact with Africa at the British consulate in New York. Brooks turned to the consulate right after his election in May 1920 because he was eager to leave and to expand his church “farther back in the dark regions [where] we have not yet been.” Accordingly, Missionary Secretary J. W. Rankin put in a request for the bishop to be admitted to Sierra Leone and to “other proposed portions of Africa where a mission station may be established to good advantage.” Also, he urged the New York office to issue the visa in time for Brooks’s departure, which was planned for early January 1921.43 Completing the paperwork for the visa, however, kept Brooks and Rankin busy for more than six months, and once submitted, the papers were not considered until March of that year. Officials indicated that the visa was delayed because it had “Sierra Leone on it,” which was “British territory.”44 Brooks was denied permission in the end, although the applications of members of his delegation, consisting of his wife and seven African AME missionaries, were successful. They could “go through,” officials explained, because they were either Sierra Leoneans or had specified their destination as Liberia.45 With his delegation going ahead, Brooks ended up circumnavigating the British colonial apparatus. He sailed for Liberia with a French company to avoid stopovers in England and began his first tenure in Monrovia.46 Around the same time, Gregg initiated the same procedure and encountered different difficulties. There was no delay in his departure to South Africa. Nor was it problematic for him to make Qtd. in Dickerson, ed., Land of the Southern Cross, 3. Wright, Bishops, 108. 43 W. S. Brooks to J. W. Rankin, November 11, 1920. SCRBC, AME CR, box 41, folder “Corr. Bishop W. S. Brooks, 1920.” 44 J. W. Rankin to W. S. Brooks, January 8, 1921. SCRBC, AME CR, box 41, folder “Corr. Bishop W. S. Brooks, 1921”; and J. W. Rankin to British Passport Office, December 28, 1920; and M. Jeffes to J. W. Rankin March 9, 1921. Both SCRBC, AME CR, box 44, folder “Passports and Visa, 1920.” 45 Among Brooks’s delegates were Reverend Steady Jr. from Sierra Leone and Reverends Ridley and Campbell from Liberia. W. S. Brooks to J. W. Rankin, November 4, 1920. Folder “Corr. Bishop W. S. Brooks, 1920”; and J. W. Rankin to W. S. Brooks, January 8 1921. Folder “Corr. Bishop W. S. Brooks, 1921.” Both SCRBC, AME CR, box 41. 46 J. W. Rankin to W. S. Brooks, January 8, 1921. Folder “Corr. Bishop W. S. Brooks, 1921”; and W. S. Brooks to J. W. Rankin, August 12, 1920. Folder “Corr. Bishop W. S. Brooks, 1920.” Both SCRBC, AME CR, box 41. 41 42

Meeting the ‘Native’

stopovers. He even was welcomed to stay a few days in Belgium as an invited participant of the IMC’s “Mission in Africa” conference, the gathering at which new immigration regulations for African American missionaries were devised. While his own process thus moved swiftly, Gregg felt the brakes of colonial immigration regulations in his delegation. The laws of the Union of South Africa prohibited him from bringing “any missionaries” because they were black and from the United States.47 Their trips to Africa shaped Brooks’s and Greggs’ sense of being nonnative and alien and eventually desirable blacks in British territory in different ways. Categories of blackness and nativity determined the speed of their departure, as well as the paths their delegations could or could not take onto the imperial stage. To be sure, their route to colonial Africa was more complex than crossing the Atlantic. As Rankin would say, it involved facing “tremendous obligations.”48 The Black Nonnatives’ Colonial Mobility

The tedious immigration procedures AME people endured were followed by increasing social and spatial mobility. Most travel diaries concurred that crossing the Atlantic was an initiation into a colonial lifeworld very different from the one they encountered at the British consulate in New York City. Once delegations to Africa had been permitted to leave, they were sent off with large farewell receptions attended by hundreds of church officials and guests.49 Many missionaries described their ships in the mold of “a luxuriously appointed floating palace” where skin color did not seem to matter.50 Once aboard, Gregg wrote, he mingled with “every class of life in Europe,” including British army officials, titled ladies, teachers, European missionaries, and immigrants, as well as “the inevitable sharpers [con artists].”51 Throughout the passage the peculiar pleasures of storms, seasickness, exotic trips ashore, as well as a host of unfamiliar leisure activities seemed to level passengers’ diverse class backgrounds. AME missionaries reported that daily reading and writing routines that they assumed on board made them feel like “very fine English people.”52 Others noted that the ship distanced them from lifestyles that were coded as black in the United States. They spoke of how enjoyable the passage was, even if there “Bishop Gregg Sails for Africa,” Christian Recorder, October 23, 1924, 1. J. W. Rankin to W. S. Brooks, January 8, 1921. SCRBC, AME CR, box 41, folder “Corr. Bishop W. S. Brooks, 1921.” 49 “Bishop Brooks’ Reception and Departure. Baltimore, Philadelphia, Newark and New York Have Receptions to the Bishop and His Wife: A Large Number Bids Farewell,” Christian Recorder, January 20, 1921, 5. 50 Wright, Beneath the Southern Cross, 13 51 Gregg, “Land of the Southern Cross,” 13. 52 Lucy M. Hughes, “My Visit to South Africa,” Voice of Missions (July 1939): 22–23. 47 48

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was, “noticeably, no jazz.”53 Gregg too was overwhelmed by his social elevation, stating that he had never had the privilege “to be with a more congenial set of people.”54 The experience of such privileges aboard the ship began a process of overcoming the racial divides that AME people had internalized in Jim Crow America. Gregg’s description of his first encounter with Africans showed that he no longer conceived of himself as black as he approached the West African coast. He wrote: some one [sic] at the side of the vessel cried out, ‘Oh look at the blacks.’ (Mrs. Gregg and I hurried to the rail to look at the blacks too, and there we saw two natives who had a boat … . I shall never forget the feeling … when I saw the first time the shores of the Fatherland and these two brothers whose waving hand seemed to point me on to the work for which I was going in that country.55

This statement also reveals the range of contingent connections that resulted from Gregg’s Africa encounter. Along with evoking the traditional imagery of a fatherland and the brotherhood of its descendants, Gregg viewed blacks as “natives” and his work as his prime relationship to the continent.56 The appearance of the term “native” in AME missionaries’ accounts prefigured the social strata in which African Americans could move in colonial society. African American missionaries were aliens and therefore nonnatives according to the categories of colonial immigration. Despite their racial similarity to Africans, this legal status allowed them to move across the ethnic barriers that existed only for Africans. These opportunities, in turn, became an important factor in the emergence of an African American bourgeois culture that began with the transatlantic passage and continued when they were adopted into colonial high society. One way in which African Americans gained access to the lifeworld of the ruling class was lodged in their responsibility to traverse their respective episcopal districts in Africa. Long-distance travel generally was the privilege of nonnative people and greatly enhanced in swiftness and comfort by the 1920s, when British development schemes focused on replacing traditional vehicles such as boats, animals, and human carriers in order to increase the mobility of colonialists.57 By 1930, the number of paved roads had been doubled at the Wright, Beneath the Southern Cross, 20. Gregg, “Land of the Southern Cross,” 13. 55 Ibid., 15. 56 This ties in with Gilroy’s argument that blacks on the move across the Atlantic were not limited to the strategic commitments of political movements operating within the confines of ethnicities or nations. Gilroy, Black Atlantic, 19. 57 A. O. Anjorin, “West Africa and the Colonial Economic Systems,” in From Colony to Sover53 54

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Gold Coast, and railroads connected inland trading posts to the major ports of British West Africa.58 In the Union of South Africa there were trains running several times per week between principal towns and in the late 1930s, they branched out to destinations as far as Northern Rhodesia.59 At first, modern transportation systems served colonial authorities to get a firmer grip on their respective territories. They eased the movement of troops, administrators, commodities, natural resources, and the collection of taxes, while allowing nonnative staff to keep in touch with the Colonial Office in London, as well as with family and friends at home. In colonial societies, the mobility of administrators became a symbol of their cultural distinction. As the Colonial Office put it, the train system was not merely functional but “specially fitted throughout to ensure the comfort of passengers.”60 Access to comfortable means of locomotion played into classic colonial binaries of progress and backwardness, according to which colonizers were the people who moved forward, whereas Africans were stigmatized as immobile. In fact, as Valeska Huber shows, the development of colonial transportation systems focused as much on mobilization as on its impediment. Along with railroads, streets, and waterways, the colonial powers established borders, immigration restrictions, and pass laws for the indigenous population, thus depriving their ‘others’ of the privilege of being in motion.61 Judging from AME accounts, after the slow procedures of immigration, African American missionaries became utterly fascinated with the range and regimes of colonial mobility. A central element in their descriptions was the possibility of using a variety of means of transportation. Some presented individual trips as segments of one coherent long-distance movement. One AME missionary stated that he had managed to travel “more than eleven times the distance around the world” in South Africa. He then specified how far by which means of transportation, indicating distances covered by cars, by trains, and finally by “donkey, cart, on foot or otherwise.”62 The report suggests that he had a clear sense of how access to modern means of travel suggested a higher social status in colonial society. For similar reasons, many AME missionaries liked eign State: An Introduction to the History of West Africa Since 1900, ed. A. Fajana and A. O. Anjorin (Sunbury-on-Thames, 1979), 84–88. 58 Alleyne, Gold Coast at a Glance, 42–43; and Hailey, African Survey, 1537–39. 59 G. E. J. Gent and A. J. Harding, The Dominions Office and Colonial Office List for 1939 … (London, 1939), 223. 60 William H. Mercer, A. J. Harding, and G. E. J. Gent, The Dominions Office and Colonial Office List for 1930 … (London, 1930), 162. 61 Valeska Huber, “Multiple Mobilities: Über den Umgang mit verschiedenen Mobilitätsformen um 1900,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 36 (2010): 339. On the role of colonial mobility in the private life of administrators, see Elizabeth Buettner, Empire Families: Britons and Late Imperial India (Oxford, 2004). 62 Berry, Report, 1940, 55.

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to emphasize the temporal dimension of their transportation. Using roads and railways meant that trips normally taking “days to … travel on foot” became rides lasting a few hours. Additionally, some noted their ability to move off beaten paths. A typical claim was being “the first American Citizen of Color to set foot on [hinterland] soil.”63 Whether emphasizing the swiftness, comfort, or territorial reach of their mobility, AME missionaries’ colonial travel experiences stood in sharp contrast with those they made in Jim Crow America.64 New notions of their own progress furnished AME missionaries with a scheme for assessing colonial advancement as well. As inspectors of the church’s far-reaching episcopal districts in Africa, they had to visit mission stations in different colonies and, at times, different empires. These itineraries allowed for transimperial comparisons. In West Africa, as one traveler noted, there was a “very marked difference” in infrastructure between French and British colonies; shortcomings on the British end, she guessed, occurred because investments were mainly made for “government officials and … less in development.”65 Even more explicit were the complaints of William H. Heard, the resident bishop of West Africa, articulated in 1915. To illustrate the “great difficulties” he had in getting from station to station, and from Liberia, to Sierra Leone, and to the Gold Coast, he staged a picture of himself in a hammock carried by “native porters” – the most outdated form of transportation. While he used the image to push his church to get him a boat so that he could avoid moving through the poorly interconnected British territory altogether, he also delivered an image of colonial backwardness. In 1931, when the Voice printed his picture, it ridiculed the inconvenience as the “de luxe mode of travel in Liberia (Figure 3.1).”66 In British South and Central Africa, the experience was different. Missionaries took less note of the deficiencies in the transportation infrastructure than of the means that were used to restrict the mobility of the subject population. “[N]atives must have passes duly signed and stamped,” Missionary John A. Gregg observed, “or else will be stopped at the borders.”67 The constraint of their motion highlighted, in turn, the travel privileges of the African American staff. On a trip through Southern and Northern Rhodesia in 1939, Lucy M. Hughes, president of the WHFMS, claimed to have been taken under the care of the superintendent of railroads, who specifically ordered that “all concerned Alleyne, Gold Coast at a Glance, 42; and Hughes, “Visit to South Africa,” 23. Cf. Theodore Kornweibel, Jr., Railroads in the African American Experience: A Photographic Journey (Baltimore, 2010). 65 Christine S. Smith, “The A. M. E. Church in West Africa as I Saw It,” Voice of Missions (July 1939): 6. 66 “Long Distance Travelling,” Voice of Missions (February 1931): 14; and R. C. Ransom, “Dedication of African Boat,” Voice of Missions (January 1915): 9. 67 Gregg, “Land of the Southern Cross,” 22. 63 64

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Figure 3.1. “Bishop W. H. Heard Using the De Luxe Mode of Travel in Liberia.” Source: Voice of Missions (February 1931): 14.

must extend every courtesy” to her.68 According to Hughes, he also made sure that trains would tarry “a minute or two longer” at smaller stations, so that “the American Lady Missionary” could greet the pastors, teachers, and pupils, many of whom had “walked 25 and 30 miles” to the station.69 When Hughes remarked on the long walks Africans made to meet her for a few minutes, she at the same time revealed one way in which swift travel shaped AME missionaries’ ideas of nativity as related to pace. Other passengers on car rides, for instance, spoke of African women standing “with bare feet and skirts pinned high” and doing their washing in the river as an “interesting sight along the highway.”70 And some even found “the passing of natives walking along the highway, and the villages which succeeded each other so rapidly” a “weird experience.”71 As much as the colonial mobility of nonnative blacks multiplied 68 69 70 71

Jas Hopwood, “Journey of Mrs. Lucy M. Hughes, M. A.” Voice of Missions (February 1939): 5. Hughes, “Visit to South Africa,” 23–24. Wright, Beneath the Southern Cross, 103. Berry, Report, 1940, 36.

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their encounters with Africans, it limited their opportunities to forge deeper connections. While it is difficult to know who they really observed along the highway, it is easy to grasp the missionaries’ alienation from environments they began to call native. African Americans usually mentioned donkeys, hammocks, and walking pace in connection with the local population, whereas their descriptions of roads and railways conveyed the comforts or discomforts of travel and the stages of colonial development in the regions they passed through. As colonial means of locomotion shrunk time and space, speed became a new category to frame their colonial experience. The image of the immobile native not only summoned colonial rules of racial difference; it also distinguished black Americans from the ethnic varieties of indirect-rule society they fleetingly traversed. The Public Representation of the Nonnative Black Missionary in Colonial Society

A much different logic of missionary self-fashioning evolved around the African Americans’ public life. Many described a steady procession of official receptions, conferences, and banquets marking their way through colonial societies. As Richard R. Wright Jr., one of Bishop John A. Gregg’s successors in South Africa, recalled, public church events in Africa tended to attract “larger numbers than I had generally seen in such church functions in America.”72 His first General Conference, held in 1936 in a “native location” in Bloemfontein, Orange Free State, had fostered this impression. According to his description, eight hundred women of the AME Church’s Women’s Missionary Society of South Africa alone had attended. Some of them had traveled up to five hundred miles “on foot, on donkeys, on trains, and in wagons” to greet him and his wife.73 In addition, the event brought together Bantu people, reverends, official representatives, and “native chiefs” from twelve different provinces, colonies, and protectorates, including Rhodesia, Basutoland, and Nyasaland. In total, Wright reported, participants spoke six different languages.74 An important feature of such missionary stopovers was thus the creation of temporary hubs at which different forms of social and spatial mobility intersected and converged. In such hubs black Americans could highlight their status in colonial societies through the recognition they received from respectable people. Gregg, for example, took pride in being welcomed by the mayor of Cape Town in the 72 73 74

Wright, 87 Years, 231. Ibid., 235. Wright, Beneath the Southern Cross, 62–63.

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city hall as well as by some of his former students who, since his first visit as a missionary, had risen to become paramount chiefs of their tribes.75 A reception for Bishop Richard R. Wright Jr. in Bremersdorp, Swaziland, hosted by the deputy resident commissioner featured the speeches of three outstanding AME Church women: Lucy M. Hughes and Luella Graham White, both African American missionaries, and Charlotte Manye Maxeke, one of the first African students educated in the AME Church’s Wilberforce University and the first president of the Bantu Women’s League.76 According to a missionary who had attended twelve welcome receptions, “the variety of representatives on each program” and the “genuine spirit of sincerity on the part of the African peoples” set these events apart.77 While representatives of “churches, schools clubs, municipalities and most agencies of uplift” graced the events themselves, the wearing of “gala attire” emphasized the social status of each participant.78 Descriptions of dresses were not merely gestures of appreciation for AME staff; they also suggested group affiliation. Female AME Church workers, for example, wore black robes, white collars, and tiger-skin caps. Typically, the “wellgroomed appearance” of attendees would range from formal dresses, black ministerial gowns, and school uniforms, to “all different and spectacular” native and missionary costumes.79 In addition, African Americans’ social privileges surfaced in the arrangement of the events themselves. Venues, either AME Church-owned buildings or public edifices, were “draped with a variety of flags” together with large “Welcome” greetings. Distinguished guests, or those entitled to give a speech, were seated on a stage, together with the chairmen of the respective event.80 Addresses and speeches complemented musical performances from AME Church choirs, quartets, and even solo trumpeters. As reception and conference programs suggest, the official course of events often ended with mingling over some refreshments.81 At times banquets were more elaborate than the program itself and featured courses such as “Sweet Potato Surprise,” “Haitian “Bishop and Mrs. J. A. Gregg in South Africa.” SCRBC, AME CR, box 44, folder “Misc., Corr., Minutes, Reports, South Africa, Cuba, US,” 4 and 5. 76 Program of the Reception for Bishop Wright, Agricultural Hall, Bremersdorp, 8.30 p. m., May 11, 1938. TUL, BAAC, Bishop Richard Robert Wright Jr. Papers, box 4, folder “South Africa Program, Women’s Home and Foreign Missionary Society, Cape Town, Oct. 1938+ Bloemfontein, Dec. 1939.” 77 Josephus R. Coan, “Trekking Along,” Voice of Missions (February 1939): 8. 78 Ibid.; and “Reception to Bishop W. W. Beckett, D. D. in Capetown, S. Africa,” Voice of Missions (March 1917): 3. 79 Hughes, “Visit to South Africa,” 23. On school uniforms in West Africa, see Berry, Report, 1940, 31. 80 “Reception to Bishop W. W. Beckett,” 3. 81 Reception Program Banqueting Hall, City Hall Cape Town, Wednesday, 13th December, 1939, at 8.15 p. m. MARBL, Emory University, Josephus Roosevelt Coan Papers, box 27, folder 9. 75

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Coffee,” or “Neapolitan Ice Cream.”82 Even when no banquet followed, there were at least tables “laden with appetizing foods,” where participants could help themselves.83 In such elevated environments some missionaries began to feel at odds with categories of colonial and Afro-Atlantic differentiation. If public events magnified social strata, they also appeared to level, if not reverse, racial and ethnic hierarchies. In South Africa, Bishop Richard R. Wright Jr. found it “hard to draw the line between colored (the South Africans spell it ‘Coloured’), natives, and Europeans,” a threefold distinction he had not encountered in America.84 But the similarities between African Americans and Africans were highlighted in different ways. Choral singing without instruments, one missionary noted, appeared to be not only “almost universal among the Africans” but also served to explain the musical “talent of the American Negro” as a “natural gift” stemming from their African heritage.85 Others noted a “striking difference in native receptions and those in America.” Africans “can never do enough for you. They would give you their hearts if it was possible.”86 Nonetheless, the welcome events of newly arrived African American staff represented cosmopolitan, middle-class values, rather than local or working-class values. They often staged an idealized microcosm of the social world AME bishops were about to enter, as opposed to the amalgamation of African Americans’ and Africans’ ways of life. The housing African American bishops and delegates enjoyed reinforced the distinguished status they claimed during their many travels and arrivals. So-called episcopal residences functioned as perhaps the most visible icons of the bishops’ nonnative bourgeois status, as colonial society understood these terms. The buildings fulfilled representational purposes as missionary meeting points and centers of command, while offering inhabitants the same “modern conveniences” they would have had in America.87 All this was duly demonstrated with the purchase of the West African residence, located in Monrovia, Liberia, in 1923. The WPMMS financed the construction of the building, which was supervised by the society’s president and certified AME missionary, Nora F. Taylor.88 Taylor was apprehensive as she watched the construction. The “timbers and planks,” she explained, had to be brought “from the interior on the heads of natives, and the whole work [had to be] done by hand.” Despite “Banquet in Honor of R. R. Wright at the Young Women’s Christian Association,” July 15, 1938. TUL, BAAC, Bishop Richard Robert Wright Jr. Papers, box 1, folder “Invitations.” 83 “Reception to Bishop W. W. Beckett,” 3. 84 Wright, 87 Years, 232. 85 Coan, “Trekking,” 8. 86 Hughes, “Visit to South Africa,” 23. 87 Berry, Report, 1940, 37. 88 J. W. Ranking, Certificate, December 21, 1920. SCRBC, AME CR, box 41, folder “Corr. T, 1920.” 82

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the hardships, the completed two-story building with twelve rooms became “a gem for Missionary Women.” Bishop W. Sampson Brooks and his wife were the first AME Church residents to enjoy the privilege of settling into the “Finished Women’s Building” that at that time represented the only strictly modern residence in the whole Republic. It is supplied with acetylene gas, which is generated on the premises; has an up-to-date bath room with flush toilet, enameled bath tub and wash stand, and a three-piece set. The grounds are remarkably beautiful, having tennis courts, gorgeous tropical plants and numerous fruit trees. There is a chicken house, outside laundry room and a splendid well of artisan water, which is operated by an automatic pump, giving running water throughout the house.89

It also had furniture, chairs, and a piano, as a woman visitor remarked.90 Just one year later, in 1924, Gregg initiated the purchase of a similar residence in Woodstock, a suburb of Cape Town. In the past, bishops had typically been housed in rented quarters or found rooms among the parishioners, an arrangement that Gregg felt did “not reflect the dignity the office required.” 91 According to the later residents, Bishop Richard R. Wright Jr. and his wife Charlotte Crogman Wright (1879–1959), it was not only the plastered brick house with its modern amenities that made the South African residence a comfortable home. The neighbors were “respectable and quiet” and “mostly Europeans.”92 In both residences, homemaking was widely supported by the missionary department and the women’s missionary societies, as well as individual church members, all of whom wished for their bishops to enjoy the appropriate level of finery in their African residences. Soon after the Greggs and Brooks moved there, donations, barrels, and parcels from the United States poured in. Sent items included farm implements, typewriters, encyclopedias, books and magazines, tailored clothes, fruits, canned food, Virginia ham, and Christmas presents. The provisions reflected and enabled the bourgeois lifestyle AME Church staff tended to pursue on the ground.93 As a rule, the everyday life of African American missionaries was thus detached from the local population in numerous ways. Modern transport systems, public social events, and home ownership were social privileges denied to subjects categorized as natives.94 Nora F. Taylor to W. W. Beckett, [May 1923?]. Qtd. in Berry, Century of Missions, 156. Smith, “West Africa as I Saw It”, 6–9. 91 “Bishop and Mrs. J. A. Gregg in South Africa.” SCRBC, AME CR, box 44, folder “Misc., Corr., Minutes, Reports, South Africa, Cuba, US,” 3. 92 Wright, 87 Years, 231. 93 For letters that suggest arrangements for the sending of barrels, see SCRBC, AME CR, box 41, folder “Corr. Bishop W. S. Brooks, 1920.” 94 Property rights were a conspicuous expression of colonial power over Africans’ daily lives and the most critical factor shaping their attitude toward the governing power. In British territory, the colonial state granted the right of home ownership only to citizen subjects. ‘Native 89 90

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As such, the mobility of African American missionaries within colonial societies ultimately revealed the barriers that remained intact. These barriers concerned the inaccessibility of the actual missionary fields. According to Bishop Edward J. Howard (1871–1941), superintendent of the West African district from 1936 to 1940, the divisions among tribes, the multitude of partly unwritten languages and dialects, and the absence of roads were practically insurmountable impediments. Other obstacles that he noted included superstition and other religions, such as “Animism and Mohammedanism,” as well as antagonisms among tribes or between tribes and creoles, who, though they were English-speaking and Christian, were yet deemed “intolerant people.” If these cultural and political conflicts did not stop missionaries already, “heat and fever” would strike down even the most ambitious of them. Regarding the difficulties involved in missionary fieldwork, Howard concluded that not much had changed since the first Western missionaries started their work in Africa centuries before.95 8.4. Of ‘Natives’’ Sisters and Brothers: AME Missionaries and the ‘American Negro’

The following pages will zoom in on the encounter between African Americans and Africans within the African AME Church. This undertaking involves the difficulty that historians face when reconstructing subaltern voices, in other words, those belonging to historical actors who left little or no records of their own. Here, this difficulty concerns the African perspective on African American missionaries. Although local workers feature in various ways in African American AME accounts, their voices are always also mediated by the representations African American missionaries made of them.96 The aim of this section therefore cannot be to reconstruct a full picture of African perceptions of African American missionaries. It is rather to bring into view how locals shaped the African American colonial encounter. To do so, I read the African American representation of the mission against the grain. rights’ to property followed different rules. In South Africa, the Natives Land Act of 1913 forced Africans to purchase land in prescribed areas and protected European economic interests and segregation. The Gold Coast and Sierra Leone, by contrast, applied a theory of ownership in which tribal authorities dealt with land distribution on behalf of the community concerned. Both regulations alienated Africans from the land they inhabited because customary land rights, i. e., arrangements allowing the use of community lands for the benefit of all, were rendered invalid. Cf. Hailey, African Survey, 718–25. 95 Qtd. in Berry, Century of Missions, 127, 126 and 136. 96 Few works deal with the African perception of African Americans. See Gershoni, Africans on African Americans; Vinson, Americans Are Coming; and Adam Ewing, The Age of Garvey: How a Jamaican Activist Created a Mass Movement and Changed Global Black Politics (Princeton, 2014).

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My reading foregrounds expectations, loyalties, and conflicts that emerged from the attempt to negotiate proximity and differentiation between African Americans and Africans. The main sites of this encounter were the image of the American Negro and the mission’s main divisions of labor: fieldwork and housework. Together, these points of contact indicate that interactions were complicated, rather than facilitated, by the idea that people of African descent comprised a unity. The ‘American Negro’ in the African Perspective

While African American missionaries were rather detached from the local population, as discussed above, the Africans’ image of the American Negro was never far from their view. The African, Bishop Edward J. Howard observed, tended to “feel that of all others, he [i. e., the American Negro] is the one best able to help him in laying the foundation for a Christian race and civilization, which will give him a place of religious, racial, economic and industrial freedom.”97 Others noticed a “degree of sympathy between the Afro-American, and the African, and the native.”98 Many speculated that Africans were attracted to the church’s name “African,” claiming that they had confidence in their “brother in America” because “of his training and contact with western civilization.”99 Some even found that Europeans echoed the Africans’ praise of African Americans. Those interested in “the welfare and progress” of Africans looked to “the Coloured people of America for hope and inspiration.”100 Regardless of their plausibility, the explanations African American AME people provided show that they engaged with the images Africans had made of them. The power of this image was perhaps exemplified best by the growing class of African missionaries, who not only joined the AME Church to secede from European missions but seized the “opportunities and potentialities” it offered for training “leaders among Negroes in other lands.”101 Most of them studied at Wilberforce University, Ohio, and many continued their training at renowned nonecclesiastical American universities. Eva Morake, a South African, was funded by the WPMMS to do her MA in rural education at Columbia University.102 Samuel B. A. Campbell, a Sierra Leonean, earned degrees in philosophy, science, theology, and a prize for his oratory skills at Harvard University before returning to West Africa as part of Bishop W. Sampson Brooks’s delegation Berry, Century of Missions, 136. Kinch, West Africa, 27–28. 99 Berry, Century of Missions, 119. 100 J. M. Mokone, “Mrs. Lucy M. Hughes in Central Africa,” Voice of Missions (February 1939): 5. 101 Berry, Century of Missions, 119. A list of local workers is on page 149. 102 Coit, Report, 1932, 14. 97 98

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in 1920.103 Some were even promoted into high-ranking posts in the church in the United States. Francis Herman Gow, born in 1896 in Cape Town, for instance, began his training at the South African AME Bethel Institute of Industry, continued it at Wilberforce University and Morris Brown College, and eventually became the first South African bishop of the AME Church in the United States. He returned to South Africa some time in the 1920s, upon the invitation of Bishop John A. Gregg, to apply his expertise in local AME education programs.104 But not all went back to offer education. Hastings K. Banda, a Wilberforce graduate, became an anticolonial agitator in Nyasaland; Amanda P. Mason drifted from AME teaching in Sierra Leone into the radical nationalist movement of the South African ANC; and Charlotte Manye Maxeke, who once went to the United States as a member of an African choir, returned with degrees from Wilberforce and political ambitions that resulted in the founding of the ANC Women’s League.105 With such U. S.-trained elites among them, the new class of African missionaries moved into a strategic middle position in the field. Many African American accounts speak of the essential services these locals provided in enabling church events, African Americans’ travels, as well as their contact with Africans outside of the church, the stratum of colonial society that was the mission’s target group. Strong praise was expressed of workers who considered it “their first duty … to have a reception” and who hosted African American visitors in their private accommodations. According to some reports, in order to make African American guests feel at home, Africans built additional brick rooms onto their houses and served “real turkey American dinner[s].” These provisions suggest that locals anticipated African Americans’ expectations and difficulties when entering into their colonial world. Although Africans could not offer the standards of convenience their American colleagues were used to, African Americans greatly appreciated the effort, noting that their courtesy and hospitality outdid what was common in the United States.106 At the same time, African workers’ cordial welcomes reflected the hopes and aspirations their American visitors summoned. As a frequent visitor of such receptions indicated, the events in fact expressed “the Africans’ undying faith in the American Negro.”107 After organizing Lucy M. Hughes’s trip through Central Africa, Reverend Jonathan M. Mokone, the presiding elder of Bulawayo in Southern Rhodesia, expanded on this dynamic. People adored Berry, Century of Missions, 155. Wright, Bishops, 189. 105 For Hastings, see SCRBC, AME CR, box 43, folder “Corr. A-B, 1927”; for Amanda P. Mason, see Berry, Century of Missions, 155; for Charlotte Manye Maxeke, see Alfred B. Xuma, Charlotte Manye (Mrs. Maxeke): What an Educated African Girl Can Do, ed. Dovie King Clark (n. p., 1930). 106 Hughes, “Visit to South Africa,” 23. 107 Coan, “Trekking,” 8. 103 104

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Hughes, he told the home church, as a “mother” and a “daughter … of our wild, untamed Africa,” and on account of the “graphic account” she gave of the “American Negro’s upward climb from slavery to full suffrage.” With her threefold inspiration, Mokone emphasized, Hughes left her audiences, which often included Europeans, not only “breathless” but swayed from the “depths of despair to the heights of hope.”108 Raising Africans’ hopes fueled their expectations. Village people and chiefs frequently approached Hughes, observers wrote, requesting that she provide schools for their children. Moreover, the Africans’ gestures of admiration and submission were said to convey a “growing consciousness of the need for an educated ministry” within the church. Their expectation that African Americans be strong leaders, AME accounts suggest, indeed pressured the home church to provide better trained foreign missionaries.109 After all, the Africans’ faith in the American Negro did not end with demands relating to the church’s missionary operation. Upon his arrival in Cape Town, Bishop William W. Beckett contended that he was “never more surprised in his life” than when he heard of a suspicion that the AME Church aimed to “interfere with politics.”110 While African American missionaries turned a decidedly deaf ear to this expectation, locals asserted that it could not simply be ignored. Speaking “on behalf of the people of So. Africa,” Abdulla Abdurahman, a South African Indian and the only non-European to hold an elective office in the Cape Colony Provincial Council, exemplified the case.111 In his welcome address for Beckett, as the Voice reported, Abdurahman “spoke very earnestly.” He informed the bishop that the work was “not strewn with roses” and recommended that he should – in order to earn “the warm regard and affection of all colored South Africa[ns]” – bring his wife, a “cultured and refined lady whom they all knew they would love.” Beckett himself was advised to be “at all times … a most accessible and kindly man.”112 Africans’ exaltation of African Americans as their “more favored brother[s]” also reminded them that this exaltation was not unconditional.113 The African voices described in AME accounts indicate where Africans and African Americans were not easily brought together. These records support the idea that Africans were crucial in helping to pave the way for African American missionaries in the colonial world, starting with organizing their welcome receptions. Intermingled with the performance of this duty, however, were locals’ hopes that a strong American Negro leadership would come 108 109 110 111 112 113

Mokone, “Mrs. Lucy M. Hughes,” 4–5. Coan, “Trekking,” 8. “Reception to Bishop W. W. Beckett,” 3. Vernon, “South Africa,” 167. “Reception to Bishop W. W. Beckett,” 3. Kinch, West Africa, 28.

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and defend their political concerns. In this connection, it is important to note that the idea of the American Negro found its own disciples. An ascending class of African AME missionaries aspired to become leaders among African Americans in the United States. Others engaged the idea of the American Negro when refurbishing their houses and food preferences. To many, the image designated hope. And some used it to indicate where such hopes were disappointed. Reading AME accounts between the lines reveals how African missionaries variously manipulated the American Negro image and in doing so had considerable agency to facilitate or inhibit African American missionaries’ arrival in the social stratum that was defined as native in indirect-rule society. Consequently, reconciling locals’ expectations of the American Negro with the AME Church’s own ambitions in the field became an essential task for African and African American mission staff when they started to work together. This cooperation was refined in the missionaries’ fieldwork and housework, two comparatively private spheres that allowed both serious conflicts and actual affection to emerge. Fieldwork

Usually, the tone of the letters presented by African American and African fieldworkers to the bishops and the missionary department, especially those that pertained to their everyday life, were distinctly harsh. Although people frequently emphasized that they were “on the field with heart and soul,” they felt burdened. Many complained of “difficult” travel, the exorbitantly rising costs for food and “ordinary necessities of living,” and the “suffering and starving” they and their families endured. Others were distressed because “moving here and there” made it difficult to win “the confidence of the people.”114 Some of the African missionaries who had been “reared up … among the very tribe[s]” and spoke their languages and understood their growing “love for our denomination,” protested against becoming “an object of [the church’s] charity.”115 Others expected the church to grant them more funding. “I am endeavouring to do my part and I expect you to do yours,” one writer remarked, reminding the home church that building “an Indigenous Church” meant not only “SELF-SUPPORT” but also “LARGE GIVING.”116 At times, their voices resonated in the home church. Appeals for financial support came from those who did not want to disappoint the “missionaries and the members and adA. M. DeLima to J. W. Rankin, “Letters from the Field,” Voice of Missions (January 1915): 15; “On Duty to Missions,” Voice of Missions (July 1915): 8; and DeLima, “Letters from the Field,” 15–16. 115 W. T. White to J. W. Rankin, “Letters from the Field,” Voice of Missions (November 1913): 16. 116 J. W. Brown, A. M. E. Z. Year Book of the Eleventh Episcopal District with Extracts from the Minutes of the Nigeria Conference (n. p., 1938), 12–13, emphasis original. 114

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herents of our church in Africa” who turned with “eager and anxious hearts” toward the AME Church in America.117 The tone alluded to the sacrifices that fieldwork demanded and the victims it claimed. Many missionaries either died from disease or starvation, or left the AME Church in order to pursue more profitable employments. Bishop W. Sampson Brooks was alert to the problem already before he went to supervise the West African field. If these trends were allowed to grow, he predicted, they would “so demoralize our work that we shall not be able to carry out the things we are aiming to do.” The difficulty became obvious to him because two of his “very best” local workers, Brother Gibson and A. L. Brisbane, withdrew. Due to their “excellent” reputation, they had been offered better paid jobs in other denominations and the local administration in West Africa, the bishop averred.118 Another missionary, Alfred M. DeLima (b. 1875) from the Gold Coast, pondered quitting his service because he felt malnutrition had put him in a condition too “deplorable” to work efficiently.119 The loss of good workers, Brooks anticipated, would weaken the work ethic of those that remained. Many reacted to unsatisfactory working conditions by trying to take advantage of church funds. Some discontented fieldworkers began to spend their stipends on furloughs in the United States without definite return dates. As Brooks stated confidentially with regard to one of these cases, “he is a most unreasonable fellow and impresses me as simply wanting as much money as he can [get] from the Department and staying in America.”120 For those who stayed in the field, the departures of their colleagues in turn offered welcome occasions to present themselves as proving their “loyalty to the Church.” Loyalty, however, took the form of blackmailing the church to pay them, as they called it, more “appropriate” salaries. “If I do not receive … regular support,” a Sierra Leonean missionary warned, “hunger will lead me to very mean things.”121 Although women and men alike carried out fieldwork, the tension-filled power play for funding and recognition cast fieldworkers’ hardships, primarily, as male hardships. For Missionary Secretary J. W. Rankin, the withdrawals, starvation, and betrayal among West African workers made it clear that the field desperately needed “just such a man” as Brooks, whose reputation for being able to “tackle” things preceded him. Low-ranking staff also pointed “On Duty,” 8. See W. S. Brooks to J. W. Rankin, October, 15, 1920; and J. W. Rankin to W. S. Brooks October 18, 1920. Both SCRBC, AME CR, box 41, folder “Corr. Bishop W. S. Brooks, 1920.” 119 W. S. Brooks to J. W. Rankin, June 24, 1918. SCRBC, AME CR, box 41, folder “Corr. Bishop W. S. Brooks, 1920.” 120 W. S. Brooks to J. W. Rankin, December 28, 1920”; quote in W. S. Brooks to J. W. Rankin, December 31, 1920. Both SCRBC, AME CR, box 41, folder “Corr. Bishop W. S. Brooks, 1920.” 121 E. A. Peacock to E. H. Coit, September 7, 1929. SCRBC, AME CR, box 45, folder “Corr. P, 1929.” 117 118

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to masculinity in admonishing that “the men who are really working hard” and laboring among “the natives’ real heathens where we have never done anything” were not receiving appropriate recognition from mission officials.122 In the face of the growing group of “money-seekers” and in response to concerns about worker demoralization, the church affirmed a missionary ideal of “men on the firing line.”123 This missionary self-fashioning constructed selflessness and self-sacrifice in the image of males who were leaving behind profitable jobs and private conveniences. As Bishop William H. Heard summarized, “[m]en have the spirit for missions for they are willing to give up [financial gain] and the comforts of home.”124 The ideal matched local notions of chieftainship, which in some tribal traditions was not based on heredity but on merit; potential chiefs had to endure manhood initiation rites involving absence from home as a “warrior.”125 In most fieldworkers’ accounts, by consequence, affection was male-male or confined within long-distance or nonintimate relationships. African workers were said to have love for bishops who resembled an “African Prince” and to seek the favorable attention of women who were far away, because they willfully abandoned both paid labor and home ties.126 As Heard put it, a missionary man always hoped that “ladies [would] hear one on the field” and would not fail to let the men “feel the best of a woman’s heart.”127 Their distance to females distinguished fieldworkers from high-ranking, usually African American mission staff who were expected to have elevated lifestyles, housing, and wives as signs of their respectability and dignity. Housework

The AME Church’s women missionaries were typically well educated and performed a range of public functions as field inspectors and presidents of women’s missionary societies, or other local organizations. With their men on the “firing line,” female fieldworkers were cast as laborers in the establishment of the domestic front, a role that expected them to build up family-style relations and affection with Africans outside their homes.128 Charlotte Crogman Wright, J. W. Rankin to W. S. Brooks, October 18, 1920. Folder “Corr. Bishop W. S. Brooks, 1920”; and J. S. Chela Fraser to J. W. Rankin, [1921?]. Folder “Corr. F, 1921.” Both SCRBC, AME CR, box 41. 123 F. H. Gow to E. H. Coit, February 1, 1929. SCRBC, AME CR, box 45, folder “Corr. F. Herman Gow, L. B., 1929.” 124 Bishop W. H. Heard, “Letters from the Field,” Voice of Missions (November 1913): 15. 125 Kinch, West Africa, 10. 126 F. H. Gow to E. H. Coit, February 1, 1929. SCRBC, AME CR, box 45, folder “Corr. F. Herman Gow, L. B., 1929.” 127 Heard, “Letters from the Field,” 15. 128 Cf. Patricia Grimshaw, “Faith, Missionary Life, and the Family,” in Gender and Empire, ed. Philippa Levine (Oxford, 2004), 265–66. 122

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who came to South Africa together with her husband Richard R. Wright Jr. in 1936, for example, appeared “not very domestic” to some of her relatives and colleagues in the United States. At an early age, they stated, she excelled as a “smart child” and later taught classes in Greek and Latin at Clark University in Atlanta.129 Whereas she proved to be a “naturally good teacher” and an “even tempered mistress of the classroom,” she remained unable to prepare “some cabbage.” In her marriage, she “made an ideal mother” without being “too busy with the home duties to devote time to church work.” During her time in South Africa, she wrote a book about her life there, which became a bestseller after publication in 1955.130 According to her own account, Crogman Wright hardly did housework at home. The mission rather called on her to win Africans’ love and affection, which she did by taking over the church’s young people’s department, organizing sewing circles and art departments in areas designated as native locations, serving as a nurse and doctor to the student body, and introducing girls to the idea of “beauty culture” by teaching them “to care for their bodies and their heads.”131 Apart from offering practical counseling to Africans on daily affairs, Crogman Wright demonstrated her interest in housework with numerous visits to their private homes. While she was surprised to find “so many fine homes owned by colored people” who were teachers, businessmen, ministers, and skilled workmen, the native suburbs – the settlements the South African government erected for nonwhites to separate the races – confirmed her expectations. She found them to be missing any standard of comfort. In reviewing Africans’ domestic living conditions in their private spheres, Crogman Wright got a clear sense of the problems and the new frontiers women missionaries needed to address.132 Crogman Wright found a particularly noteworthy example of female housework in an accommodation she called “a house by the side of the road.” It was the principal’s cottage of the AME Church’s Wilberforce Industrial and Literary Training Institute in Evaton, the flagship school of the church’s South African work. Her inspection of the building attested that it was in a “state of neglect” when its new inhabitants, a married couple, Amore Jerome and Luella Graham White, who came for teaching assignments from Wilberforce University in Ohio to Wilberforce Institute in South Africa, moved in. However, the place soon became “a sort of mecca.” The transformation was due to the nature of Graham White’s housework, which neither centered on performing Ada Crogman Franklin to Cecile Portis, October 4, 1939. TUL, BAAC, Bishop Richard Robert Wright Jr. Papers, box 2. 130 J. E. W. Bowen to Cecile Portis, September, 27, 1957; and Ada Crogman Franklin to Cecile Portis, October 4, 1939. Both TUL, BAAC, Bishop Richard Robert Wright Jr. Papers, box 2. 131 Hughes, “Visit to South Africa,” 26. 132 Wright, Beneath the Southern Cross, 22–23. 129

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official functions at the school nor exclusively on making the house “more cozy and comfortable.” Crogman Wright described Graham White as a worker of “the noble class.” This phrase designated women who preferred to engage in work they were “not paid for” rather than do the “things for which they are paid.” One crucial unpaid labor was performed in the “mother’s love” Graham White conveyed by means of the “veritable house,” Crogman Wright asserted. She became known for using food, such as fried chicken, hot rolls, and ice cream, to bring together “the highest and the lowliest” as well as “master and mistress.” Moreover, the house was said to be a meeting point for ministers and their families, people of the local community, teachers, students, government officials, as well as “white men and women of high standing.” In Crogman Wright’s words, at “Mother White’s table,” her guests became “really friends to their fellow-men.”133 Graham White’s dedication to unpaid work exemplified the self-sacrifice that the AME Church demanded from male fieldworkers. Her housework, however, did not involve her departure or distance from the comforts of home, but rather concerned the effort to of making her own home available to other women. Her central occupation throughout her busy days was, accordingly, engaging with African girls. Before breakfast she welcomed the first group for sewing textiles she provided from the United States, and in the afternoon another group arrived for cooking and drafting; in addition, girls came almost every day to “wash and press and arrange their hair.” Apart from teaching them household skills and beauty culture, she cared for the sick and injured using her personal medicine chest. The effects of Graham White’s labors became visible in these girls’ changing appearance. As shown in Figure 3, young African women were in good physical condition, wearing self-made clothes, such as uniforms, aprons, and cooking caps, and new hairstyles. As their curly or even shaved heads disappeared, Crogman Wright observed, they looked “very like their American cousins.”134 But Graham White also discovered the hardships of these women in her house. She was supported by a domestic aide who had six children whom she brought to work and whom she fed by stealing a “very considerable portion from the principal’s larder.” Instead of punishing the aide for her trespasses, Mother White considered her an example of the importance of giving women “larger interest and activities” than childrearing and domestic work. She began organizing community meetings to advance this idea.135 Perhaps the strongest expression of the larger interests African American women, such as Mother White, aimed to provide for their female disciples was their initiative to establish medical facilities at the South African Wilberforce 133 134 135

Wright, “A House,” 26. Ibid., 27. Wright, Beneath the Southern Cross, 48–49.

Meeting the ‘Native’

Institute. In 1938, the institute’s staff made a promotional film of the school’s activities for an “African Benefit” event in the United States, organized by the AME Church for “the purpose … of giving impetus to the movement for establishing a clinic.”136 The sum raised sufficed to open the Crogman Clinic, named after Crogman Wright to honor her role in adding medical care to the school’s curriculum. More importantly, however, the fundraising helped to add a new dimension to local concepts of black self-determination. The care of the body, as Crogman Wright’s and Graham White’s housework had already exemplified, was a way for African women to experiment with leisure and African American beauty culture.137 This aspect of housework was made even more explicit in the institute’s initiative to establish an annual beauty competition, which prompted female students to increase their physical attractiveness and male students to declare their taste in women by electing a “Miss Wilberforce.”138 The focus on the care of the body was, of course, aligned with Wilberforce’s industrial curriculum, which offered training in manual labor, crafts, and sport and drill exercises, and in these fields linked physical fitness to physical labor. As a practice that concerned one’s outer appearance, industrial education also embodied the usual attempts by missionaries to put progress and civilization on display so that their achievements in colonial contexts became visible. Yet, Crogman Wright and Graham White helped to give training in self-care a new implication. Even before the clinic was opened, the staff ’s promotional film highlighted that Wilberforce had become the home of healthy and beautiful African women who, apart from housework and fieldwork, engaged in leisure activities, such as dancing and playing music and who were interested in fashion and hair-styling.139 Crogman Wright and Graham White showed that the AME approach to housework was based on the power of affection and a dose of female appeal. They transformed their own domestic environments into mission stations that would guide other women to transform themselves in similar directions. The house played a role not as a site but as a set of practices broadly associated with concepts of motherly love and self-care. Advice and instruction in sewing, cooking, and hygiene, as well as medical care, helped to inculcate subjects with an African American sense of beauty and to encourage their leisure pursuits. Such practices presented a key element not only of African American women’s missions. A central creed of the AME Church held that it could not “administer to the welfare of man’s soul and ignore his physical, mental and D. H. Sims to 1st and 9th Episcopal District, June 28, 1938. SCRBC, AME CR, box 37, folder “Corr. Sims, 1936–1938.” 137 Wright, Beneath the Southern Cross, 47. 138 Photobooks, 1942. MARBL, Emory University, Josephus Roosevelt Coan Papers, OBV 1–3. 139 Untitled Film Reel, 1937–1938. TUL, BAAC, Dr. Ruth Wright Hayre Collection, Series 4, box 1, PA013RH001. 136

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social needs.”140 Teaching Africans “how to live” started with medical attention and moved lessons in hygiene and sanitation, motherhood and childrearing to the core of missionary work.141 Consequently, women missionaries’ service encompassed more than support and encouragement for their husbands’ fieldwork and the advancement of missionary frontiers. Women set an example of everyday living that allowed unmarried and childless African women to claim their femininity, if not even mother roles, by means of their performance and practices.142 On the other hand, African American women’s relationship with African women was a shaped by the role they themselves were assigned in colonial society. As nonnatives, they became the bourgeois-type of “civilized women” whose lives unfolded in environments filled with constant love and protection, provided initially by their mothers and families and eventually by their husbands.143 Informed by the colonial notion of femininity, African American women came to understand African women as endangered and deficient because they had, as Emily C. Kinch, an African American missionary to West Africa pointed out, “no home life, and little or no family tie.” This was most evident in the custom of polygamy, which exposed them to economic exploitation of all kinds, starting with that of their own husbands. According to Kinch, African women not only worked harder than “native” men, but also harder than “Africans,” the term she used to designate slaves and members of the working class. With such workloads, she argued, African women could neither care for themselves nor their children and communities.144 In addition, African American women’s concern for African women was fueled by their problematic relation to white men. According to Kinch, male colonizers had so “frequently given up family ties in Europe, [and] taken on all the customs and habits of the natives” that the color line faded, generating races that were “more brown than black.”145 The rise of economic and sexual abuse perpetrated by African and European men intensified the taboo of close contact between male African American missionaries and African women. Like most missionary societies, AME staff considered the conversion and uplift of local females primarily women’s tasks. Although the roles of civilized women and mothers that African American females performed were particuBerry, Century of Missions, 118–19. Berry, Report, 1936, 18. 142 One example is Lucy M. Hughes, who was single and traveling on her own, but was still called Mother Hughes. Mokone, “Mrs. Lucy M. Hughes,” 4. 143 Diana Jeater, “The British Empire and African Women in the Twentieth Century,” in Black Experience and the Empire, ed. Philip D. Morgan and Sean Hawkins, 228–256 (Oxford, 2004); and Barbara Bush, “Gender and Empire: The Twentieth Century,” in Gender and Empire, ed. Levine, 77–111. 144 Kinch, West Africa, 5. 145 Ibid., 37. 140 141

Meeting the ‘Native’

lar to a class that most African women would not enter, they provided a model for African women of how they could appropriate and question the regimes of African customs and European gender roles without emulating white women. The contacts African American and African women established through housework bring us back to the smiles of the two African women in Figure 3. The picture can certainly be interpreted as showing doubly colonized women subordinated to the rule of Europeans and males, and captured in conditions analogous to American slavery, as their contextualization in the cotton field suggests.146 Nonetheless, the foregoing analysis of AME housework has shown that African women like them found new leverage in adopting gender roles as housewives and mothers when these roles were shaped by their African American encounter. Quotidian activities like homemaking and childrearing could assume a subversive character in indirect-rule society, where polygamy and work outside the home were African women’s expectation and duty. To echo Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham’s argument about African American women, the most profound challenge to colonial subordination (as to Jim Crow in the United States) rested in African men’s and women’s day-to-day struggle to work the system to their minimum disadvantage. The uplift of African women on the part of civilized African American women, of course, seemed to encourage their submissiveness. But it also had a subversive quality. African women developed a sense of beauty, health, and leisure that afforded a glimpse into the transnational world of African Americans and thus beyond the ethnic identities and labor activities that indirect-rule society intended them to adopt. In this way, these housewives and mothers were neither simply catalysts of nor dissenters against colonial rule. They exposed the “fluid interaction of political and ideological meanings” that surrounded the black church in the colonial context, and revealed that there were idiosyncratic paths to take.147 ◆◆◆ In sum, we have seen that the encounter between African Americans and Africans in the AME mission in the cultural sphere involved constructions of the native in several ways. In the daily life of African Americans, the category played a role in defining their status as nonnatives, which furnished them with the privileges, mobility, and respectability of the ruling class. The same lifestyle meant that African Americans were rather detached from the social stratum that was defined as native and the object of their mission. To reach out to this community, they closely cooperated with African staff. Forming a John McLeod, Beginning Postcolonialism (Manchester, 2000), 175–80. Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880–1920 (Cambridge, MA, 1993), 17–18. 146 147

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crucial connection between Africans and African Americans, the segment of local workers had less public appeal than African Americans, but it maintained a strong influence on how their communities perceived the advent of AME missionaries in the field. The image as American Negroes that preceded them, and the close cooperation in fieldwork and housework that resulted from this encounter, defined black-black relationships based on notions of dedication, moral integrity, and gendered capabilities. The prior constructions of the native and of the American Negro brought into view the constraints and horizons that the people that were subsumed in each category inherited or gained from one another. African Americans refused to adopt the politics of the American Negro that Africans, classed as native, hoped for. The Africans who were classed as natives, on the contrary, were prompted to seek their health, beauty, and self-determination because these rubrics were coded as the means through which the African American had risen from the cotton fields of slavery. Their transformations went beyond the ethnic constraints imposed by indirect rule and prompted them to “brighten the corner” where they were.148 As we will see in the next chapter, once Africans increasingly took over the management of new Christian fields and homes, the building of a new civilization in Africa could, and did, follow.

“‘Brighten the Corner Where You Are’: The Story of What a Few Women Can Do,” Voice of Missions (February 1931): 9–10. 148

9. Moving into the Colonial System: AME Institutions in Colonial Africa

9.1. The African AME Church

T

he aim to build a new civilization required vision and pragmatism, two things that the AME Church had to model anew in its colonial setting. In a speech titled “Africa and a Way Out” given before the Bishops’ Council in Baltimore in 1920, former Africa missionary John A. Gregg exemplified this exercise of local appropriation, stressing that for the church to retreat from Africa was not the way out. In part, he argued, the AME mission had to be modeled upon a “native” who was no longer “clannish” but roamed the country “preaching and urging for education as never before” and who had unleashed a religious “awakening as sweeping as the great Renaissance.”1 At the same time, Gregg stated, the AME Church had to consider that colonizers were watching and constraining Africans’ church movements, even if they were “governed wisely and well.” The AME mission stood at the intersection of these two developments. While its aim to inspire “Christian and social development” in Africans did not per se interfere with “political life other than as religious activity does and should,” the “honest effort” was “misjudged” by the British as precisely such an interference. Thus, Gregg summarized, the African AME Church had to get ready to deal with the British “diplomatically, in a cool, quiet, deliberate, carefully planned way.”2 The paradox that Gregg described paved the AME Church’s way into the political domain of institutionalized colonial power relations of indirect-rule Africa. This path was flanked by the unprecedented numbers of Africans who 1 2

John A. Gregg, “Africa and a Way Out,” AME Review (April 1921): 205 and 208. Ibid., 212.

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converted to Christianity and by colonizers who tried to force these Christians to remain ‘natives,’ since it were people who were constructed as such who served as the foundation of their rule. For the AME Church, this situation shaped a new missionary responsibility. To achieve its aim of helping African Christians to augment their own visions of social and spiritual development, it had to reconcile those visions with colonial policies and development plans. Like Gregg, many AME Church officials were aware that this required missionaries to move right into the sphere where indirect-rule directives and independent African church movements tended to meet and clash, and to forge new and at times unexpected allegiances within and across these lines of conflict. The Texture of African Methodism in Africa

The growth of Christianity mentioned in Gregg’s assessment had been apparent in Africa since 1900 and reached its peak after the First World War.3 Mission statistics indicated that the number of Christians in Africa quintupled from about 500,000 to two million during the interwar period. One way in which this growth manifested itself was in the increasing representation of Africans within European and American mission churches. Since 1903, the number of African staff rose from 22,000 to 81,000 people while the size of foreign staff shrank to one-tenth of the African staff by 1938.4 An even more powerful indication of the growth of African Christianity was the emergence of independent African churches. Although Western missionary data compilers did not count their memberships, it is safe to assume that Africans not affiliated with any European or American church were the fastest-growing segment. The Order of Ethiopia, for instance, a splinter group of the South African Methodist Church in Pretoria, claimed to have ten thousand communicants when it was founded in 1896.5 In addition, historical studies suggest that about one-third of the Christian population in South Africa was affiliated with African congregations.6 Despite a lack of statistics, anecdotal evidence supports the rise of an independent African church movement in West Africa, too, where traditional mission churches complained of suffering a great deal from schisms and African dissenters.7 With more African staff and greater religious autonomy for AfMissionary societies had different criteria for what constituted a missionary, a communicant, an adherent, a mission station, or a school. Comparing their statistics as well as using aggregate statistics is therefore problematic. In my analysis, I use them to identify some general trends, rather than to give precise numbers. 4 Parker, Survey, 17. 5 Mweli T. D. Skota, ed., The African Who’s Who: An Illustrated Classified Register and National Biographical Dictionary of the Africans in the Transvaal, 3rd ed. (Johannesburg, n. d.), 179. 6 Richard Elphick, The Equality of Believers: Protestant Missionaries and the Racial Politics of South Africa (Charlottesville, 2012), 107. 7 We find notice of dissenters in AME Church correspondence as well as in Sierra Leone govern3

Moving into the Colonial System

ricans, the Christian demographics of interwar Africa profoundly transformed the “texture of colonial Christianity.”8 Within this texture, the AME mission was located in some of the fastest growing Christian populations. Its core areas – Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast, and the Union of South Africa – ranked among the top five colonies measured by the quantity of churches, communicants, Sunday schools, local ministers, and educational and medical missionary initiatives.9 According to the World Atlas of Christian Missions of 1911, which was perhaps the first Western account that included AME mission statistics after the church entered the African field in the late nineteenth century, African Methodism owed its growth and standing in colonial society to a high degree of indigenization. In South Africa, including Basutoland and Swaziland, the AME Church had eight foreign staff members and 266 local workers that year, about half of whom were professionally trained and ordained. Together, they were responsible for a congregation of about 11,000 people, 500 of whom had joined the AME Church in the previous year alone. In Sierra Leone, the foreign staff still outnumbered local workers by two-thirds. But these Africans’ relatively high degree of professionalization compensated somewhat for their relatively small number. Among the Sierra Leonean AME personnel, ordained priests outnumbered unordained ones by two to one. These workers took care of about 1,400 African Methodists, a community that had grown by 6 percent compared to the previous year. On the Gold Coast, the African Methodist presence was small but complemented by the AMEZ Church, the AME Church’s sister denomination headquartered in New York, with a typical ratio of four foreign missionaries to twelve locals. Both African Methodist churches, and the African clergy associated with them, exercised rather tight controls over the admission to communion, as their own reports usually distinguished probationers and exhorters as well as baptized and converted people. The total number of Africans attending their services thus was likely to include people who did not fall under such categories (children, for instance). Attendance was therefore much higher than what abridged statistics reflect.10 A core feature of the arrival of African Methodism in Africa was that it often joined the Ethiopian movement, which was started by Africans who were dissatisfied with the predominance of whites controlling their churches. Most ment records, which closely monitored and reported schisms in the major missionary bodies, including the AME Church. 8 Kalu uses the term “texture” to refer to the character of the missionary presence, the cultural policy, the institutionalization of missionary agencies, and the translation of the scriptures. Each of these features evoked different indigenous responses. Kalu, “Ethiopianism,” 577. 9 Parker, Survey, 26–27. 10 James S. Dennis, Harlan P. Beach, and Charles H. Fahs, eds., World Atlas of Christian Missions … (New York, 1911), 93–94. For the AME-AMEZ mission cooperation in West Africa, see Section 6.1.

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of the first African AME Churches founded in the late nineteenth century were built upon religious communities that attempted to or had split from European or American church affiliations. In Sierra Leone, the AME Church amalgamated with the staff and members of the Zion Chapel in Freetown. The congregation belonged to the Countess Huntington Connection, a small society of churches that had been founded in 1783 as part of the evangelical revival that swept from England to Sierra Leone. Zion Chapel members spotted their chance to leave the connection in the AME Church. Between 1885 and 1887, they negotiated the terms of their affiliation with the WPMMS. The arrangements intended for an AME Church delegate, Reverend John R. Frederick, to take over all Zion Chapel members and property in June of 1887. By 1888, Frederick began to operate the facilities as an independent black church called New Zion AME Church. Another Sierra Leonean AME Church was the Bethel Mission. It opened its doors in the same year in the protectorate after Chief Mangay Small Scarcies asked the AME Church to do so. In 1888, the chief furnished the AME mission board with twelve acres of land for conducting religious and educational work. The board, in turn, appointed AME delegate Moses D. Davis to run the station.11 A total of four visiting AME bishops were to follow to supervise these otherwise uncorrelated stations. In 1908, when the AME Church made provisions to make West Africa one of its episcopal districts, the first resident bishop, William H. Heard, was appointed.12 The founding of AME Churches in South Africa followed similar patterns. In 1896, the Order of Ethiopia, founded in 1892 by African dissenters, such as Reverends James M. Dwane and Marcus Gabashane from the Wesleyan Methodist Church, unified with the AME Church.13 Other southern African adherents of the Ethiopian movement soon followed this example. The first official AME conferences of South Africa, convened by Bishop Henry McNeal Turner in 1898, were attended by over seven thousand people in Pretoria, Transvaal, and approximately four thousand people came to the one held in Queenstown, Cape Colony.14 Much of the reason the AME Church could stake out colonial ground quite easily was because it drew its membership from discontented African Christians who had already organized their own congregations or churches. Inheriting these structures, African Methodism from the start had a fairly even number of mission stations and organized churches, the two institutions that normally followed one another. By 1911, statistics counted 24 mission stations and 30 organized churches in West Africa, and 143 mission stations and 142 orJ. W. Rankin, “The Missionary Propaganda of the A. M. E. Church,” AME Review (January 1916): 176–77. 12 These were Bishops Abraham Grant (1898), C. T. Shaffer (1900), W. B. Derrick (1904–1907); and C. S. Smith (1907–1908). Berry, Century of Missions, 150–51. 13 Skota, ed., African Who’s Who, 176. 14 Rankin, “Missionary Propaganda,” 177. 11

Moving into the Colonial System

ganized churches in South Africa. The good balance of missions and churches paid off financially, too. In 1911, the AME Church Missionary Department raised about $7,000 from church members in the African field. This amount was about one-fifth of the budget the missionary secretary had at his disposal. In their review of the African segment in European and American mission churches in 1911, Western missionary surveys thus attested that the African AME Church had very “firm foundations.”15 The foundations of the AME Church bore fruit over the next three decades. According to Joseph I. Parker’s Interpretative Statistical Survey of the World Mission of the Christian Church of 1938, the AME Church had grown to a membership of approximately 12,000 and a total 263 local workers in Sierra Leone, and 8,000 members and 124 local workers on the Gold Coast, supported by the AMEZ Church with 800 members and 15 workers there.16 In South Africa, which had the third largest Protestant missionary force in the world, AME Church adherents numbered 42,000, almost four times as many as in 1911, with a local work force of 350 people.17 The growth of the African AME Church became tangible in a number of ways and contexts. Some observers remarked that African Methodism tended to recruit its disciples from other mission churches rather than new converts, so that its growth was reflected in the decreasing membership of European and American churches.18 Others noted that the presence of African American staff itself could be diminished in favor of the expanding African base. According to Parker’s Survey, there was only one nonnative ordained minister in Sierra Leone, and four in South Africa in 1938.19 Finally, funds raised in the field indicated the growth of the African membership. In 1938, the African contribution the AME missionary department’s budget amounted to $ 80,000, thus supplying almost half of the financial means it had on disposal in that year.20 Overall, the lines of growth of the African AME Church far surpassed that of the home church, whose foreign missionary presence in Africa, membership numbers, and donations for missions stagnated, if not dropped during the interwar period.21 Even with little access to such statistics, the U. S.-based AME Church registered surprise about the magnitude of its African section in 1920. Gregg, who had just discussed the delicate situation of AME missions in the African coloDennis, Beach, and Fahs, World Atlas, 21 and 94. Parker, Survey, 67. 17 Elphick, Equality, 107; Parker, Survey, 70. 18 Schermerhorn, Christian Mission, 247. 19 Parker, Survey, 108–109. 20 Berry, Report, 1936, 47. 21 Compared to the decade between 1906 and 1916, AME membership decreased about 0.5 percent during the 1920s. U.S. Bureau of the Census, “Religious Bodies,” 49. 15 16

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nial setting in his “Way Out” speech, referred to it as a “wonderful … success upon which the AME Church has stumbled,” and Bishop William W. Beckett guessed that Africa with all its peculiar barriers had become and would remain the church’s main “field of operation.”22 After all, statistics and observers concurred that Africans drove the AME Church in Africa in terms of manpower and financing in the 1920s and 1930s. As AME efforts to inspire Africans to take command of their own Christian and social development materialized, their agenda increasingly had to address what Africans themselves understood by Christian and social development. 9.2. The Postwar Debate About New Africa

By the end of the First World War, the question of Africa’s future development was being hotly debated. Colonizers, missionaries, and Africans alike believed a “day of opportunity” for setting new directions had come.23 Of course, views differed as to what directions for Africa’s development were desirable. Colonizers indicated their vision in the euphemistic rhetoric of the “native question.” According to Jan Smuts, a South African politician, the term designated the intent to preserve Africa’s “unity with her own past” and to “build her future progress and civilization on specifically African foundations” instead of forcing the continent “into an alien European mould.”24 For the colonized, by contrast, the new Africa certainly began with the end of colonial rule. “[W]hen the African talks of the future of his race,” the Gold Coast Times stated in 1931, “he looks forward to … be[ing] wholly free of the political and economic domination of the white man.”25 Liberation, however, was only a first step and not the make-or-break answer. James E. K. Aggrey, an AMEZ minister and educator of African development, summed up the new issues by likening Africa to a “great mark of interrogation” standing behind “the question of the future world.” With this image Aggrey meant to suggest that Africa was entering a liminal stage in between “backwardness” and the “suffering of indigenous people” and the prospects of its heretofore dormant potential.26 As the debate began, a good part of it concerned the question of who was to blame for hampering African development. Many drew attention to the colonial discourses of the West, in which Africa was represented as marked by “heathenism, savagery, unchartered wastes, untracked mountains and utter Gregg, “Way Out,” 205; and “Address by Bishop W. W. Beckett at the Bishop’s Council, Baltimore, February 11, 1920,” Voice of Missions (March 1920): 2. 23 “The Progress of West Africa,” Gold Coast Leader, November 16, 1918, 4. 24 Jan C. Smuts, Africa and Some World Problems … (Oxford, 1930), 78. 25 “The Future of the African,” Gold Coast Times, April 4–11, 1931, 7. 26 “What about Africa’s Future?” Gold Coast Times, February 18, 1933, 1. 22

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negation of things civilized,” to use an AME official’s words.27 The notoriously “dramatic accounts of a wild country and a savage people,” the Phelps-Stokes Commission on Education in Africa added, reflected the desire of “a reading world” to indulge in the “thrills of wild life on the ‘Last Frontier’” and focused the efforts of colonists on proving “the inferiority … of Africans in comparison with other peoples” more than on “determining policies concerned with their development.”28 An important line of reasoning in the debate thus was that the self-construction of Westerners as superior agents of civilization had become Africa’s undoing because it was responsible for preempting its progress. Africa was, an AME bishop stated, not a dark but a “Misunderstood Continent.”29 The postwar ambition to clarify such misunderstandings opened the debate to considerations about what the proper tools for the continent’s advancement could be. There were certainly voices that insisted that the African was “intellectually equipped … to take [a] stand with the powers that be” and that the time was “ripe for African Nationalism.”30 This was the position of those who viewed colonialism as tantamount to “bondage.”31 One famous suggestion to end colonial subjection came from the Pan-African Congress movement. It demanded that “a code of laws” be issued “for the international protection of the natives of Africa.”32 But most observers doubted that top-down transformations were possible or that they could promote development. They wrote: We should wish … that the … Congress would show less tendency to treat Africans as upon one level and would show a wider practical acquaintance with the multitudinous kinds of Africans, and not generalise as to their needs. To help Africa in a practical way … intimate knowledge of internal conditions is necessary.33

The critics of the Pan-African Congress went on to develop an approach with “Africanized Africans” as its goal.34 This camp believed that the inherently diverse mix that African peoples carried in their individual pasts, cultural heritages, and customs provided a toolkit for the continent’s development. As the

Vernon, “South Africa,” 165. Jones, Education in Africa, 1 and 5. 29 W. Sampson Brooks, “Africa,” AME Review (October 1926): 89. 30 Kofi Akumia Baidu, “The New Africa or Serious Thinking for the African,” Gold Coast Times, October 18, 1930, 11. 31 “Future of the African,” 7. 32 Résolutions Votées Par Le Congrés Pan-African, Réuni Les 19, 20, 21 Février 1919 …, accessed September 21, 2012, http://www.library.umass.edu/spcoll/exhibits/dubois/images/11_1_2.jpg. 33 J. W. G., “The Pan-African Congress,” African World: Special West African Monthly Supplement, December 1, 1923, iii. 34 Kofi Akumia Baidu, “The New Africa or Serious Thinking for the African,” Gold Coast Times, September 27, 1930, 5. 27 28

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AMEZ Church-trained Reverend S. R. B. Attoh-Ahuma from the Gold Coast put it: [W]e have a nation and, what is more, we have a past – ‘though ungraced in story.’ We own a political Constitution, a concentric system of government, of one race, born and bred upon our own soil … . In the soul of … Africa is focused the corporate wisdom, knowledge, wishes and desires, aspirations and ambitions, the ineffable joys and the majestic pains of the people.35

According to this logic of using what Africa itself had to offer, another author explained, the African became “neither the European he imitates nor the African that he refuses to be” but “realise[d] Africa and its good things.”36 The idea that African development could be driven from within the continent involved renegotiating Africans’ relationship to African Americans. An appreciation of African variety, it seemed, could not easily be reconciled with the categories and identities on which contemporary visions of the unity of black people were usually premised. As some admonished: It has got to be borne in mind that Negro humanity in the earth, though it may be one in blood, has evolved very diversely under different conditions and climes. Some Negroes in some climes are different from, and indeed superior to, other Negroes. … In the matter of development it would be absurd to take it that the American and the West African Negro are standing on the same plane.37

Garvey’s vision of black nationalism, in particular, provoked sharp criticism among Africans. “His wild conception of a Negro Republic in Africa,” observers argued, “is bound to fail ignominiously.”38 This view matched that of the AME Church, which did “not hope to see in the near future the rather fantastic dream of Mr. Marcus Garvey realized.”39 To this end, the church strongly reminded its foreign staff to avoid any “disrepute and suspicion” and to “unqualifiedly oppose, denounce and repudiate [Garvey’s] fraudulent organization.”40 S. R. B. Attoh-Ahuma, “The Gold Coast Nation and National Consciousness,” Gold Coast Times, February 28, 1931, 1–2. Attoh-Ahuma (1863–1921) had been trained together with James E. K. Aggrey by the AMEZ Church in the United States. His book The Gold Coast Nation and National Consciousness (1911) was published as a serial in the Gold Coast Times in 1931. 36 A Native of Aneho, “The Need for Africans Realising Africa,” Gold Coast Leader, December 14–21, 1918, 3–4. 37 “The Modern Negro: A Comparative View,” Sierra Leone Weekly News, April 26, 1919, 8. 38 “The Year 1921,” Sierra Leone Weekly News, January 14, 1922, 6. 39 “Africa, and the Americans,” 201. 40 Clerk to W. A. Fountain, January 19, 1922. Folder “Corr. Bishop W. A. Fountain, 1922”; and W. W. Beckett to S. M. Jones, October 1, 1923. Folder “Corr. I-J, 1923.” Both SCRBC, AME CR, box 42. 35

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But there were also moderate voices in the church and in Africa. They argued that Garvey’s misguided political vision still provided a useful “seedthought,” because he drew attention to the question of what it was that blacks on both sides of the Atlantic hoped for.41 From this point of view, the tactics and goals of black aspiration were much more diverse than uniting under the banner of a pan-African nation. Some fancied a “Mental Emancipation” from the terms and categories white supremacists had instilled black subjects with.42 Others spoke of harnessing “the value of combination in racial affairs” in order to generate economic and political benefits for all blacks that were comparable to those of whites.43 Religion, too, seemed to be a field that offered perspectives. As AME Bishop William T. Vernon observed, separatist black churches in South Africa expressed “the repressed soul strivings of a people struggling for self leadership [sic].”44 Like Vernon, many hoped that the struggles of these Christians could overcome old customs and thus guided Africans not only toward self-government but also toward social renewal.45 Finally, most African commentators adopted the view that the “American Negroes” provided them with useful orientation. Their “condition … of general efficiency,” exemplified in their churches, industries, businesses, and banks, was particularly admired.46 This efficiency was seen as both a feature that distinguished African Americans from Africans and as the aim that the two groups had in common. As the Gold Coast Times explained: The reason why the American Negroes have … risen from abject slavery to become a superior race to us culturally and economically is that their leading people apply knowledge to the welfare of the race. … When we … have developed an educational system combining primary instruction with industrial training and the inculcation of true ideals of citizenship we shall raise a band of workers who will apply their knowledge in a manner that will ensure the rapid advance of the race.47

The visions Africans developed of a new Africa thus were neither confined to pan-African fraternization nor, as an AME bishop put it, to “Americanization.” “Year 1921,” 6. Willie O. Essuman, “How Can Youth Develop Cooperative and Harmonious Relations Among the Races of the Earth?” Gold Coast Times, November 28, 1936, 1–2. 43 “The Value of Combination in Racial Affairs,” Gold Coast Times, August 16, 1930, 7. 44 Vernon, “South Africa,” 169. 45 For a voice critical of the destructive power of religion, see “The Christian Mission and Native Customs,” Gold Coast Times, February 1, 1930, 7. For advocates of religious transformation, see H. B. Philpott, “The Negro’s Place in the Sun,” Gold Coast Leader, July 27, 1918, 7; and W. H. Peet, “How Would You Have Us…? The Question Africa Is Asking the World,” Gold Coast Times, September 20, 1930, 7–8. 46 “Modern Negro,” 8. 47 “The Application of Knowledge,” Gold Coast Times, April 12, 1930, 7. 41 42

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Their goal was to bring out of Africans “the best that was in them,” and critical review of the African American example was part of this project.48 Tuskegeeism

Many observers found a useful anchor point for formulating their vision of African American involvement with African self-realization in ‘Tuskegeeism.’ At the start of the twentieth century, the term began to be used to denote the idea of industrial education for African Americans as implemented at Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. As a school, the Tuskegee Institute trained African Americans in agriculture and skilled labor. But its philosophy was to enable among its students self-determination based on instilling the value of industry, sobriety, and discipline. In the African debate, Tuskegeeism came to represent prospects for Africans’ future that appealed to both colonizers and the colonized in different ways. Colonizers basically embraced the concept as a means to advance blacks in ways that did not question white supremacy. The British derived their idea of Tuskegeeism mainly from the findings of the Phelps-Stokes Commission on Education in Africa. In its survey of African schools published in 1922, the commission recommended far-reaching “adaptations of education,” meaning the transformation of European and American educational conventions into “school programs [that] prepare the youth to deal wisely and effectively with the problems of their country and their generation.”49 The plan fit well with the indirect-rule approach of noninterference in Africans’ life. But the role model the commission had in view for adaptation was actually specifically Tuskegeean. As the Phelps-Stokes Fund reported in 1931, it had sent 220 colonial, missionary, and African educators to the United States to “observe the methods and objectives of Negro education” to facilitate school transformations.50 The transfer of such Negro education to African settings consequently implied that new structures would adapt the same training practices through which African Americans were accommodated to the demands of the racially segregated American society. Applied in colonial contexts, black education seemed to effect the intended transfer of the social implications. South African missionaries noted that industrial schools helped to put “the negro into a proper niche in the agricultural and industrial spheres.”51 And in British West Africa, a less industrialized part of Africa, it was observed that the approach seemed to keep the “black man in 48 49 50 51

Brooks, “Africa,” 90. Jones, Education in Africa, 16. Dillard, et al., eds., Twenty Year Report of the Phelps-Stokes Fund, 21. “Brevities,” South African Outlook, March 1, 1923, 53.

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his place – a hewer of wood and a drawer of water.”52 Indeed, a famous British governor explicitly stated as much in 1938: “[W]hat at times has been put forward by administrations as a policy of education has in truth been only the expression of a political determination … to implement the view held of the place the African should occupy in the social economy.”53 The repressive implications of the colonizers’ version of Tuskegee did not go unnoticed by black observers on each side of the Atlantic. In 1923, shortly after the Phelps-Stokes Commission Report, the acting head of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, Robert Moton, added his own perspective to the debate. On a lecture tour across Europe, he beseeched missionary societies to regard it as mistaken to think that the school was meant “to make mechanics and artisans simply.” A Tuskegee graduate was, instead, “under a sacred obligation to go out into the world, not to enrich himself, primarily, but to make his efficiency and skill a resource of well-being and prosperity to others, to individuals and to the community in which he makes his home.” In this sense, Moton argued, industrial schools were truly “Christian institutions” that, by definition, delegitimized the practice of casting the African an “involuntary agent in [the] exploitation” of his continent, most of all when it catered to white men’s gain. “In a word,” Moton summarized, “the great lesson for the world to learn” from industrial education was “the lesson of mutual understanding and cooperation.”54 Moton’s loud critique of the misunderstood concept of Tuskegeeism in the African context, which was reprinted in South African missionary papers, resonated with what American and European missionaries heard from Africans on the ground. Many wanted industrial schools. But they demanded them to be able to step out from the social niche colonial society imposed upon them.55 Dissent on the part of Africans became apparent in the precautions mission schools had to take when implementing such industrial programs as part of the British policy of “developing the African on his own lines.”56 As the South African Outlook, the official journal of the General Missionary Conference in South Africa, reported, Africans refused to attend industrial schools when they were run by white people, “thinking they were being done down for the advantage of the White man.” Implementing the model in colonial society, the paper concluded, seemed to require the help of men “from Tuskegee.”57 “Wanted! Industrial Institutions,” Gold Coast Times, December 8, 1934, 7. Hailey, African Survey, 1208. 54 “Missionary Methods II. Address Delivered by Principal Moton to the Scottish Churches Missionary Congress at Glasgow,” South African Outlook, March 1, 1923, 61–62. 55 “Wanted! Industrial Institutions,” 7. 56 Hailey, African Survey, 1281. 57 “Native Education in South Africa: Is It on Right Lines?” South African Outlook, September 1, 1922, 186. 52 53

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While fueling controversial debates in colonial society, the promises Tuskegee held for Africa’s future created favorable views of the AME mission. Since it was comprised of African Americans, its staff was useful on either side of the issue: they could cooperate with colonialists in need of blacks to manipulate Africans’ negative perceptions or with colonized Africans in need of blacks to bring the Tuskegee idea to its proper fulfillment. The South African Outlook, for instance, praised AME Bishop William T. Vernon for his “unbiased and thoroughly honest opinion” on the native question and welcomed his church’s plans to establish “industrial schoools [sic] for the Native,” although he was closely monitored by colonial immigration authorities.58 Furthermore, a number of more or less political African papers represented the views of AME officials concerning mission work, Tuskegee, and the native question.59 The debate became a stage for the AME Church to present its own vision of Tuskegeesim. The church used the term “Christian education” to designate the whole complex of spiritual and social advancement it entailed. As an AME official explained, the concept did not end with “teach[ing] faith in Jesus Christ”; rather, it “sets Him forth as our pattern in useful practical living.” As such, the concept encompassed a variety of undertakings beyond church life, such as “making the best of our opportunities; extracting the sweets from our surroundings … ; turning the two pounds into four and five into ten; … brightening the sin-cursed world with our lives.”60 Booker T. Washington, who analyzed the AME Africa mission shortly before his death in 1915, confirmed that it powerfully engaged disciples in the twofold struggle “to support these [AME] churches,” and “to purify their own social life, making it clean and wholesome.” The capacity to inspire “a kind of moral discipline” in people was distinctive of the AME mission, he argued. It changed social realities in ways that churches with narrow concepts of Christian education never could.61 The concept of Tuskegeeism that the AME Africa mission pursued thus was not only consonant with the notion that Tuskegee was per definition a Christian institution, as Robert Moton reminded European and American missionary societies. More importantly, it was markedly different from the colonial notion of transferring a social model that kept blacks in their proper niche. In Bishop Brooks’s words, the mission aimed to “civilize, industrialize, and Christianize the African” so that he could become “a potent factor in [his] “Wise Words,” 127; on Vernon’s detention, see Smith, History, 331–36. The African press featured AME programs, conference reports, and sometimes interviews or portraits of the work of individuals. I found such coverage in the Cape Argus, the Gold Coast Times, and the Sierra Leone Weekly News. Sometimes the Voice of Missions published articles from the African press. See, for instance, “The A. M. E. Church Grows in South Africa,” Voice of Missions (January 1936): 3–4. 60 D. A. Graham, “Christian Education in Liberia,” AME Review (October 1926): 91. 61 Booker T. Washington, “The Mission Work of the Negro Church,” AME Review (January 1916): 187. 58

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Figure 3.2. Above: “The Old: A School of Obedience – Africans Paying Homage to their Chief.” Below: “The New: Students of the Carpentry Department, Wilberforce Institute, Evaton, South Africa, and some of their work.” Source: Voice of Missions (June 1931): cover page.

own salvation” by “utiliz[ing] the immense resources of wealth which Africa affords.”62 The premise informed the AME Church’s image of new Africa. As the cover illustration of the Voice of Missions from June 1931 showed, the church envisioned the students of industrial education, here represented by graduates of the Carpentry Department of the AME Church’s Wilberforce Institute in Evaton, Transvaal, as leading this development (Figure 3.2). The image depicted a group of Africans nicely dressed in pants and white shirts, standing upright, facing the camera, and posing with wooden dressers that, according to the caption, were “some of their work.” To underscore the difference these new Africans were capable of making in their social environments, the Voice juxtaposed their image with one of the “old” Africa, in which half-dressed Africans lay prone on the dusty ground around some tribal authority. Presumably referring to the traditional lifestyles indirect rule imposed, the caption declared 62

Brooks, “Africa,” 90–91.

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the scene a “School of Obedience” in which Africans were “Paying Homage to their Chief.” With these images the AME Church visualized the direction of development it wanted Africans to take. The transition from “old” to “new” underscored the centrality of Tuskegeeism for this trajectory and positioned the AME Church in the much broader debate in which colonizers, missionaries, and Africans discussed the future of the continent. AME missionaries, this position suggested, did not agree to the colonizers’ construction of the native and their adaptation of Tuskegee. Nor did they assert blunt claims of pan-Africanism, namely, the identity of blacks on both sides of the Atlantic, as Garvey and others proposed. When raising their voices, they inserted themselves into a much more complex constellation of solidarity and power, thereby gauging new paths they could take to jump-start the building of Africans’ new civilization. 9.3. Gaining Ground: The ‘Native’ Worker and Colonial Education in Sierra Leone

On the ground, it was the new class of African AME workers who pushed the building of a new Africa the most. This group typically had access to higher education, travel, and social mobility, largely due to their “first hand contact” with AME missionary work and with the AME schools they attended in the United States.63 Since the early 1920s, the African workforce had grown not only in numbers but increased its efficiency. As Missionary Secretary E. H. Coit observed, Africans seemed to push African Methodism further than their African American colleagues ever could.64 African American supervisors in the field agreed. They spoke of the “steady growth both [sic] spiritually, numerically and financially” that Africans accomplished even in times “when there was nothing but ‘chaos and confusion.’”65 Indeed, the paths that African AME missionaries took on colonial ground left tangible traces, precisely because they tapped unexpected sources for expansion. As a South African minister put it in 1929, “WE ARE GROWING,” specifying that growth had to be understood as going in “several directions.” His description of the state of the African AME missionary work gives a vivid picture of the complexities such progress entailed: Even with the money we are able to put into our work we do not begin to meet the needs with anything like satisfaction, but so strong has been the Race appeal and so effective has

63 64 65

Dovie King Clark, “Missionary Echoes: Our Students,” Voice of Missions (February 1931): 11. Coit, Report, 1932, 14. “Reception to Bishop W. W. Beckett,” 3; and Kinch, West Africa, 16.

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been the work of the ministry, that though we labour in most cases with poor material, large numbers have flocked to our standard in the Lord of Jesus Christ. Indeed within the last few months more than 300 persons have come to us from the influential Lutheran Church, 400 have come to us from the Dutch Reformed Church, and others have left the Church of England and kindred denominations, to say nothing of the crowds who have walked out of their darkness into the light as preached to them by humble, footsore, half-dressed, hungry ministers of the AME Church, eaten up with zeal whose spirituality has dispersed the gloom and made the brightness of the Lord to shine. … [AME ministers] live in small wretched huts viewed by civilized standards, have to support large families, and travel MAGNIFICENT DISTANCES over their circuits.66

As becomes clear from this quotation, the AME mission in Africa cannot be understood as implementing a predefined plan, even though such plans may have existed. It was individuals with unbroken zeal and the creativity to raise funds and to help themselves who established schools, churches, and communities, thereby defining the terms of a new civilization in the making. The following pages will examine AME institution building in Sierra Leone in order to understand the serpentine paths “missionary builders,” as an AME minister distinguished the group, pursued in this undertaking.67 The example shows how African workers responded to local needs and thereby forged unexpected connections and alliances across both the colonial divide and the Atlantic. The AME Mission in Sierra Leone

The notion that the AME mission in Sierra Leone was progressing with chaos and confusion most likely emerged among African American staff who found it difficult to keep track of local workers who went to the “hinterlands” and left the “subjects of these countries” in control of the stations they erected. By 1930, Sierra Leoneans ran new missions in Krutown, a native settlement in Freetown, and in places far from the city, such as Port Lokkoh, Mange, and Magbele.68 In 1917, Emily C. Kinch, a frequent traveler and missionary in West Africa, counted eight new churches that claimed to be adherents of the AME Church. Three of them were located in Freetown and five in the protectorate, along the Small Scarcies River. The biggest one, the New Zion AME Church in the center of Freetown, was formed by a group of Africans that had seceded from the Countess Huntington Connection. Campbell Memorial AME Church in Cline Town, the East end of Freetown, Kinch reported, grew from a small F. H. Gow to E. H. Coit, n. d. SCRBC, AME CR, box 45, folder “Corr. Gow F. Herman, L. B., 1929,” emphasis original. 67 J. F. B. Coleman, “A Bishop’s Monument,” Voice of Missions (November 1934): 5. 68 E. H. Coit to Alexander McLeish, November 20, 1930. SCRBC, AME CR, box 45, folder “Corr. M, 1930.” 66

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Figure 3.3. “Moore Memorial Chapel and Day School, Sierra Leone, West Africa.” Source: Voice of Missions (August 1920): 3.

wooden mission station its former owner, Reverend L. Davis, had abandoned, whereas the Emanuel AME Church in St. Grassfield, in the West of Freetown, had “suggested itself ” in view of steadily increasing requests from the people. While diverse in their origins, all three were connected to day schools that carried enrollments of up to 130 students.69 Similarly, the protectorate churches – Moore Memorial Church in Sendugu near Port Lokkoh, Bethel AME Church in Mange, Florida Grant AME Chapel in Tombo, Allen AME Church in Magbele, and Ebenezer Canadian Church in Rotumba – had sprung up for the most varied reasons. Some were founded by Sarah Gorham, the “[f]irst Woman Missionary assigned to a Foreign Field by the A. M.E Church”; others resulted from the fight against “Animism and Mohammedanism” or followed a chief ’s invitation.70 As in the Freetown district, a connection to mission schools was standard.71 Bethel, Allen, and Ebenezer even offered classes for boys in agriculture and for girls in sewing and domestic Names of churches and locations vary in AME accounts. Those above are taken from Kinch, West Africa, 16–19; and Berry, Century of Missions, 136–39. 70 Berry, Century of Missions, 138 and 126. 71 Kinch, West Africa, 18–19. 69

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science.72 By 1920, the foundation of Turner Memorial Church in Mahera and Big Robomp Mission in Port Lokkoh expanded the range of mission stations. Each outpost was connected to up to ten “preaching points” that were visited regularly by AME Church itinerant missionaries.73 What gave coherence to the various locations, purposes, and backgrounds of AME Churches in Sierra Leone, and later in the Gold Coast and Nigeria, was the Reverend H. M. Steady and his family. Born in 1859 in the village of Waterloo in Sierra Leone, Steady received extensive training from the Countess Huntington Connection, the Wesleyan Church, and the Church of England. But the church he would dedicate his service to for almost half a century was the newly arrived AME Church. Together with his young wife Hannah Adelicia Beatrice George, who was born in 1869 and converted to Christianity at the age of sixteen, the newly graduated “Dr.” Steady joined the group of Countess Huntington Connection secessionists at the Zion Chapel in Freetown in 1890.74 He was licensed to preach in the same year and ordained a deacon by the famous African American Bishop Henry McNeal Turner in 1891, when the first Annual Conference of Sierra Leone was organized. From 1893 onwards, Steady served as the presiding elder of that same conference, and, as such, guided the church through its most tumultuous years. In 1897, all the Zion Chapel secessionists, except for Dr. Steady, withdrew from the AME Church and took all their property and members to the Wesleyan Church.75 “Standing alone,” he worked arduously to re-establish the AME congregation in Freetown and the protectorate, serving as its superintendent for twelve years and as its representative in the AME General Conference in the United States for twenty years. In 1907 or 1908, Steady resigned from his responsibilities in the Sierra Leone Conference so that his son, Isaac E. C. Steady, could take over. Isaac had just returned from his studies at the AME Wilberforce and Yale Universities.76 Driven by necessity, H. M. Steady started to rebuild the church by training his own ministers. About twenty of them were from Sierra Leone, another twenty came from the Gold Coast, and ten of them were women. Among them were the Reverends E. T. Martyn, J. F. Gerber, J. H. Gooding, J. O. A. Decker, M. S. Lott, G. A. John, and E. J. D. Cole, and his son Isaac.77 All of them took on responsibilities as pastors or schoolteachers, often both at once, and in 1934 alone, three of them were on study leave in the United States. Starting their Ibid., 27. Hannah B. Steady, “Address of Mrs. Hannah B. Steady,” Voice of Missions (October 1920): 13–14. 74 Hannah B. Steady is sometimes referred to as Mrs. H. M. Steady, presumably because these are the initials of her husband. Richard R. Wright Jr., ed., The Encyclopaedia of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia, 1947), 262. 75 Berry, Century of Missions, 137. 76 Wright, Encyclopaedia, 262. 77 Berry, Century of Missions, 149. 72 73

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Figure 3.4. “Rev. George Decker, Rev. J. R. Frederick, Prof. H. M. Steady, Mr. George Boyle, C. S. Smith. [From a photograph taken at Free Town, Sierra Leone.]” Source: Smith, Glimpses, 20.

work in the circuits the AME Church administered in Freetown and less accessible hinterlands, they carried African Methodism further along the West African coast. By the mid-1930s, the Sierra Leone Conference had grown to twenty-nine local missionaries, and first AME Annual Conferences were in the process of formation in Nigeria and the Gold Coast, with the help of twelve local missionaries each. The Gold Coast work, for instance, had been initiated by a Sierra Leonean woman called Sister E. J. Randall in Sekondi, Cape Coast, in 1931, and plans were made to work out the “Dodowa project,” an industrial school near Accra. Responding to the territorial growth, the AME Church General Conference in the United States decided to subsume the conferences of Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast, and Nigeria into one West African district in 1936 and assigned Isaac E. C. Steady as the general superintendent.78 The territorial expansion of the AME mission coincided with the efforts of the growing elite of African Christians, who believed that a common religion could become a major bond to form the nationalities of future West African states. Advocates of indigenous leadership in churches, such as the Yoruba Baptist minister Mojola Agbebi, the Sierra Leone-born Anglican minister Dan“Rev. I. C. Steady Gives Roster of the Works in Sierra Leone, Nigeria and the Gold Coast,” Voice of Missions (November 1934): 10; “Review of Mission Work in Nigeria and the Gold Coast in West Africa,” Voice of Missions (February 1935): 7; and I. Chiakazia Steady, “West African Notes,” Voice of Missions (May 1936): 9. 78

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deson Crowther, and the head of the African Church of Nigeria J. K. Coker, set up their congregations as the prototype of “multi-ethnic organization[s].” As such, these churches played an important role in opposing the dominance of European missions in their respective areas as well as in unifying Africans across the tribal boundaries that indirect-rule policies imposed.79 Steady’s African Methodist congregation, consisting of Mende in the protectorate, and creoles and the Kru in Freetown alone, began to become just this kind of multiethnic organization. He, too, was able to use what these disparate ethnicities had in common to pursue growth in multiple directions and in various spheres of operation. By extending the church’s purpose well past conversion, Steady’s workers were acknowledged by the home church as pushing the mission’s boundaries deeply into their respective homes. In this way, the AME mission’s expansive dynamic entailed constructing a community that was not powered by resistance to Western missions and colonial rule alone.80 Reverend H. M. Steady and Colonial Education

Favoring the aim of building up a Christian society, missionaries often tried to transform people’s ways of life more radically than colonial officials did.81 Their most important means for this was education, which was used by foreign and local staff alike. Steady was also familiar with the argument that schools were necessary to minister the “welfare of man’s soul,” because literacy increased “the effectiveness of the Christ Cause [that missionaries] wished to convey.”82 He himself had been trained in several British mission schools and had felt the Africans’ urge for churches and education since he started to preach “in the open air, amidst taunting and jearing [sic]” in the church’s natal days around 1900.83 In the decade following the schism of 1897, when all AME facilities were lost to the Wesleyan Church, Steady made fundraising for the erection of proper church and school buildings the priority of his career. Four AME Churches in Sierra Leone were turned into “substantial and commodious building[s],” made of wood and stone, with seating capacities for up to nine hundred people. To this end, Steady gathered donations from the WPMMS and a variety of local sources. As Emily C. Kinch remarked not without astonishment, next to “friends and well-wishers,” money poured in from “unexpected quarters”; even J. B. Webster, “African Political Activity in British West Africa, 1900–1940,” in History of West Africa, Vol. 2, ed. J.F.A. Ajayi and Michael Crowder (London, 1976), 643. 80 Coit, Report, 1932, 13–14. 81 A. J. Christopher, Colonial Africa (London, 1984), 83. 82 Berry, Century of Missions, 119. 83 H. M. Steady to W. W. Beckett, March 22, 1922. SCRBC, AME CR, box 42, folder “Corr. Steady, H. M.; Steady, I. E. C.; Steady, Grace, 1922.” 79

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those who “once manifested strong opposition to [Steady’s] cause” now “readily came to its relief.”84 Missionary Secretary Llewellyn L. Berry too noticed the unexpected stream of income that materialized in Sierra Leone. The “compulsory curtailing of expenses by the Home Board,” his explanation ran, seemed to result in “stimulating self-support.” Appreciating the development, Berry praised the ardent struggle of missionaries and their communities in West Africa to “find ways of raising funds” as a sign that their work had self-help at its core and financial independence from the home church as its result.85 The renovation of existing mission schools and churches was followed by the founding of the AME Seminary for Boys in Freetown in 1908. A theological institute “to train men for our Ministry,” it was the first secondary school the AME Church established there. Although the first class had only three boys, the work of the seminary soon paid off. Under the guidance of G. A. John, one of Steady’s first students, it reported a satisfactory numerical and financial increase over the decades following its founding. The graduates, in turn, supplied the local church with more pastors and teachers and raised the level of education for some to study at American universities.86 Nonetheless, Steady was concerned that “bearing the rentage [sic] of the building … will cripple its onward march.”87 Between 1921 and 1924, he prompted all missionaries receiving stipends from the missionary department to join him in the “self-sacrificing” effort to purchase the school and the grounds on which it was built.88 After all, as Emily C. Kinch would later note, the value Steady brought to the church by helping it possess buildings of its own grew much higher than their actual cost. The new property was said to be a “testimony to [his] love and fidelity” to the AME Church, a source of “encouragement to the pastors and members,” and a material asset that even unconverted chiefs could appreciate.89 “Few as we are,” Steady proudly concluded in his report for the year 1920, “we nevertheless occupy no small place in the spiritual life and atmosphere of the Colony and Protectorate.”90 Only one year after this report, in 1921, Steady fortified the congregation he had helped to establish by founding an AME Girls’ Industrial and Literary School, also known as the Girls’ Educational and Industrial Institute, in Freetown. With his daughter-in-law Grace B. Steady and later his wife Hannah B. Steady as principals, the AME Girls’ School at first rounded out the Steady Kinch, West Africa, 16 and 17; for financial statistics see Berry, Century of Missions, 116–17. Berry, Century of Missions, 117. 86 “A. M. E. Mission in Sierra Leone, West Africa,” Voice of Missions (July 1939): 10; and “Rev. I. C. Steady Gives Roster,” 9–10. 87 “Presiding Elder’s Report for the Year Ended January 7, 1920, Sierra Leone Conference, A. M. E. Church,” Voice of Missions (April 1920): 13. 88 Berry, Century of Missions, 125. 89 Kinch, West Africa, 16–19. 90 “Presiding Elder’s Report,” 12. 84 85

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family’s presence. Founded in the same year as Bishop W. Sampson Brooks’s Monrovia College and Industrial Training Institute, the “nucleus of a Tuskegee Institute” in Liberia, the school also added substance to the industrial character that distinguished AME institutions of higher education all across Africa during the interwar years.91 Most importantly, however, the AME Girls’ School gave Steady’s enterprise a new direction. As Freetown’s only school focusing on the training of women in sewing, cooking, and laundry work, it carried African Methodist practices into a sphere of indirect-rule politics, in which female emancipation at that time was meant to tie in with women’s subjection.92 That the Steadys made inroads into these uneven and ambiguously overlapping domains was indicated by the unexpected critique and support they summoned. While in line with AME policies of education, H. M. Steady’s initiative was questioned by the home church regarding both its aim and effects. As Emily C. Kinch intimated in 1917, it was difficult to determine whether such schools would transform the lives and homes of their students.93 Furthermore, it seemed that if they succeeded in transforming these homes, they would incur higher expenses for the home church. As Bishop Edward J. Howard noted during his assignment to West Africa from 1936 to 1940, signs that Africans were changing their daily habits correlated with a “material response.” They requested, for instance, instruments such as pianos, harmoniums, and organs, which indicated that music began to play a role in their church life as well as in private and public entertainment. Others asked to be supplied with “modern cooking utensils,” typewriters, mimeographing machines, carbon paper, chalk, blackboards, maps, writing pads, composition books for courses in business training, and beauty parlor gear, thus expressing an urge for transformation that ranged from changing diets to styling. The demand for such “modern western facilities,” Howard argued, was a measurable but overly expensive intimation of how “wholesome” Africans reacted to the mission’s teachings.94 For Steady, who also communicated such needs to the home church in his role as superintendent, the demands he raised on behalf of the AME Girls’ School would threaten his reputation. Not only did the church deny funding the project. More severe was that Steady’s local superior, Bishop W. Sampson Brooks 91 Smith, History, 337; for AME involvement in building similar schools at the Gold Coast and in Nigeria, see “The Story of a High School in West Africa,” Voice of Missions (December 1931): 15–16. 92 Freetown was the sole center of higher education for West Africans until the opening of Achimota College in Accra in 1927. See the chapters “Gold Coast” and “Sierra Leone” in H. G. A. Hughes, Chronology of Education in British Africa (Afonwen, 1992). 93 Kinch, West Africa, 27. 94 Qtd. in Berry, Century of Missions, 127–28; for a list of requested items, see “Wanted,” Voice of Missions (July 1939): 12; and “A Macedonian Cry: Issued by Bishop E. J. Howard, Presiding Bishop of the 14th Episcopal District for His Great and Needy Work in West Africa,” Voice of Missions (October 1938): 7.

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– himself recognized as “one of the leading financiers of the church” and the most “tireless and earnest worker … ever known” – discredited Steady as “drunk after money” and “robbing many of the poor missionaries that he has educated.”95 With its transatlantic connections severely diminished, the AME Girls’ School was shaped primarily by the ties, topics, and needs Steady tapped on the ground. There, the opening of the school was at first a powerful statement in the growing debate about women’s status in colonial African society.96 The “future mother of the race,” commentators argued, “cannot live on book-learning alone.” Nor was she supposed to “compete with men,” which was considered an “un-African” effect of education. Instead, industrial education was seen as a means to foster women’s “domestic, industrial and eugenic behavior.” This idea comprised developing their practical knowledge of motherhood, their “home instinct,” and their ability to preserve food, clothes, health, money, as well as to “convert … the house into a home,” observers noted.97 In addition, the debate emphasized the special importance of women for community building.98 Concerns about fixing women in the role of mothers and housekeepers were overlaid with anxieties about female emancipation.99 With women having just entered into the urban public sphere, an author named “Creole-Boy” complained, “all our girls know is to dress like butterflies, and flutter about the streets of Freetown. What interests them most is Dancing and Gossiping.” The notion that African women were “led astray by Rakes and Liberties” installed “Afro-American ladies” as a counter model of femininity. Their community service, regulated sexuality, and sense of domesticity, he argued, made them the ideal guides for African “girls” on their way to becoming “good wives.”100 Finally, that Mrs. Casely Hayford, the wife of the well-known leader of the NCBWA, failed at that time to establish a similar school in cooperation with the UNIA, added to the AME Girls’ School’s popularity.101 After opening, the school increased enrollment from ten to one hundred students in the first year of operation and sustained its rapid success by offerRichard R. Wright Jr., Who’s Who in the General Conference, 1924 (Philadelphia, 1924), 14; M. B. McCullough to R. R. Downs, July 9, 1923. Folder “Corr. M, 1923”; and W. S. Brooks to W. W. Beckett, July 19, 1923. Folder “Corr. W. S. Brooks, 1923.” Both SCRBC, AME CR, box 42. 96 “Our Girls! Their Educational Problem: Which Is Best? An Education Really Adapted to Their Needs or A Higher Literary Education?” Sierra Leone Weekly News, December 12, 1925, 13. 97 “The Departure of Mrs. Casely Hayford and Miss Kathleen Easmon for the United States,” Sierra Leone Weekly News, July 3, 1920, 9, emphasis original. 98 “At Headquarters,” Gold Coast Leader, January 26, 1918, 3–4. 99 Jeater, “British Empire and African Women,” 232. 100 Creole-Boy, “Wanted! A Home for Training Prospective Mothers,” Sierra Leone Weekly News, June 5, 1926, 13 and 4. 101 “The Proposed Technical and Industrial School for Girls,” Sierra Leone Weekly News, June 12, 1920, 5. 95

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ing solutions to the local situation. The first practical step was remodeling the facilities, housed in a rented private building, to be able to accommodate the growing student body. Picking up on the debate about African women’s roles, Isaac E. C. Steady declared to the local press shortly after that the development of detailed schemes regarding “local conditions and production,” as well as the appointment of an African American principal were to follow. Perhaps to indicate that his missionary self-fashioning obeyed the local demands, he signed the piece with “yours for the industrial advancement of African girls” instead of the usual “yours for the redemption of Africa.”102 While the appointment of African American women did not materialize, the home church at least agreed to support the principal with a stipend paid by the WPMMS. The policy helped to bring African women with prestigious degrees from American universities into the school’s highest office. Among them were Steady’s wife Hannah, his daughter-in-law Grace, the Liberian Wilberforce University graduate Amanda P. Mason, who served the school for almost ten years before marrying Alfred B. Xuma in 1931, and the Sierra Leonean Constance Horton, a Columbia University graduate and fellow of the Phelps-Stokes Fund study tour through industrial schools in the U. S. South.103 With these features, the school gained a distinguished reputation that even belied some of its shortcomings. It was seen as a commodious house with an “American Negro Young Lady” as its principal and a student body “educated in modern lines.”104 Colonial and other “eye-witnesses” agreed that the schoolgirls would provide an “incentive to other girls to improve their elocution and action.” Rumor also had it that “excellent” performances by musical groups augmented the school’s income when their admirers donated “decent amounts” of money to it.105 The AME Girls’ School’s choir, for example, won the Fourth Annual Singing Competition inaugurated by Arnold Hodson, the governor of Sierra Leone, in 1935.106 Meanwhile, local communities also began to praise the AME Girls’ School’s “very splendid standing in the educational system” of Sierra Leone.107 This judgment referred to the British education initiative that was interwoven with the school’s making and spectacular flourishing. Colonial education began in I. E. C. Steady, “Girls’ Industrial and Literary Institute (A. M. E.): 25 Oxford Street, Freetown,” Sierra Leone Weekly News, November 18, 1922, 5. 103 “Liberia and Sierra Leone Hold Memorial Services,” Voice of Missions (September 1934): 11; and Smith, “West Africa as I Saw It,” 7. On the marriage with Alfred B. Xuma, see Berger, “Mother of the Nation,” 548. 104 “The Annie Walsh Memorial School,” Sierra Leone Weekly News, March 10, 1923, 8. 105 By an Eye Witness, “The Girls’ Industrial and Literary Institute,” Sierra Leone Weekly News, December 26, 1925, 13. 106 “The A. M. E. Girls’ Industrial School, Freetown, Sierra Leone, Successful in Singing Competition,” Voice of Missions (March 1935): 11. 107 Smith, “West Africa as I Saw It,” 6. 102

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Sierra Leone most conspicuously in 1911, when the local administration appointed an Education Committee based on Education Ordinance No. 13. The initiative was part of the broad shift in colonial rule from direct to indirect forms of government and served specifically to bring mission schools under colonial control. To this end, the ordinance of 1911 issued rules pertaining to the examination of schools regarding their curricula and schedules, staff, the payment of grants, attendance, registration, and the condition of school buildings. The inspection of schools, “with or without notice,” constituted a core instrument of the new policy. It prompted missions to anticipate their exposure to the committee’s imperial gaze. Another incentive to conform to colonial expectations was the availability of government grants for missionary educators if the inspector so recommended. Colonial funding was premised on the number of students receiving regular instruction, the condition of the facilities, and, most importantly, on their curricula. To be eligible for grants, schools had to offer classes in “obedience to authority,” arithmetic, agriculture, English, hygiene and sanitation, industrial work, and sewing for both sexes.108 By means of inspection and financial support, the British aimed to utilize existing educational institutions to influence Africans’ daily lives. This technology of indirect rule targeted the whole subject population and thus complemented the policy of noninterference with native customs that served to maintain ethnic divides. A “helpful education among the masses,” colonial officials argued, was marked by curricula that did not interfere with students’ “home duties and field occupation” and sparked their “interest in their children’s progress.”109 Defined as such, colonial education naturalized categories of labor and family care that were at the core of agricultural capitalism while discouraging Africans from subverting the order colonizers constructed as natural. Nonetheless, the functioning of colonial school systems presupposed colonial subjects who wished to attend them. Africans had to be instilled with a desire to transform themselves in the directions colonizers intended, such as increasing their labor efficiency to support their families and children because they viewed such a transformation as beneficial to their own moral, social, and economic advancement.110 When British inspectors visited AME schools in the protectorate for the first time in 1914, they applauded the values instilled in Steady’s schools and Rules Made Under the Provision of Section 5 of the Education Ordinance No. 13 of 1911, 1913. Box 473, E/131, iv; and Grants to Schools in the Protectorate, 1914. Box 474, E/62/1913. Both NASL. 109 Annual Report of the Protectorate Education for the Year 1915. Box 476, E/22/16; and Circular no. 4/1929: Scheme for Education in the Protectorate Referring to Day Schools by H. S. Keigwin, 1929. Box 478, E/8/29. Both NASL. 110 On the colonial technology of instilling colonial subjects with a desire to transform themselves in predetermined directions, see Scott, “Colonial Governmentality.” 108

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through his focus on industrial education. According to the colonial report, the Bethel Mission at Mange provided “excellent” to “very good” instruction in the required subjects of obedience to authority, arithmetic, hygiene, and sewing. In addition, the inspector noted that Bethel was one of the few schools that succeeded in conveying “the supreme importance and dignity of Agriculture” and thus delivered a crucial service in this “purely agricultural country.” Although much of the appeal Bethel could create for Africans to engage in agricultural labor was due its instructors being black and connected to a black American church, the reports did not address this connection. However, the fact that next to Bethel, two AME mission schools in the protectorate were awarded government grants based on their similar curricula may indicate that the British were not ignorant of the matter, either. To be sure, such grants allowed the AME Africa mission to stake out its place among the European and American mission schools that were funded by their home churches at levels much greater than the AME Church could afford.111 Accepting colonial grants did more than just bring AME schools into the orbit of colonial education in the following decades. In 1917, three years after the first inspection of AME facilities, the Sierra Leone government rewarded Steady for his efforts to build “secondary schools and a great many schools in the Protectorate” with an appointment to its Education Committee.112 As a member of the colonial administration, Steady did not subject the mission to colonial directives. Rather, he elevated its standing from an object of colonial inspection to a model of colonial education. By advising the British in educational matters, Steady seized upon an opportunity to bring self-help to bear within and by means of imperial power structures, in addition to utilizing them to compensate for underfunding. The AME Girls’ School was one result of making this connection. With its focus on females, it abolished the African American traditions of training in outdoor work and the coeducation of the sexes, imparting instead directions to Tuskegeeism that were specific to its colonial field of application. Steady’s participation in developing standards for women’s education in the colonial system preceded the founding of the AME Girls’ School. In 1917, he attended, in his new role as a member of the Education Committee, a conference its director convened with representatives of missionary societies and colonial officials. All agreed that domestic science was a much “needed” subject, and that it should be the focus of female education. The conference then went on to define the subject as subdivided into keeping the house clean/ homemaking, cooking, laundry work, and sewing, mending, and darning. In Appendix: Protectorate Education Statistics, Report on the Non-Government Schools in the Protectorate for Year Ending December 1913. NASL, box 474, E/33/14, 7. 112 Director of Education to the Honourable Colonial Secretary, re: Appointments of E. M. Rush and Rev. H. M. Steady on the Education Committee, Nov. 14, 1916. NASL, box 476, E/90/16. 111

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addition, the group agreed that domestic science was to include hygiene, care of the children, and motherhood as “secondary classes.”113 Women’s life occupation was thus imagined as flowing from housewife to mother. According to a confidential government report, assigning women this new “role” was seen as essential to exercising colonial control. “There is a great possibility,” the report argued, “that any system of … education capable of influencing and moulding the girlhood …, is likely the soonest to substantially influence the general population.”114 Perhaps because Steady attended the conference and had a clear sense that colonial authorities aimed to use African women as a means of total colonial penetration, he was able to turn the AME Girls’ School into a prestigious asset in the system of colonial education. Since the school opened in 1921, then headed by Steady’s daughter-in-law Grace B. Steady, its principals were prepared for the inspections. Over the years the reports noted some deficiencies, such as a shortage of textbooks and maps, or of classes in history, geography, and “nature study” to prepare the “biological aspect of Hygiene.”115 However, as Steady wrote to the home church, the school achieved “satisfactory results especially in the Industrial Arts and Sciences.”116 According to the inspectors, the success of industrial classes was measureable in the quality of their products. In sewing “designs show a decided improvement in simplicity and color harmony,” K. B. Cope, supervisor of infant and female education, noted in 1930. Cooking, cake mixtures, pastries, and bread were given high marks, too, second only to the “excellent” jellies and preserves. Overall, the inspector found the “orderly arrangement, marked cleanliness and keen interest on the part of the girls” to be “outstanding features.” Notwithstanding minor deficits, the report concluded, the school was “fulfilling a very useful purpose in encouraging girls to take a greater interest in Domestic Work, and is well worthy of support from the public funds.”117 Within the AME Church, the AME Girls’ School’s continuous success was attributed largely to Amanda P. Mason. As the home church eventually admitted, in her ten years as principal she had reached “the limit of success within its limitations,” meaning the home church’s refusal to provide funds. Also, the Steady family’s reputation slowly recovered from being supposed Proceedings of the Conference on Female Education Held at Government House on the 29th September 1917. NASL, box 477, E/89. 114 Memorandum of a Scheme for the Introduction of English Elementary Education into the Protectorate of Sierra Leone, 1914. NASL, box 682 (1), C/261, 3. 115 “Report on the A. M. E. Girls’ Industrial and Literary School, December 1930,” Voice of Missions (June 1931): 12–13. 116 I. E. C. Steady to W. W. Beckett, September 26, 1922. Folder “Corr. Steady, 1922”; and I. E. C. Steady to W. W. Beckett, December 24, 1923. Folder “Corr. Steady, 1923.” Both SCRBC, AME CR, box 42. 117 “Report on the A. M. E. Girls’ Industrial and Literary School,” 12–13. 113

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“money-seekers” to being “missionary builder[s]” along the lines of Bishop W. Sampson Brooks.118 Alongside the praise Mason won for her work, Isaac E. C. Steady received credit for giving up his promising career in the ministry in the United States in favor of returning to the “illy paid work at his home.” Ultimately, also his father, H. M. Steady, was acknowledged as a champion of self-support: “With the limited means at his disposal, his administration has been in keeping with his name, not brilliant but consistently decent and of such calibre as to win the regard of all denominations working there.” Finally, the idea of providing the AME Girls’ School with appropriately decent facilities in a nice building was discussed as “a fitting climax upon the many faithful years” of Steady’s service.119 Both Steady’s appointment to the Education Committee and British involvement in various AME schools illustrate the influence that local AME missionaries exerted in the political domain. The nature of this influence, as the late approval of Steady’s work by the home church showed, was neither determined by black solidarity nor transatlantic connections. In cooperating with the colonial educational system, Steady achieved a measure of independence in choosing means to help his church. Thus, he could be seen as one of the most logical champions of his African and African American fellows even as he served the colonial government. Part of the confluence related to the contemporary debates about how to shape a new Africa by means of Tuskegeeism. As opposed to pan-Africanist and later Garveyist thought, the new African Tuskegeeism was grounded in the idea that social and spiritual development were not white but universal human concepts. By definition, then, pushing African development along these lines represented a powerful denial of white monopoly. Within this view, AME missionaries’ activities could be framed as facilitating Africans’ self-realization on the human path they were preordained to follow – instead of destroying or transforming their lifestyles to the advantage of the colonizers.120 Concomitantly, AME missionaries reinforced the colonial concept of the native to the extent that their projects implied a need for African development. African progress was to be achieved with the help of a new class of educated Africans, and by extension, African Americans. This notion was not trivial. It could entail an analogy to the apologetics of Africans’ enslavement as a part of God’s providential design, thus casting colonialism as a necessary hardship rather than a moral wrong. However, AME missionaries’ harnessing of colonialism was not equivalent to acting on behalf of a Western civilizing force. They could take sides with the colonizers, and the moment they did, they underscored their stated commitment to complete self-deter118 119 120

J. F. B. Coleman, “A Bishop’s Monument,” Voice of Missions (November 1934): 5. Dovie King Clark, “Missionary Echoes: Amanda Mason,” Voice of Missions (June 1931): 11. Cf. Campbell, Songs, 82–83.

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mination, realized by forgoing racial separation with the help of allies on both sides of the colonial divide. 9.4. The Outlook of the Afro-colonial Liaison

The foregoing history of the Steady family allowed us to zoom in on the intricate paths AME missionaries followed, the alliances they forged, and the difficulties and conflicts they encountered when building the African AME Church in Sierra Leone. In the total set-up of the AME Church, the Steady family was, of course, one of hundreds who navigated similar colonial and Afro-Atlantic relations of power and solidarity. While these stories cannot be presented in detail, the following paragraphs, drawing on the example of the Steadys, will point to some general issues that characterized AME missionary work beyond Sierra Leone. First of all, the Steadys’ case shows that connections among the African AME missionaries in West and South Africa were rather weak. Apart from Amanda P. Mason, who continued the community-building she had led in Sierra Leone in South Africa after her marriage to ANC President Alfred B. Xuma in the early 1930s, few local missionaries knew their colleagues from different districts or what they were doing.121 It is safe to assume that some of them met occasionally in the United States if they were chosen to attend AME Church conferences as delegates of the African districts, as Steady did several times between 1908 and 1928.122 Even if the Steadys’ example tells little about inner-African connections, it illustrates patterns that concerned West Africans and South African congregation alike. Similar to Steady’s Zion Chapel in Freetown, the South African AME Church was born out of indigenous Christians’ responses to the color line within European mission churches and sustained throughout difficult periods, including the Anglo-Boer War, imperial reconstruction, the consolidation of the Union of South Africa, and the First World War. Perhaps most similar to Steady’s story was that of Mangena Maake Mokone (1851–1931), the founder and leader of the amalgamation between the Ethiopian Church and the AME Church. Mokone had worked at a sugar plantation in Pietermaritzburg, Natal, until his education had the same effect on him “that cold water has to a thirsty person.” After several years of theological studies, he became a preacher and member of the Wesleyan Methodist Church in Pietermaritzburg. He seceded from this group in 1892, aiming to “form a religious community” comprised, During the period covered in this study, there were two AME bishops, William H. Heard and Charles S. Smith, appointed to both West and South Africa. Missionary inspectors visited both fields as a rule. 122 Wright, Encyclopaedia, 262. 121

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managed, and maintained by Africans alone.123 The episode of Afro-Atlantic intertwinement that followed is well documented in James T. Campbell’s Songs of Zion (1995).124 The South African AME Church’s geographical expansion reflected its appeal to local subject people and concentrated along the paths of those who were “anxious to assist” the church in spreading the gospel among them.125 A good example of such zeal to push the work into new fields was Reverend Hanock Msokera Phiri. The grandson of Chief Mwase Kasungu in Nyasaland, and a mission-educated Christian, Phiri was so enthused to discover the existence of Tuskegee and other African American institutions of higher education in the newspapers that he seized the first available opportunity to become an African Methodist. Together with his nephew, Hastings K. Banda, later the Malawian president, he met William T. Vernon, the acting resident bishop of the South African district, at the AME Church’s Annual Conference in Bloemfontein in 1923. Promises were made to educate Banda in the United States and to send Phiri back to Nyasaland to operate the AME Church there. Both materialized. According to AME reports, colonial officials were at first puzzled about Phiri’s application to open a “native controlled mission,” although they gave in.126 Phiri thus opened the field that was most remote from Cape Town, Johannesburg, and Pretoria, the contemporary centers of AME Church congregations. Yet his school was not a singlehanded achievement. It took place as Nyasaland inaugurated its Education Department, and thus benefited from the same Africa-wide colonial education initiative that broke fresh ground for both Africans’ colonial subjection and African Methodist self-determination in West Africa. By the early 1920s, AME-related initiatives like Phiri’s had sprouted from the docks of Cape Town to north of the Zambesi and from Freetown to Yoruba Land and Calabar. They all required individuals of Steady’s stamp, dedicated to building AME institutions at all costs and, ideally, at the expense of the local education administration.127 As with Steady’s Zion Chapel, schisms within the church membership were a usual business. As Jonathan M. Mokone, the son of founder of the Ethiopian Church, tellingly put it, they often exceeded “the great divisions of the darker race known as Colored and Native” that the South African government had imposed, The “Colored” were differentiated according to “fairness of skin and Qtd. in Skota, ed., African Who’s Who, 158. For the church’s own accounts, see Josephus R. Coan, Flying Sparks: The Genesis of African Methodism in South Africa (Nashville, 1987), 125–34; and Coan, “Expansion of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.” 125 E. H. Coit to H. M. Phiri, January 20, 1926. SCRBC, AME CR, box 43, folder “Corr. Parks H. B., 1926.” 126 Richard R. Wright, “Education in South Africa,” Voice of Missions (May 1937): 5–6. 127 Cf. “Review of Mission Work,” 7. 123 124

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texture of hair” and other social and sectional disparities, he explained. Among the tribes grouped as “Natives,” the largest one was the Basuto, comprising, however, in itself again several independent and antagonistic groups. Within the Xhosa and the Zulu there were similar divisions and conflicts. Perhaps with a wink, Mokone demonstrated the problem by explaining how even the announcement of a hymn was a delicate political challenge: “to quell the turbulent spirit,” he stated, “one must say we will sing Hymn No…, and in Sesute Hymn No…, and in Sinosa, Hymn No….” and so on.128 The de facto form of governance in indirect-rule Africa, tribal division existed within the church alongside a whole stratum of people who were embedded in the Atlantic world of British politics and African education via the AME Church. As Isaac E. C. Steady proudly declared in 1938, perhaps remembering his father’s appointment to the Education Committee two decades earlier, he had been nominated to be an unofficial member of the Sierra Leone legislature by the governor. “His Majesty King George VI,” he added, “confirmed the appointment Nov. 15.”129 Also Charlotte Manye Maxeke, the first South African student enrolled at Wilberforce, who returned from the United States in 1901, never failed to assert her loyalty to Queen Victoria.130 Others like John A. Gregg, an African American who went back to South Africa as a resident bishop in 1924, made it onto the guest list of the official reception of the Prince of Wales in Cape Town.131 Not hesitating to pursue multiple connections, the majority of those comprising the Afro-Atlantic educational traffic graduated from Wilberforce University, Ohio, partly with AME Church stipends. In the minds of Africans, such training abroad could enhance their social mobility to an extent that allowed them to go beyond the ceiling of ministerial and teaching careers that was usual for African mission school graduates. Like Phiri, Banda was utterly fascinated with the AME Church as an institution that provided higher education. “The school,” Banda wrote to Missionary Secretary E. H. Coit during a sojourn in the United States, “was the backbone of the Church in Central Africa.”132 Banda’s example also represents the sometimes rigid discipline at European mission schools, which, coupled with limited opportunities for higher education in Nyasaland and accentuated by wartime conditions, may have im-

J. M. Mokone, “Aspects of Life in South Africa,” Voice of Missions (May 1937): 9. I. E. C. Steady to Walter F. Walker, December 24, 1938. SCRBC, AME CR, box 35, folder “Corr. S, 1938.” 130 Campbell, Songs, 287. 131 John A. Gregg to L. L. Berry, March 5, 1941. SCRBC, AME CR, box 44, folder “Misc., Corr., Minutes, Reports, South Africa, Cuba, US.” 132 Hastings K. Banda to E. H. Coit, March 22, 1927. SCRBC, AME CR, box 43, folder “Corr. A-B, 1927.” 128 129

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pelled many to enter the AME Church or its educational exchange programs.133 Banda himself had been expelled from the school system of the Livingstonia Mission of the United Free Church of Scotland in the Kasugun district and went to Britain to complete his training as a physician. Like Alfred B. Xuma, he was supposed to return to oversee an AME Church health clinic in South Africa, but World War II stranded him in Britain.134 The bulk of those who managed to get educated in the United States took on ministerial and teaching appointments, if they returned to Africa. Among the Wilberforce contingent alone, consisting for the most part of the offspring of the early secessionists, a number of people, including Henry Msikinya, Marshall Maxeke, James and Harsant Tantsi, Edward Magaya, and Jonathan M. Mokone, devoted their lives to African education. Charlotte Manye and her husband Marshall Maxeke, for instance, opened a series of schools in northern Transvaal, on the East Rand and the Transkei.135 By 1932, the group of Wilberforce exchange students peaked with twelve South Africans, among them the Maxekes’ son Edward Clarke, Osborne and Pearl Ntsiko, and Eva Morake. Morake later joined Msikinya, the Tantsi brothers, the Maxekes and Magaya in supporting Francis Herman Gow, the principal of the AME Church’s South African flagship school, the Wilberforce Literary and Industrial Institute south of Johannesburg.136 African American missionaries also spoke of the high demand for education in the southern African fields. As Richard R. Wright Jr., AME bishop of South Africa from 1936 to 1940, observed, “education occupies a far larger part of a minister’s time than it is possible for the average American to imagine.” As in West Africa, almost every mission station or church had an elementary school attached to it, and each of them were usually caught in the struggle of trying to meet the standards imposed by respective colonial governments in order to obtain grants. In the late 1930s, about forty out of sixty-five total AME schools received government funding. These included illustrious ones, such as the Bethel Institute in Cape Town, with almost six hundred students and eight teachers paid with government funds. Less fortunate was the Emily Vernon Institute in Basutoland, one out of fifteen schools in that country that remained entirely unrecognized by the government.137 A similar situation was to be found in Southern Rhodesia, where the church was shut out in the early 1920s after the Presiding Elder, Reverend Z. C. Mtshwelo, had been deported from the province. Yet, after Mtshwelo made a trip to Salisbury and had a “personal 133 134 135 136 137

Macdonald, “Reverend Hanock Msokera Phiri,” 78. Campbell, Songs, 237. For a biographical account of Charlotte Manye Maxeke, see Xuma, Charlotte Manye. Coit, Report, 1932, 14. Wright, “Education,” 6.

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interview” with the commissioner of Native Affairs and the colonial secretary, which restored the government’s confidence in him, the church was readmitted to Rhodesia. As John A. Gregg remembered, Mtshwelo’s diplomatic skills made him an “open door” to the Native Commission of the Cape Colony, headed by Major Herbst and Dr. T. C. Loram, who received Mtshwelo with honor “everywhere he went” and bestowed “many favors” on the church.138 Even a brief sketch of the South African field reveals the lines along which its affairs converged with those of the Steadys. The African Methodist terrain of civilizing, industrializing, and Christianizing the African required individual zeal, negotiating ethnic diversity within the AME Church, securing its favorable recognition by the colonial government, and emphasizing education as a mission and a personal career option – to be pursued in the United States or the African AME Church.139 In all fields, this mission was powerfully shaped by the local conditions: independent African church movements and the colonial repression thereof. But, more precisely, it was the church’s emancipatory heritage that defined the basis of its African colonial accommodation. As an independent black institution of racial uplift that had been crucial for guiding slaves to citizenship in the United States, it remained dedicated to enabling blacks to build self-governed institutions. In colonial Africa, this longstanding priority in emancipatory projects tended to channel the confusion of independent church movements into the kind of well-ordered community that colonizers envisioned for their subjects. ◆◆◆ This chapter has shown that the rise of the African AME Church was tightly embedded in local politics of rule and emancipation, whenever they related to independent African church movements. In the postwar period, especially, when the consolidation of indirect-rule systems coincided with the search for a new Africa, the AME Church moved into a position where these two dynamics could be effectively connected. The productivity of the convergence was revealed in proposals of a new African Tuskegeeism, despite Garvey offered plans of liberation and despite Tuskegee’s infamous reputation as serving the white man’s purpose. The example of the Steady family in West Africa, too, has demonstrated that AME missionaries did not have to take sides with either British rule or black independence. Their influence in the political domain was equivocal because they could work with and in the colonial administration in order to institutionalize Africans’ self-help, at times even without the home John A. Gregg to L. L. Berry, March 5, 1941. SCRBC, AME CR, box 44, folder “Misc., Corr., Minutes, Reports, South Africa, Cuba, US.” 139 Cf. Brooks, “Africa,” 90. 138

Moving into the Colonial System

church’s support. The AME missionaries’ ability to build such institutions, consequently, could not grow from any political predetermination. It was lodged in their ardent attempt to allow the mission to function, even if this functionality in the colonial world was “uncertain in its contemporary impact, and ambiguous in its historical implications.”140 To conclude, we may consider how the cultural sphere addressed in Chapter 8 and the political sphere addressed in this chapter can be put into dialogue with each other. In each sphere, African Americans and Africans recoded colonial power structures as African Methodist, so that utilizing these structures seemed to locals like fair means to transform themselves. That the AME Church’s industrializing, civilizing, and Christianizing was hardly seen as an alien intervention gave it enormous force over its disciples. By instilling a desire in their adherents to transform their everyday lives and institutions, AME missions became integral to the different domains of the colonial process. This integration, however, was due neither to collaborating with nor fighting against British colonialism. It concerned, rather, the AME mission’s generic capability to interlock their culturally decisive and political indeterminate projects with the inconsistencies of the contemporary colonial regime. Through its African members the mission could utilize at once indirect-rule tribalism and the ambition of Africans to build a new African civilization that was only just defined in the making. African American missionaries, by extension, did not aim to help Africans overthrow colonial rule, but “to live better, healthier and happier.”141 Constructed as nonpolitical, this aim involved its own rubrics of emancipation, such as native funds, beauty, leisure, colonial careers, and human dignity. Like the African Methodist mission itself, this emancipation did not have a set agenda. It was about being able to take an available path. “[T]he Negro has advanced,” as Missionary Secretary Llewellyn L. Berry put it, “in a fan-shaped formation of self-help and conquest.”142

140 141 142

309.

Cf. Comaroff and Comaroff, “Christianity and Colonialism,” 11. “Reception to Bishop W. W. Beckett,” 3. Berry, “What Negroes Are Doing for Negroes,” International Review of Missions (June 1936):

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10. Afro-colonial Encounters: An Entangled History of African Colonization and African American Emancipation

10.1. Pan-Africanism, the Absence of Empire, and the Silencing of Africa

I

n this study, I have examined the encounter between African American missionaries and the British Empire in Africa between 1900 and 1939. I have used the self-representations of AME missionaries as a clue to uncovering a series of unexpected networks and relations between African Americans and the colonized continent. I have argued that the work of AME missionaries in Africa was defined by their engagement with representations others made of them as descendants of the ‘dark continent,’ as ‘American Negroes,’ and as ‘native’ Africans. Their efforts coincided with the period in which African Americans’ loud demand for pan-African unity met with British attempts to exclude African Americans from colonial territory altogether. At the beginning of this study, I pointed out that my reconstruction of the paths AME missionaries took on the imperial stage relates to three central problems that characterize the historiography on African American relations with Africa. One is the emphasis on pan-Africanism that prevails especially in the historiography on African American missionaries in Africa. Another is the absence of empire in U. S. history, which has been addressed by scholars with little regard for how this absence plays out in African American history.1 The last point is the critique raised by postcolonial scholars who argue that Gilroy’s concept of the black Atlantic has silenced Africa with its predominant focus on African American voices.2 In what follows, I will summarize and re-examine my findings in light of these three problems and then look briefly at how AME 1 2

One example is Kaplan, “Left Alone.” See, for instance, Chrisman, “Du Bois in Transnational Perspective.”

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missions developed in the era of decolonization. I will conclude with suggestions on how an entangled history of black emancipation and African colonization can serve to put African American history in dialogue with postcolonial studies. One key finding in each part of this study has been that AME missionaries in no case simply crossed the Atlantic to a presumably ancestral homeland. Instead, they took three different paths. All were deeply interrelated and intersected, and all interacted with much broader contexts while shaping the entity that came to be called the AME Africa mission. One way for AME personnel to relate to Africa, discussed in Part I, was by traveling and travel writing. None of their writings asserted preexisting images of Africa as a motherland or a dark continent. Rather, AME people circumnavigated the existing specter of Africa images by fashioning themselves as explorers of the human interior. The imperative in black missionary writing was to affirm the originality and authenticity of the traveler’s gaze. AME travelers’ preoccupation with seeing on site was influenced by European travel and exploration literature. However, appropriating the imperial gaze helped AME missionaries to produce a black tradition of knowledge of Africa distinguished by the corrections it offered regarding the existing European literature and indispensable to excavating the grounds for their missionary operation. The second way AME people constructed their relationship to Africa was by envisioning themselves as part of a global ecumenical movement that became dominant in the interwar period. As shown in Part II, AME missionaries conceived of themselves as “God’s last reserve.” The image drew on the theological idea that human variety was God given and that racial and indigenous particulars of Christianity were quintessential prerequisites for mankind to achieve its common social purpose on the inhabited earth. Within this framework, AME people were able to claim qualities for themselves that counterbalanced the predominance of technology and science in the contemporary concept of Western civilization: emotionality, spirituality, and altruistic service. Based on these same qualities, African American missionaries could also relate to Africans without asserting the scientific notion of racial descent. Africans appeared to be, like the American Negro, a reserve in humanity that had not participated in the brutal imperial wars and conquests of the West and therefore showed promise of being able to build an alternative Christian civilization. Finally, the third way for AME people to construct their relationship to Africa was through encountering the ‘native.’ In Part III, I explored AME engagement with this ambiguous colonial category from two different yet complementary perspectives. The first, the African American angle, perceived the native as a social stratum of colonial society and as a group of African workers within the AME Church. In both understandings, the category precluded the unity of African Americans and Africans. Notions of nativity gave African

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Americans the social privileges of the nonnative ruling class and enabled AME Church institutions to enter the political domain of the indirect-rule system. The second perspective was that of the African AME Church. From this angle, African AME workers stood at the threefold crossroads of the emancipatory strategies colonized Africans pursued, the transatlantic traffic of African American role models, and the appropriation of these models in colonial contexts. Local AME people utilized the image of the American Negro to frame the AME Church in Africa as an institution that opened up routes of African emancipation that went beyond the limits the colonial society imposed. These three ways AME missionaries entered ongoing relationships with colonial Africa challenge the pan-African narrative in several ways. All parts of this study show that a crucial condition enabling AME missionaries to move and act in colonial territory was their sharp distinction from the Garvey movement, the prime proponent of pan-African ideology at that time. This distinction was drawn by different institutions in several places. The AME Church Missionary Department in the United States prohibited AME foreign mission staff from overtly aligning with Garveyism in the early 1920s, because it rejected Garvey’s patronizing gestures toward Africa and because it did not want to be seen as antagonizing the white race in colonial settings (Section 4.4). The International Missionary Council further differentiated the AME Church and Garveyism. In its negotiations with the British Colonial Office about the admission of African American missionaries to Africa, it pushed for AME missionaries to be recognized as so-called Tuskegee-type Negroes in binary opposition to Garvey-type Negroes to emphasize their missionary qualities (Section 7.3). Finally, Africans too drew the distinction between AME missions and pan-Africanism. In the African AME Church the idea that American Negroes were prime agitators in the liberation of Africa, as Garvey proposed, raised expectations and criticisms that caused conflicts between local and African American AME staff about the extent to which their mission in Africa was political (Section 8.4). In the public debate, by contrast, African observers often refuted Garvey’s plans as ignorant and impractical and favored AME people who kept a critical distance from African American pan-Africanism when devising visions of a new Africa (Section 9.2). At the same time, it was not only the explicit rejection of Garveyism that drew AME missionaries away from pan-African aspirations. Along with AME self-representations as explorers of human interiors, last reserves, and nonnatives, a set of loosely related dynamics evolved that did not conform to the idea of Africa as the ancient home of the black race. Part of this digression lay in the image of Africa that AME travel accounts constructed. The many details, corrections, and inconsistencies that travelers noticed in Africa complicated the notion that black people could relate to the continent from afar (Chapter 3). A concomitant dynamic challenging the homeland idea started when Af-

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rica travelers changed their concepts of home on the move. In their accounts, they favored gender and family relationships that delegitimized constructions of black masculinity outside of the domestic sphere, including the paternalistic notion of protecting Africa as a motherland (Section 4.1). The missionary ideal of a domesticated black masculinity was institutionalized with the founding of the AME Men’s Missionary League in 1921. The League stressed that male leadership in the missionary profession was defined by taking on traditionally female responsibilities of family care in the house before reaching out to African brothers (Section 4.2). The relocation in 1926 of the AME Church Missionary Department headquarters to Harlem, the black metropolis of the day, further consolidated AME missionaries’ concepts of home. Instead of Africa, their field of labor, the transatlantic AME community found a home in this specific building and was prompted to form networks of communication, support, and representation that centered in Harlem (Section 4.4). Starting in the Atlantic, all of these reconfigurations of home echoed in the United States in inconsistent ways. As homecoming AME missionaries transformed structures as diverse as gender roles, families, religious institutions, and black communities, each drifted away from the pan-African dialectic of homeland and diaspora. The second historiographical issue this study’s findings cast new light on is the absence of empire in African American history. In the introduction, I explained this absence as resulting from an image of colonialism as a negative structure; through a contact perspective, I went beyond this image and reconstructed where African Americans engaged with colonial regimes of power without being oppressed by them. Studying this engagement demonstrates that speaking of empire was more than a combative rhetorical strategy that was in vogue among African American agitators of the interwar period. It reveals, instead, a contingently related set of flows, structures, and practices that connected black Atlantic interactions with the international missionary movement and with the colony-metropole relationships of Europe. AME missionary travel writing, for instance, intersected and interacted with the structures of knowledge that emerged from the European colonial conquest while forming a black Atlantic missionary tradition (Section 3.1). At the same time, the ecumenical movement constructed the South Atlantic as a region in which black missionaries could move as long as they appeared to conform to the newly devised ideal of the American Negro from the South that was welcomed, yet closely monitored by the British colonial power (Chapter 7). On the local level in Africa, as the example of the AME Girls’ Industrial and Literary Institute in Freetown showed, AME missionary institutions could latch on to the colonial educational system and recode colonization schemes as practices of black selfhelp that enabled Africans’ social mobility (Section 9.3). While transforming one another, these contact zones opened up paths to colonial Africa for AME missionaries that could not be taken by pan-Africanists.

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In sum, entering colonial regimes certainly meant that African American missionaries came to be strictly controlled by colonial and missionary authorities, and at times this control diminished their numbers and slowed down their transatlantic passage, as much scholarship has shown. Nonetheless, we would neglect the paths that were taken on the colonial stage if we assumed that colonial and missionary institutions simply sabotaged the black mission. Early twentieth-century regimes of Western imperialism brought about not only exclusion but were crucial sites of African Americans’ colonial encounter, often resulting in ongoing relationships with colonial Africa. A critical aspect of this encounter was the production of a variety of representations of American Negroes, reflecting the multiple interests of colonizers, missionaries, and Africans. Constructed as leaders of black emancipation or helpers of African colonization by its ‘others,’ the AME community acquired an equivocal image and considerable opportunities to move and act in colonial contexts. The images African American missionaries constructed of themselves within these colonial power structures, in turn, revealed their inconsistencies. Engaging with unfinished rules of colonial difference, they diversified rather than unified blacks’ self-image. In this way, AME missionaries’ self-fashioning indicates that empire became a productive force in African American history: it furnished them with possibilities for self-determination and transatlantic contacts beyond pan-Africanism. The final core aim of this study was to incorporate the African perspective that has been silenced in accounts that followed Gilroy’s concept of the black Atlantic as a predominantly African American formation. The case of the AME Africa mission provides insights in the role of Africans in transatlantic interactions in several ways. First, the restructuring of the AME Church Missionary Department in the 1920s was prompted by fieldworkers’ claims that they formed the sole informed segment in the church, so that they alone could suitably structure the mission. The U. S.-based department responded by agreeing to grant these African staff members authority to proceed as they pleased and to inspect the field to compensate for its lack of field knowledge (Section 4.3). Another, even more significant way Africans shaped the course of the AME mission was in its cooperation with independent African churches. In many cases, the first AME congregations were founded upon preexisting bodies, such as the Ethiopian Church in South Africa and the group of dissenters that left the Countess Huntington Connection in Freetown. The momentum toward building an independent African Christianity that flourished as colonial powers seized upon the continent thus provided the grounds for the AME Church to take root in colonial society (Section 9.1). Finally, African voices surfaced in African American missionaries’ accounts of their work routines in the field and the house. The encounter between Africans and African Americans at these private sites unleashed both severe conflicts and rivalries as well

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as friendships, motherly love, and care, thereby defining the limits of both local distance and Afro-Atlantic proximity (Section 8.4). On the basis of these examples, this study has argued that the formation of the AME Africa mission involved a critical black transnationalism that was able to emerge when Africans and African Americans met and grappled with each other.3 AME missionaries, each part of this study demonstrates, became neither pan-Africanists nor Africa’s colonizers. Their non-pan-African concerns, their utilization of empire, and their critical engagement with ‘natives’ guided them down new paths yet not away from black emancipation. 10.2. The AME Church and Postcolonial Africa

Shaped by its complex intertwinement with processes of colonization in Africa, the AME Africa mission reached its peak in the years between 1900 and 1939. The intensity of this relationship ended with the Second World War, when the decline of European empires in Africa eroded the conditions of the African American colonial encounter. In the two decades after 1945, the number of people under British colonial rule shrank from seven hundred million to five million. Beginning with the independence of Ghana (Gold Coast) in 1957, a series of postcolonial states was founded in Gambia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Cameroon, Botswana (Bechuanaland), Lesotho (Basutoland), Swaziland, Zimbabwe (Rhodesia), and Malawi (Nyasaland). In response, the British struggled to find ways to relate to their former territories more or less as equal partners. Decolonization plans aimed to secure the cooperation of moderate nationalists and gradually to transfer power to African elites. In this way, the British expected to see earlier commitments to self-government under the system of indirect rule in Africa fulfilled as planned. The reality of African self-government, however, was different. In 1961, the Union of South Africa left the British Commonwealth and began to dismantle pass laws, locations, and other means designed to overtly or subtly segregate populations and to guarantee white supremacy. At the same time, new federations, political borders, and government systems came into being in West and Central Africa that did not seek collaboration. The British support for the charismatic and erratic nationalist leader Kwame Nkrumah (1909–1972) in Ghana, for instance, proved ill-fated. Nkrumah pursued radical aims to expel the British from Ghana and expansionist policies that worked toward pan-African unity across the continent.4

Chrisman, “Black Transnationalisms.” William Roger Louis, “The Dissolution of the British Empire,” in Oxford History of the British Empire, Vol. 4, The Twentieth Century, ed. Brown and Louis, 349. 3 4

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The changes Africa underwent during decolonization likewise altered the AME missionary self-conception. When traveling through postcolonial African territory in the 1950s, AME people noticed a “cry of ‘Freedom’” surrounding them and admired how “light-footedly” it transcended tribal and political boundaries. The AME mission knew the power of such crossethnic appeal. Ever since Bishop Henry McNeal Turner had delivered his speeches at the first AME conferences in West and South African colonies, the mission had acquired adherents among diverse groups of Africans. At the end of colonial rule, however, AME missionaries asserted that Africans had found, by their own initiative, a “language” to integrate themselves and to guide their continent to liberation. In their accounts, AME missionaries celebrated the Conference of Independent States in Africa in Accra, the first attempt of eight independent African states to cooperate. They endorsed Nkrumah’s maxim that Africans had “nothing to lose but [their] chains” and “freedom and human dignity” to regain, and they emphasized that Africans would do so “unsuccored mentally and spiritually.” Finally, they argued, with Africans lifting “the steel grid of Colonialism from the face of their Continent,” even the myth of the dark continent was to pass into history.5 Unlike the numerous black agitators in the United States who were mesmerized by Africa’s course to freedom, AME people did not insert themselves into the postcolonial picture. They confessed instead that pan-African liberation had transpired outside of the AME missionary tradition. Refraining from the postcolonial stages of African agitation, AME missionaries continued to be invested in the contact zones that remained intact outside of the continent. One of these was the ecumenical movement. Ecumenism flourished after World War II with the founding of the National Council of Churches of Christ, which replaced the FCC in the United States, and the World Council of Churches, which succeeded the IMC in the international sphere. While the AME Church was still not well represented in these centralized councils, it held memberships in the World Methodist Council, the Guyana Council of Churches, the Christian Council of Trinidad and Tobago, and played a prominent role in the All Africa Conference of Churches from the 1960s onwards.6 In the United States, the AME Church’s ecumenical efforts remained most effective in the united front that black American churches had started to build in the 1920s. Focusing on the civil rights struggle, black ecumenism bred new alliances, including with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference led by Martin Luther King Jr.7 Jordan, African Methodist Episcopal Church in Africa, 8, 14, and 15. This information is drawn from the website of the World Council of Churches, accessed April 15, 2015, http://www.oikoumene.org/en/member-churches/african-methodist-episcopal-church. 7 Mary R. Sawyer, Black Ecumenism: Implementing the Demands of Justice (Valley Forge, 1994), 35–65. 5 6

Afro-colonial Encounters

Another contact zone inherited from the AME Africa mission was the perception of Africa in the African American community. From the time of decolonization through 1960, the Year of Africa, this image idolized anticolonial African leaders and rebellions that did not hesitate to use violence. Nkrumah’s radical liberation of Ghana, the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya, the National Liberation Front in Algeria, and the murder of Patrice Lumumba in Congo provided models of political action that displaced both the strategy of Gandhian civil disobedience and the image of a defenseless African motherland in the minds of many African Americans.8 Africa’s militant anticolonialism encouraged leaders of the civil rights movement such as Malcolm X, Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, and Stokely Carmichael to propose concepts of “black power” that involved armed self-defense and nonalignment during the Cold War.9 While AME missionaries subscribed to the ideas behind the civil rights movement as a core theme in the AME Church’s emancipation, they could not agree with the image of Africa the movement entertained. Noticing the radicalization of pan-African sentiments and the strong idealization of the liberated continent in the 1960s, the AME Church Missionary Department launched an Americans of African Ancestry movement. The campaign undertook to promote a “realistic understanding of the highly significant relationships existing today between Africa and America” by educating blacks about the diversity that existed among African countries, people, and about their respective living conditions.10 African Americans, the campaign argued, were supposed to understand Africans’ problems as problems of the “world community” and develop a “moral interest” in their well-being. The urge to demystify Africa for the African American community perpetuated the AME mission’s tradition of admonishing precaution against the erroneous views people were inclined to harbor when viewing the continent from afar.11 The postcolonial roles AME missionaries claimed for themselves in the ecumenical movement and in shaping the image of Africa resonated with the missionary practices they had developed during the colonial era. Since their transatlantic routes had long drawn them away from dreams about pan-African liberation, they staged the end of colonial rule as the exclusive achievement of Africans. The “moral interest” they wanted African Americans to develop too focused attention on Africans’ capacity to help themselves, and thus on the approach to black emancipation the AME Church itself had developed and Sudarshan Kapur, Raising Up a Prophet: The African-American Encounter with Gandhi (Boston, 1992). 9 von Eschen, Race Against Empire, 185–89. See also Kevin Gaines, “E. Franklin Frazier’s Revenge: Anticolonialism, Nonalignment, and Black Intellectuals’ Critiques of Western Culture,” American Literary History 17 (2005): 506–29. 10 Jordan, African Methodist Episcopal Church in Africa, 10. 11 Ibid., 15. 8

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pursued. Self-help, in the African Methodist sense, involved addressing people’s needs out of the particularities of their living conditions. In this way, AME missionaries had guaranteed the autonomy of AME constituents on each side of the Atlantic, including the freedom to choose their own paths. At the dawn of decolonization, it seemed that the pragmatism of self-help – which had once had granted AME missionaries leverage to coopt the colonizers – could likewise result in liberation. The period unearthed some important political legacies that followed from AME missionaries’ presumably apolitical approach. Many Africans who had graduated from AME mission schools or participated in AME educational exchange programs with the United States advanced to leading positions in anticolonial movements and later postcolonial states. Kwame Nkrumah, for instance, the first president of Ghana, had received degrees from Achimota College in Accra and Lincoln University in Philadelphia. Eva Morake and Sol Plaatje, who were instrumental in the foundation of the South African Native National Congress, the predecessor of the ANC, graduated from the AME Wilberforce University in Ohio. Other ANC leaders, such as Alfred B. Xuma and John L. Dube, held degrees from the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. And Hastings K. Banda, the first president of Malawi in 1961, was a Wilberforce graduate and friend of AMEZ Church associate and Achimota College cofounder James E. K. Aggrey from the Gold Coast.12 Although primarily acknowledged for their anticolonial politics, these and lesser-known African leaders who were raised in AME milieus, engaged throughout their lives in efforts to improve the living conditions and physical well-being of Africans. Nkrumah’s clarion call for Africans to “lose [their] chains” involved regaining freedom and human dignity through self-help rather than fraternization with African American agitators. This notion can be traced back to the interwar years, when Africans began to define their vision of a new Africa by reviewing African American approaches to emancipation. Juxtaposing Booker T. Washington’s practical approach to social and economic self-determination and Garvey’s and Du Bois’s visions of pan-African liberation, many Africans favored the former. In African publications of the early 1920s, we find Garvey’s “wild conception of a Negro Republic in Africa” dismissed as bound to fail and Du Bois’s Pan-African Congress movement criticized for its tendency to “generalize [Africans] as to their needs.” “To help Africa in a practical way,” the African World argued in accordance with the AME mission, “intimate knowledge of internal conditions is necessary.”13

12 13

Virginia Curtin Knight, ed. African Biography, Vol. 1 (Detroit 1999), 50–58. “Year 1921,” 6; and J. W. G., “Pan-African Congress,” iii.

Afro-colonial Encounters

10.3. Beginning African American Postcoloniality

Postcolonial and African American studies have only begun to engage with each other. Much of this engagement is due to the similar developmental trajectories the fields have traversed. African American historiography emerged in the early 1920s in reaction to the indignation of blacks toward the view that they lacked a history of their own.14 Postcolonial studies formed in the late 1970s based on discontent with Eurocentric historiography that had long silenced the colonized. These similar motivations prefigured a shared concern for the history of the oppressed. Told in the language of postcolonialism, African American history unveiled an analogy to colonial history that began with the revolt of the African subaltern against American slavery and segregation, two forms of internal colonization, and then continued with the civil rights struggle, which negotiated the terms of black independence and decolonization. The rise of black-nationalist ideology in the United States, too, fits the colonial chronology. It resembled anticolonial movements in India and elsewhere that began to appropriate Western concepts of nationhood to counteract oppression.15 In addition to identifying analogies, postcolonial scholars have characterized African Americans as one of the world’s largest diasporas. The history of their forced migration and enslavement serves to elucidate colonial violence and the ways in which oppressed and displaced populations were involved in anticolonial struggles in their former homelands.16 The careers of AME people and the independent black church they erected in colonial Africa complicate both of these narratives. On the one hand, they invalidate a chronology that distinguishes colonization and liberation as two subsequent stages. On the other, they problematize the analogy of African American emancipation and anticolonial liberation. Since the AME mission did not endorse pan-African concepts of displacement and resistance, its formation cannot be described as emerging from the oppressive structures of colonialism. This study has shown, by contrast, that AME missionaries established multiple connections in Africa and the United States based on their contacts with Africans, the ecumenical missionary movement, and representatives of the British Empire. All of these connections inherited highly racialized power relations that were institutionalized on both sides of the Atlantic by means of racial segregation in the United States and indirect rule in British Africa. And The Division of Negro Literature, History and Prints, the forerunner of the Schomburg Center of Research in Black Culture, was founded in Harlem in 1925 to counter the view of blacks as a people without a history. The collection continues to stand out for its holdings in African American history. 15 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Subaltern Talk: Interview with the Editors,” in Spivak Reader, ed. Landry and MacLean, 294–95. 16 “African American and Post-colonial Studies,” in Postcolonial Studies: The Key Concepts, ed. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, 7–9, 3rd ed. (London, 2013). 14

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yet, resistance was not the AME Church’s response. While establishing a strong presence in Britain’s African colonies, the AME Church tapped into conversations that connected African Americans, Africans, colonizers, and Christians. These conversations all addressed a strikingly similar question, namely the question of the role of the ‘American Negro’ in colonial Africa, particularly in relation to the forging of ‘native’ administrations, ‘indigenized’ Christianities, and ‘Africanized’ Africans. When looking at these conversations from the perspective of AME missionaries, we can understand that they were not merely concurrent, but interrelated. AME missionaries acted at the intersections of these macrohistorical transformations and moved, through them, into a transitional position that allowed them to align themselves with different sides of the colonial divide. As such, AME missionaries are a telling example that the color line, while spanning the globe, made possible ongoing and productive relationships between unequal, conflicted, and often opposing camps. To turn their example from a notable exception into a clue to the unexpected and largely unknown entangled history of African American emancipation and African colonization certainly requires more research. The relationship between African American missionaries and colonial Africa is only one of many that were established in the heyday of European colonialism. To broaden the scope of transatlantic interaction beyond the religious agents studied here and the relatively well-researched educational borrowing that emerged around Booker T. Washington, future research could address how black trade, financial transactions, medical care, or beauty cultures were enhanced in colonial structures.17 Research could also go further in the opposite direction, exploring how the domestic African American reading public developed notions of class, race, and gender based on the images of the exotic colonial worlds that they consumed in the comfort of their living rooms just like the well-studied white bourgeoisie did.18 A stronger focus on the travels and self-fashioning of colonized Africans in the United States and the broader Southern Hemisphere could bring the Afro-colonial connection into dialogue with the growing body of scholarship on the global South.19 On this point, it is also important to note that the geographic scope of the African American colonial encounter was not confined to the Atlantic. Existing research suggests that the Afro-colonial contact zone spanned the Pacific and the Indian Oceans and thus extended into a variety of colonial spaces.20 The mobility of African Americans at the height of The most recent one is Zimmerman, Alabama in Africa. Two of the most important works on this reciprocity are Cooper and Stoler, eds., Tensions; and Kaplan and Pease, eds., Cultures. 19 See, for instance, Ward, Bone, and Link, eds., American South and the Atlantic World; and Nico Slate, The Prism of Race: W. E. B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Paul Robeson, and the Colored World of Cedric Dover (New York, 2014). 20 See, for example, Michael Cullen Green, Black Yanks in the Pacific: Race in the Making of American Military Empire After World War II (Ithaca, 2010); Gerald Horne, The End of Empires: 17 18

Afro-colonial Encounters

European colonialism may guide us toward a history of contacts in which they were not only reaching out to the world’s oppressed but utilizing colonial regimes to their advantage in much more efficient ways than historians currently assume.21 In beginning to engage with Afro-colonial entanglements, this study also undertook to propose a reconceptualization of the postcoloniality of African American history. The postcoloniality suggested here starts neither with the end of colonial rule nor with the strategic interventions blacks made against colonialism. In my account, postcoloniality designates the scholarly attempt to reinscribe empire, understood as a complex, relational, and productive form of power, into the history of African Americans. To this end, I have accounted for flows, structures, and practices in the black Atlantic that digressed from the centuries-old routes of the transatlantic slave trade and the more recent directives of pan-African resistance. The different paths that AME missionaries took facilitated the tracing of the formation of twentieth-century black Atlantic communities without asserting the pan-African binaries – black and white, oppression and resistance, homeland and diaspora – that we usually identify as building blocks of these communities. In the Afro-colonial contact zone, African Americans had a say in a myriad of topics, such as European exploration literature, homemaking in Harlem, Tuskegeeism in the South, Garveyism in British Africa, and secular civilization around the globe. Whereas colonialists and missionaries in Africa stayed attuned to their voices, combative black-nationalist leaders in the United States tended to contradict or mute them. To be sure, AME people in no case moved among likeminded people. Their endeavors were promoted and obstructed by rivalries, conflicts, defeats, and alliances that arose from the improvised dimension of the contacts they established with arguably very different groups of people in the colonial Atlantic. African American postcoloniality, I submit, begins not with studying black Americans who raised their voices against the oppressive structures of colonialism. It begins instead with looking for black Americans who gained new possibilities to speak for themselves by moving onto the imperial stage. By following those who set aside pan-African preoccupations in favor of entering into the highly asymmetrical colonial structures of power, we can trace a postcolonial history of black self-determination. African Americans and India (Philadelphia, 2008); Marc Gallicchio, African-American Encounters with Japan and China: Black Internationalism in Asia, 1895–1945 (Chapel Hill, 2000); John W. Pulis, Moving On: Black Loyalists in the Afro-Atlantic World (New York, 1999); and Grant McCall and John Connell, eds., A World Perspective on Pacific Islander Migration: Australia, New Zealand and the USA (Kensington, NSW, 1993). 21 Research on black internationalism, especially, tends to portray the movement of blacks beyond the United States as escape from the constraints of national, imperial, and racist structures. Michael O. West, and William G. Martin, “Contours of the Black International: From Toussaint to Tupac,” in Toussaint to Tupac, ed. West, Martin, and Wilkins, 1–44.

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Conceptualized in this way, the postcoloniality of African American history stresses the need for scholars to address questions of race and power beyond the binary of white oppression and black resistance that tends to predetermine research agendas to the present day. Recently, Barack Obama, America’s first black president, exposed the unbroken power of this binary. Many hoped that his rise to the highest government office would be the final victory of black emancipation over America’s obsession with white supremacy. Such hopes, however, were unfulfilled. Once in office, as the Atlantic Monthly summarized in 2012, Obama was forced to be a president “twice as good” and “half as black.” The indignation about his vanishing blackness speaks to the concern of this study in two regards. On the one hand, it exemplifies that the role of blacks remains restricted to the realm of protest and agitation to the present day. On the other hand, it illustrates the difficulty of being recognized as black and powerful outside the realm of struggle. Obama, the president, was perhaps the first black American to publicly stop protesting, agitating, or appealing to federal power. As the Atlantic Monthly put it, “[h]e was employing it. The power was black.”22 The foregoing analysis accounts for this type of black power. It is concerned with a part of African American history that happened beyond protest and agitation and therefore was a form of African American emancipation.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, “Fear of a Black President,” Atlantic Monthly, August 22, 2012, accessed February 12, 2013, http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/09/fear-of-a-black-president/309064/. 22

11. Works Cited

Microfilmed Collections African American Religious Serials, 1850–1950. 83 reels. Chicago: American Theological Library Association, 2005. Federal Surveillance of Afro-Americans (1917–1925): The First World War, the Red Scare, and the Garvey Movement, edited by Theodore Kornweibel, Jr. 25 reels. Frederick: University Public International Missionary Council Archives, 1910–1961. IDC Publishers, 1987. (IMC Archives)

Archives and Special Collections Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies, Rhodes House, Oxford Wraith Papers (MSS.Afr.s.1563) The Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary (UTS), Columbia University in the City of New York: Missionary Research Library Collections (MRL) Pamphlets Emory University, Atlanta, GA: Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library (MARBL) Josephus Roosevelt Coan Papers The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (SCRBC), The New York Public Library: Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division AME Church Records (AME CR) Llewellyn L. Berry Papers School of Oriental and African Studies Library (SOAS), London: Archives and Special Collections Conference of British Missionary Societies/International Missionary Council (CBMS/ IMC) Temple University Libraries (TUL), Philadelphia, PA: Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection (BAAC) Bishop Richard Robert Wright Jr. Papers

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Dr. Ruth Wright Hayre Collection The National Archive of Black Women’s History (NABWH), Washington, DC Josephine Humbles Kyles Papers The National Archives of Sierra Leone (NASL), Freetown: Colonial Secretary’s Office Files General Education (E) Confidential Minute Papers (C) The National Archives of the UK (TNA), London Colonial Office (CO) Dominions Office (DO)

Published Primary Materials “Address by Bishop W. W. Beckett at the Bishop’s Council, Baltimore, February 11, 1920.” Voice of Missions (March 1920): 2. “Address Delivered Before National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.” Christian Recorder, June 30, 1927, 12. “Africa, and the Americans of African Descent.” AME Church Review (April 1922): 200–202. Albright, L. S. The International Missionary Council: Its History, Functions, and Relationships. New York, 1946. Allen, Richard. The Life, Experience, and Gospel Labours of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen: To Which Is Annexed the Rise and Progress of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States of America. Containing a Narrative of the Yellow Fever in the Year of Our Lord 1793: With an Address to the People of Colour in the United States. 1833. Reprint, New York, 1960. Alleyne, Cameron Chesterfield. Gold Coast at a Glance. New York, 1931. “The A. M. E. Church Grows in South Africa.” Voice of Missions (January 1936): 3–4. “The A. M. E. Girls’ Industrial School, Freetown, Sierra Leone, Successful in Singing Competition.” Voice of Missions (March 1935): 11. “A. M. E. Mission in Sierra Leone, West Africa.” Voice of Missions (July 1939): 10. “The American Negro as a Missionary.” Foundation (July 1929): 7. “American Negroes and Africa.” Foundation (May 1927): 19. “The Annie Walsh Memorial School.” Sierra Leone Weekly News, March 10, 1923, 8–9. “The Application of Knowledge.” Gold Coast Times, April 12, 1930, 7. “Are the Churches in Reality Beginning to Place Christ Above Color and Race?” Voice of Missions (June 1932): 8. “At Headquarters.” Gold Coast Leader, January 26, 1918, 3–4. Attoh-Ahuma, S. R. B. “The Gold Coast Nation and National Consciousness.” Gold Coast Times, February 28, 1931, 1–2. Baidu, Kofi Akumia. “The New Africa or Serious Thinking for the African.” Gold Coast Times, September 27, 1930, 5. —. “The New Africa or Serious Thinking for the African.” Gold Coast Times, October 18, 1930, 11. Barton, James L. “The Opening Address.” In Foreign Missions Convention, edited by Turner and Knight, 1–3. Beach, Harlan P., and Charles H. Fahs, eds. World Missionary Atlas: Containing a Directory of Missionary Societies, a Classified Summary of Statistics, Maps Showing the Location of Mission Stations Throughout the World, a Descriptive Account of the Principal Mission Lands, and Comprehensive Indices. New York, 1925. Berry, Llewellyn L. A Century of Missions of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, 1840– 1940. New York, 1942.

Published Primary Materials

—. Thirtieth Quadrennial Report of the Home and Foreign Missionary Department of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, 1932–1936. New York, 1936. —. Thirty-first Quadrennial Report of the Home and Foreign Missionary Department of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, 1936–1940. New York, 1940. —. “What Negroes Are Doing for Negroes.” International Review of Missions (June 1936): 308–310. “Bishop Brooks’ Reception and Departure. Baltimore, Philadelphia, Newark and New York Have Receptions to the Bishop and His Wife. A Large Number Bids Farewell.” Christian Recorder, January 20, 1921, 5. “Bishop Gregg Sails for Africa.” Christian Recorder, October 23, 1924, 1. “Bishop Gregg Tells the World.” Voice of Missions (May 1931): 6–7. “Bishop Turner’s Vision of Africa in Concrete Form.” Voice of Missions (July 1939): 4. Blyden, Edward W. Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race. London, 1887. Bowen, J. W. E., ed. Africa and the American Negro: Addresses and Proceedings of the Congress on Africa Held Under the Auspices of the Stewart Missionary Foundation for Africa of Gammon Theological Seminary in Connection with the Cotton States and International Exposition, December 13–15, 1895. Atlanta, 1896. Brent, Charles H. “The Situation at Home.” In Foreign Missions Convention, edited by Turner and Knight, 27–36. “Brevities.” South African Outlook, March 1, 1923, 53. “‘Brighten the Corner Where You Are’: The Story of What a Few Women Can Do.” Voice of Missions (February 1931): 9–10. Brooks, W. Sampson. “Africa.” AME Church Review (October 1926): 89–91. —. What a Black Man Saw in a White Man’s Country: Some Account of a Trip to the Land of the Midnight Sun. Minneapolis, 1899. Brown, J. W. A.M.E.Z. Year Book of the Eleventh Episcopal District with Extracts from the Minutes of the Nigeria Conference. N.p., 1938. By an Eye Witness. “The Girls’ Industrial and Literary Institute.” Sierra Leone Weekly News, December 26, 1925, 13. “A Challenge to Christian Womanhood.” Voice of Missions (September 1920): 21. “The Christian Mission and Native Customs.” Gold Coast Times, February 1, 1930, 7. Clark, Dovie King. “Missionary Echoes: Amanda Mason.” Voice of Missions (November 1934): 5. —. “Missionary Echoes: Our Students.” Voice of Missions (February 1931): 11. Coan, Josephus R. Flying Sparks: The Genesis of African Methodism in South Africa. Nashville, 1987. —. The Missionary Presence in Africa. Atlanta, [1971?]. —. “Trekking Along.” Voice of Missions (February 1939): 8. Coit, E. H. Twenty-ninth Quadrennial Report of the Home and Foreign Missionary Department of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, 1928–1932. New York, 1932. Cole, Jean Lee, ed. Freedom’s Witness: The Civil War Correspondence of Henry McNeal Turner. Morgantown, 2013. Coleman, J. F. B. “A Bishop’s Monument.” Voice of Missions (November 1934): 4–5. Committee of Reference and Council of the Foreign Missions Conference of North America. The Contemporary Foreign Missions of the Protestant Churches of North America: A Digest of Statistical Summaries, Agencies, Policies and Methods. New York, 1930. Constitution and By-Laws of the Men Missionary League of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. New York, 1920. Coppin, Levi J. Observations of Persons and Things in South Africa, 1900–1904. Vol. 2. Philadelphia, 1905. —. Unwritten History. Philadelphia, 1919. Creole-Boy. “Wanted! A Home for Training Prospective Mothers.” Sierra Leone Weekly News, June 5, 1926, 4 and 13.

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DeLima, A. M. to J. W. Rankin. “Letters from the Field.” Voice of Missions (January 1915): 15–16. Dennis, James S., Harlan P. Beach, and Charles H. Fahs, eds. World Atlas of Christian Missions: Containing a Directory of Missionary Societies, a Classified Summary of Statistics, an Index of Mission Stations, and Maps Showing the Location of Mission Stations Throughout the World. New York, 1911. “The Departure of Mrs. Casely Hayford and Miss Kathleen Easmon for the United States.” Sierra Leone Weekly News, July 3, 1920, 9. Dillard, James H., Thomas Jesse Jones, Charles T. Loram, Joseph H. Oldham, Anson Phelps Stokes, Monroe Work. Twenty Year Report of the Phelps-Stokes Fund, 1911–1931: With a Series of Studies of Negro Progress and of Developments of Race Relations in the United States and Africa During the Period, and a Discussion of the Present Outlook. New York, 1932. Du Bois, W. E. B. “African Missions.” Foundation (September 1932): 17. —. “Charlotte Manye.” Crisis (January 1929): 21–22. —. “The Color Line Belts the World.” Collier’s Weekly (October 1906): 30. Reprinted in W. E. B. Du Bois: A Reader, edited by David Levering Lewis, 42–43. New York, 1995. —. The Negro American Family. Atlanta, 1908. —. The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study. Philadelphia, 1899. —. Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches. Chicago, 1903. Accessed September 16, 2014. http://docsouth.unc.edu/church/duboissouls/dubois.html#dubois88. “The Ecumenical Conference.” Christian Recorder, October 6, 1921, 1 and 4–5. Ecumenical Missionary Conference, New York, 1900. Report of the Ecumenical Conference on Foreign Missions Held in Carnegie Hall and Neighboring Churches, April 21 to May 1, 1900. Vol. 1. New York, 1900. “The Editor’s Notes.” International Review of Missions (January 1912): 1. Episcopal Address by Bishop W. Sampson Brooks to the Bishops, General Officers and Members of the Twenty-ninth Quadrennial Session of the General Conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Cleveland, Ohio, May 2–16, 1932. Philadelphia, 1932. Essuman, Willie Owen. “How Can Youth Develop Cooperative and Harmonious Relations Among the Races of the Earth?” Gold Coast Times, November 28, 1936, 1–2. Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America. Annual Report, 1922. New York, 1922. —, and Commission on Interracial Cooperation, eds. Toward Interracial Cooperation: What Was Said and Done at the First National Interracial Conference Held Under the Auspices of the Commission on the Church and Race Relations of the Federal Council of the Churches and the Commission on Interracial Cooperation, Cincinnati, Ohio, March 25–27, 1925. New York, 1926. Fey, Harold E., and Margaret Frakes, eds. The Christian Century Reader: Representative Articles, Editorials, and Poems Selected from More Than Fifty Years of the Christian Century (New York, 1962). Foreign Missions Conference of North America. Preparation of Missionaries for Africa: A Statement Prepared Under the Direction of the Missionary Personnel and Africa Committee as Revised in 1935. New York, 1935. “The Fraternal Council of Negro Churches in America.” In Year Book of Negro Churches, edited by Ransom, 24–25. Frazier, E. Franklin. The Negro Church in America/C. Eric Lincoln, The Black Church Since Frazier. Rev. ed. New York, 1974. —. The Negro Family in Chicago. Chicago, 1932. —. The Negro Family in the United States. Chicago, 1939. “The Future of the African.” Gold Coast Times, April 4–11, 1931, 7. G., J. W. “The Pan-African Congress.” African World: Special West African Monthly Supplement, December 1, 1923, iii.

Published Primary Materials

Gardiner, Bruce J. “Notable Mission Compilation.” Johannesburg Sunday Times, January 23, 1927. Garvey, Marcus. “Africa for the Africans.” 1923. Reprinted in The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey: Or, Africa for the Africans, compiled by Amy Jacques Garvey, 68–72. Centennial ed. Dover, 1986. —. “African Fundamentalism.” 1925. Reprinted in Marcus Garvey and the Vision of Africa, edited by John Henrik Clarke, 156–59. New York, 1974. Gasaway, Pearlie Mae. “The Value of United Movements.” Negro Journal of Religion (August 1937): 7. Gent, G. E. J., and A. J. Harding. The Dominions Office and Colonial Office List for 1939: Comprising Historical and Statistical Information Respecting the Oversea Dominions and Colonial Dependencies of Great Britain, an Account of the Services of Officers, a Transcript of the Colonial Regulations, and Other Information. London, 1939. Graham, D. A. “Christian Education in Liberia.” AME Church Review (October 1926): 91–95. Gregg, John A. “Africa and a Way Out.” AME Church Review (April 1921): 205–13. —. “The Land of the Southern Cross” [1910?]. In Land of the Southern Cross, edited by Dickerson, 9–42. Guggisberg, Gordon, and A. G. Fraser. The Future of the Negro: Some Chapters in the Development of a Race. London, 1929. Hailey, William M. An African Survey: A Study of Problems Arising in Africa South of the Sahara. London, 1938. “Harlem Directory: Where to Go and What to Do When in Harlem.” Harlem, November 1, 1928. Reprinted in Voices from the Harlem Renaissance, edited by Nathan Irvin Huggins, 46–47. Oxford, 1995. Heard, William H. From Slavery to the Bishopric in the A. M. E. Church. 1924. Edited by William Lorenz Katz. New York, 1969. —. “Letters from the Field.” Voice of Missions (November 1913): 15. Hopwood, Jas. “Journey of Mrs. Lucy M. Hughes, M. A.” Voice of Missions (February 1939): 5. Hughes, Lucy M. “My Visit to South Africa.” Voice of Missions (July 1939): 22–26. “International Ideals of the Churches of Christ.” In A. M. E. Year Book, 1922–1923, edited by Charles Spencer Smith, John Hawkins, and Reverdy C. Ransom, 64. Philadelphia, 1923. International Missionary Council. The World Mission of Christianity: Messages and Recommendations of the Enlarged Meeting of the International Missionary Council Held at Jerusalem, March 24th–April 8th, 1928. London, 1928. “Interpretative Thinking on the Foreign Field.” Voice of Missions (July 1939): 3. “An Invitation to the General Conference to Visit the Headquarters of the Missionary Department.” Voice of Missions (April 1936): 5. Jenifer, John T. Centennial Retrospect History of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Nashville, 1916. —. “What Has African Methodism to Say for Itself.” AME Church Review (January 1916): 159–70. Johnson, H. T. “The Black Man’s Burden.” Voice of Missions (April 1899): 1. Reprinted in Willard B. Gatewood, Jr., Black Americans and the White Man’s Burden, 1898–1903, 183–84. Urbana, 1975. Jones, Thomas Jesse. Education in Africa: A Study of West, South, and Equatorial Africa by the African Education Commission Under the Auspices of the Foreign Mission Societies of North America and Europe. New York, 1922. Jordan, Artishia W. The African Methodist Episcopal Church in Africa. New York, 1964. Kinch, Emily Christmas. West Africa: An Open Door. Philadelphia, 1917. Latourette, Kenneth Scott. A History of the Expansion of Christianity. 7 vols. New York, 1937– 1945. Leonhard, John W., ed. Who’s Who in America: A Biographical Dictionary of Notable Living Men and Women of the United States. Chicago, 1901–1902.

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“Liberia and Sierra Leone Hold Memorial Services.” Voice of Missions (September 1934): 11. Loram, Charles T. “Native Progress and Improvement in Race Relations in South Africa.” In Twenty Year Report of the Phelps-Stokes Fund, edited by Dillard, et al., 84–92. “Lott Carey.” Western Recorder, November 8, 1925. Accessed February 22, 2013. http://ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/126862607?accountid=10226. Lugard, Frederick J. D. The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa. Edinburgh, 1922. “A Macedonian Cry: Issued by Bishop E. J. Howard, Presiding Bishop of the 14th Episcopal District for His Great and Needy Work in West Africa.” Voice of Missions (October 1938): 7. Macfarland Charles S., ed. The Churches of the Federal Council: Their History, Organization and Distinctive Characteristics and a Statement of the Development of the Federal Council. New York, 1916. Maclennan, Kenneth. Twenty Years of Missionary Co-operation. London, 1927. McKay, Claude. Harlem: Negro Metropolis. New York, 1940. McKenzie, Fayette Avery. “Practical Ideals for Negro Education.” Missionary Review of the World (June 1922): 457–64. “Men’s Missionary League of the A. M. E. Church.” Voice of Missions (July 1920): 17. “Men’s Missionary League of Mississippi.” Christian Recorder, August 3, 1922, 3. Mercer, William H., A. J. Harding, and G. E. J. Gent. The Dominions Office and Colonial Office List for 1930: Comprising Historical and Statistical Information Respecting the Oversea Dominions and Colonial Dependencies of Great Britain, an Account of the Services of Officers, a Transcript of the Colonial Regulations, and Other Information. London, 1930. Miller, Kelly. “Negroes’ Work at Home and Abroad.” Missionary Review of the World (June 1922): 476–78. “Missionaries Study Industrial Schools in the South.” Voice of Missions (February 1936): 6. “Missionary Methods II. Address Delivered by Principal Moton to the Scottish Churches Missionary Congress at Glasgow.” South African Outlook, March 1, 1923, 61–63. “The Modern Negro: A Comparative View.” Sierra Leone Weekly News, April 26, 1919, 8–9. Mokone, J. M. “Aspects of Life in South Africa.” Voice of Missions (May 1937): 9. —. “Mrs. Lucy M. Hughes in Central Africa.” Voice of Missions (February 1939): 4–5. Moore, Edward Caldwell. The Spread of Christianity in the Modern World. Chicago, 1919. Moss, Ida. “How to Make the Home Better.” Christian Recorder, May 11, 1922, 2. Mott, John R. Cooperation and the World Mission. New York, 1935. A Native of Aneho. “The Need for Africans Realising Africa.” Gold Coast Leader, December 14–21, 1918, 3–4. “Native Education in South Africa: Is It on Right Lines?” South African Outlook, September 1, 1922, 184–86. “Negro Americans: An Asset or a Liability.” Special issue, Missionary Review of the World (June 1922): 421–22. “Negro Missionaries in Africa.” Foundation (March–April 1923): 12. Niebuhr, Reinhold. “Our Secularized Civilization.” Christian Century, April 22, 1926. Reprinted in Christian Century Reader, edited by Fey and Frakes, 22–28. Office of the International Missionary Council. Treaties, Acts and Regulations Relating to Missionary Freedom. London, 1923. Oldham, Joseph H. Christianity and the Race Problem. New York, 1924. —. “His Message to Nations and Races.” In Foreign Missions Convention, edited by Turner and Knight, 46–51. —. The Missionary Situation After the War: Notes Prepared for the International Missionary Meeting at Crans, Near Geneva, June 22–28, 1920. New York, 1920. —, and B. D. Gibson. The Remaking of Men in Africa. London, 1931. “On Duty to Missions.” Voice of Missions (July 1915): 8. “Our Girls! Their Educational Problem. Which Is Best? An Education Really Adapted to Their

Published Primary Materials

Needs or A Higher Literary Education?” Sierra Leone Weekly News, December 12, 1925, 13. “Our Missionary Department.” AME Church Review (July 1926): 24. Parker, Joseph I., ed. Interpretative Statistical Survey of the World Mission of the Christian Church: Summary and Detailed Statistics of Churches and Missionary Societies, Interpretative Articles, and Indices. New York, 1938. Parks, H. B. Africa: The Problem of the New Century – The Part the African Methodist Episcopal Church Is to Have in Its Solution. New York, 1899. —. “A Work for American Negroes.” In Report, 1900, by Ecumenical Missionary Conference, 471–72. Payne, Daniel Alexander. Recollections of Seventy Years. 1888. Edited by William Lorenz Katz. New York, 1968. Peabody, Lucy W. “Woman’s Place in the World: An Address Before the National Conference of the Interchurch World Movement in Pittsburgh, Pa.” Voice of Missions (March 1920): 20–21. Peet, W. H. “How Would You Have Us…? The Question Africa Is Asking the World.” Gold Coast Times, September 20, 1930, 7–8. Philpott, H. B. “The Negro’s Place in the Sun.” Gold Coast Leader, July 27, 1918, 7. Powell, J. C. “The Mission of the African Methodist Episcopal Church to the Darker Races of the World.” AME Church Review (January, 1903): 585–95. Reprinted in Social Protest Thought, edited by Angell and Pinn, 203–207. “Presiding Elder’s Report for the Year Ended January 7, 1920, Sierra Leone Conference, A. M. E. Church.” Voice of Missions (April 1920): 12–13. “The Progress of West Africa.” Gold Coast Leader, November 16, 1918, 3–4. “The Proposed Technical and Industrial School for Girls.” Sierra Leone Weekly News, June 12, 1920, 5 and 12. “Race Leadership.” Christian Recorder, April 4, 1921, 1 and 4. Rankin, J. W. Annual Report of the Home and Foreign Missionary Department of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. New York, 1914. —. “The Missionary Propaganda of the A. M. E. Church.” AME Church Review (January 1916): 174–78. Ransom, Reverdy C. “Bishop Henry McNeal Turner.” AME Church Review (July 1915): 45–47. —. “Dedication of African Boat.” Voice of Missions (January 1915): 9. —. “The Negro, the Hope or Despair of Christianity.” In World Fellowship, edited by Weller, 316–19. —, ed. Year Book of Negro Churches: With Statistics and Records of Achievements in the United States, 1935–1936. Wilberforce, 1936. Read, Hollis. The Negro Problem Solved: Or, Africa as She Was, as She Is, and as She Shall Be; Her Curse and Her Cure. New York, 1864. “Reception to Bishop W. W. Beckett, D. D. in Capetown, S. Africa.” Voice of Missions (March 1917): 3. Redkey, Edwin S., ed. Respect Black: The Writings and Speeches of Henry McNeal Turner. New York, 1971. “Report of the Commission on Survey of Missionary Activities of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.” Voice of Missions (August 1931): 8 and 10. “Report on the A. M. E. Girls’ Industrial and Literary School, December 1930.” Voice of Missions (June 1931): 12–13. Résolutions Votées Par Le Congrés Pan-African, Réuni Les 19,20, 21 Février 1919, Au Grand-Hotel, Paris, Pour La Protection Des Indigénes D’Afrique Et Des Peuples D’Origine Africaine. Accessed September 21, 2012. http://www.library.umass.edu/spcoll/exhibits/dubois/ images/11_1_2.jpg. “Rev. I. C. Steady Gives Roster of the Works in Sierra Leone, Nigeria and the Gold Coast.” Voice of Missions (November 1934): 9–10.

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Index

A Abdurahman, Abdulla 127 Accra 246, 268, 270 Adeleke, Tunde 31 Advisory Committee on Native Education in Tropical Africa 153 African American studies 271 African Blood Brotherhood 106 African Church of Nigeria 247 African diaspora studies 30, 32, 33 African Letters 74, 75, 79, 94 African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church 132, 133, 159, 161, 162, 163, 177, 182, 184, 185, 203, 231, 233, 234, 236, 270 African National Congress 38 African Survey 198 African World, The 270 Afro-American, The 133, 134, 217 Agbebi, Mojola 246 Aggrey, James E. K. 176, 177, 179, 185, 187, 234, 270 Alabama 39, 60, 69, 194, 238, 239, 270 All Africa Conference of Churches 268 Allen AME Church 244 Allen Christian Endeavor League, AME 117 Allen, Richard 19, 57, 58, 67, 74, 132 Alleyne, Cameron Chesterfield 79 AME Church Review, The 78, 94, 128, 130, 165

AME Discipline 58 American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions 147, 149 American Colonization Society 62, 63, 65, 174 American Red Cross 138 American Society of African Culture 178 American Society of Church History 175 Americans of African Ancestry movement 269 Angola 21, 91 Annual Conference, AME 112, 245, 246, 257 Arkansas 59, 69 Association of College Presidents, AME 205 Association for the Study of Negro Life and History 132, 133 Atlantic Monthly, The 274 Attoh-Ahuma, S.R.B. 236 B Baltimore 57, 160, 229 Banda, Hastings K. 17, 39, 218, 257–59, 270 Bantu 212 Bantu Men’s Social Center 178 Bantu Women’s League 213 Barnes, Andrew E. 39 Basuto 258 Basutoland 177, 198, 204, 212, 231, 259, 267

298

Index

Bechuanaland 198, 204, 267 Beckett, William W. 136, 219, 234 Becoming African Americans 106 Bell Town 51, 53 Beneath the Southern Cross: The Story of an American Bishop’s Wife in South Africa 79 Berghahn, Marion 54 Berlin 10, 23, 141, 166 Berlin, Ira 33 Berliner Tageblatt 167 Berry, Llewellyn L. 66, 67, 68, 70, 79, 127, 248, 261 Bethel AME Church 244 Bethel Institute of Industry, AME 218 Bethel Mission, AME 232, 253 Big Robomp Mission, AME 245 Black Atlantic studies 32–35, 40 Black Atlantic, The 34 Black Star Line 62, 135 Bloemfontein 212, 257 Blyden, Edward W. 39 Board of Missions, AME 67, 125 Boer War 105, 257 Boggs, Reverend 65 Boyle, George 246 Bremersdorp 213 Briggs, Cyril 106 Brisbane, A. L. 221 British Empire 23, 25, 42, 43, 44, 63, 72, 183, 198, 203, 262, 271 British Museum 205 British Passport Control Office 204 Brooks, W. Sampson 130, 134, 162, 204– 207, 215, 217, 221, 227, 240, 249, 255 Brother Gibson 221 Bulawayo 112, 218 Calabar 257 C Calvert County 204 Charleston 57 C. E. Union, German 139, 141 Cameroon 51, 53, 80, 91, 267 Campbell Memorial AME Church 243 Campbell, James T. 31, 38, 257 Campbell, Samuel B. A. 217 Cape Coast 246 Cape Colony 95, 219, 232, 260 Cape Town 18, 96, 98, 103, 105, 112, 128, 203, 212, 215, 218, 219, 257, 258, 259 Carey, Lott 21 Carmichael, Stokely 269

Carnegie Foundation 154 Case, Jay Riley 31 Centennial Retrospect of the African Methodist Episcopal Church 160, 165 Century of Missions of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, A 127 Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection 45 Chief Mangay Small Scarcies 232 Chief Mwase Kasungu 257 Chilembwe, John 39 Chrisman, Laura 37, 38 Christian Advocate, The 164 Christian Century, The 149 Christian Council of Trinidad and Tobago 268 Christian Mission in the Modern World, The 175 Christian Recorder, The 69, 78, 100, 121, 122, 135, 178 Christianity and the Race Problem 155, 157, 182 Church Missionary Society 17, 177 Church of England 243, 245 Clark University 223 Cline Town 243 Coan, Josephus R. 45, 178 Coit, E. H. 128, 130, 131, 133, 134, 161, 188, 201, 242, 258 Coker, Daniel 65 Coker, J. K. 247 Cole, E.J.D. 245 Colonial Office 18, 46, 48, 143, 153, 185, 203, 209, 264 Colored Protective Association 105 Columbia University 10, 46, 217, 251 Committee for the Employment of Negro Workers 133 Committee of Reference and Counsel, FMCNA 147, 148, 160, 171, 176, 177 Communist International 106 Conference of Independent States in Africa 268 Congo 21, 76, 91, 152, 200, 269 Congress on Africa 63 Cooper, Frederick 26, 41 Cooper, Julia 106 Cope, K. B. 254 Coppin, Fanny Jackson 105, 111, 112, 115 Coppin, Jane 108, 109 Coppin, John 108, 109 Coppin, Levi J. 79, 97, 98, 103, 114, 119, 120, 123, 137, 205

Index

Corbould, Clare 106 Council of Bishops, AME 125, 229 Countess Huntington Connection 232, 243, 245, 266 Crisis, The 134 Crogman Clinic, AME 45, 225 Crowther, Dandeson 247 Crummell, Alexander 63 Cuffee, Paul 62, 65 Cultural studies 40 D dark continent 47, 51, 53, 55, 62, 65, 66, 72, 76, 83, 86, 88, 91, 100, 104, 127, 159, 193, 262, 263, 268 Davis, L. 244 Davis, M. H. 125 Davis, Moses D. 232 Dawn in Bantuland: An African Experiment 79 Decker, George 246 Decker, J.O.A. 245 DeLima, Alfred M. 221 Dorante, Este Vanico 75 Dorsch, Hauke 43 Drake, St. Clair 61, 63 Du Bois, W.E.B. 99, 103, 105, 106, 120, 134, 135, 184, 270 Dube, John L. 270 Dwane, James M. 38, 232 E Ebenezer Canadian AME Church 244 Ecumenical Conference of Methodism, Sixth 162 Ecumenical Missionary Conference, New York 146–47 Education Committee of Sierra Leone 252, 253, 255, 258 Education Department of Nyasaland 257 Education Ordinance no. 13 (1911) 252 Edward Waters College, AME 205 Emanuel Church, AME 244 Emily Vernon Institute, AME 259 Ethiopian Church of South Africa 74, 105, 170, 175, 256, 257 Ethiopian movement 17, 231, 232 Eureka 204 Evangelical Alliance 160 Evaton 45, 170, 178, 193, 223, 241

F Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America 148, 160, 161, 164, 178, 268 Fisk University 180 Florida Grant AME Chapel 244 Foreign Missions Conference of North America 147, 148, 160, 171, 176 Fortune, Timothy T. 63, 105 Fosdick, Raymond 156 Foucault, Michel 42, 83, 99 Foundation, The 184 Fourah Bay College 177 Fourteen Points 149 Fraser, Alexander G. 17, 182, 183, 184 Fraternal Council of Negro Churches 163 Frazier, Franklin E. 61, 120 Frederick Douglas Memorial Hospital 105 Frederick, John R. 232, 246 Fredericks Town 108 Freetown 18, 78, 90, 91, 92, 96, 98, 128, 137, 178, 181, 232, 243, 244, 245, 246, 247, 248, 249, 250, 256, 257, 265, 266 Friend of the Free State, The 187 From Slavery to the Bishopric in the A.M.E. Church 79 G Gabashane, Marcus 232 Gaines, Abraham L. 130 Gambia 198, 267 Garvey, Marcus 38, 42, 62, 99, 103, 106, 136, 166, 183, 185 Garveyism 29, 136, 264, 273 General Conference, AME 67, 115, 134, 137, 205, 212, 245, 246 General Missionary Conference 239 Gerber, J. F. 245 Gandhian civil disobedience 269 Gilroy, Paul 34 Girls’ Educational and Industrial Institute, AME 248 Girls’ Industrial and Literary Institute, AME 178, 181, 265 Girls’ School, AME 248, 249, 250-55 Glimpses of Africa 54, 73–81, 88, 89, 94, 95, 99, 100 Gold Coast 17, 94, 162, 172, 176, 177, 182, 184, 185, 198, 200, 209, 210, 221, 231, 233, 236, 245, 246, 267, 270 Gold Coast at a Glance 79 Gold Coast Times, The 234, 237 Gooding, J. H. 245 Gordon, Colin 42

299

300

Index

Gorham, Sarah 244 Gow, Francis Herman 259 Greater Bethel AME Church 132 Green, Abigail 142 Gregg, John A. 79, 114, 125, 130, 139, 141, 142, 166, 167, 188, 204–208, 210, 212, 215, 218, 229, 230, 233, 258, 260 Guggisberg, Gordon 182 Guyana Council of Churches 268 H Hampton-Tuskegee model 63, 64, 66, 181 Handy, Mary F. 130 Hardt, Michael 43 Harlem 23, 44, 103, 106, 128, 130, 131, 132, 133, 136, 137, 138, 265, 273 Harlem Directory 132 Harlem Renaissance 29, 106 Harr, Wilber C. 28, 29 Harvard University 217 Hastings, Adrian 19, 28, 142 Hayford, Mrs. Casely 250 Heard, William H. 79, 125, 210, 211, 222, 223 Herbst, Major 260 Higginbotham, Evelyn Brooks 227 Hip hop studies 107 History of the African Methodist Episcopal Church 75 Hodson, Arnold 251 Home and Foreign Missionary Department, AME 44, 64, 66, 67, 79, 115, 128, 171, 203, 233, 264, 265, 266, 269 Hood, Solo0mon Porter 203 Horton, Constance 251 How I Found Livingstone 89 Howard University 180, 205, 206 Howard, Edward J. 216, 217, 249 Huber, Valeska 209 Hughes, Lucy M. 210, 211, 213, 218, 219, 226 Hunter, L. M. 130 I Immigration Restriction Act of the Union of South Africa no. 22 (1913) 17 In Darkest Africa 89 Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union 38 Institute of African Languages and Tribal Culture 153, 186 Institute of Race Relations 178 Institute of Social and Religious Research

171 Instructions Concerning the Application of Missionaries Desiring to Proceed to British Territory 204 Interchurch World Movement 120, 144 Interdenominational Council of Religious Education 178 International Congress of the World Fellowship of Faith 167 International Missionary Council 46, 48, 138, 143, 148, 151–54, 156, 157, 160, 164, 169, 171, 172, 178, 182, 183, 185–90, 207, 264, 268 International Review of Missions, The 148, 151 International Society of Christian Endeavour 167 Interpretative Statistical Survey of the World Mission of the Christian Church 154, 233 J Jacobs, Sylvia M. 28, 29 Jeanes Foundation 154 Johannesburg 257, 259 Johannesburg Sunday Times, The 187 John, G. A. 245, 248 Joint Committee for the Employment of Negro Workers 133 Jones, Thomas Jesse 153, 176 Journal of Negro History, The 133 K Kadalie, Clements 38 Kansas 204, 205 Kaplan, Amy 43 Kinch, Emily C. 79, 124, 226, 243, 247, 248, 249 King George VI 258 King, Martin Luther, Jr. 268 Kirk-Greene, A.H.M. 198 Kru 247 L “Land of the Southern Cross, The” 79 League of Nations 149 Liberia 21, 62, 63, 64, 65, 74, 91, 162, 177, 178, 200, 203, 206, 210, 214, 249 Lincoln University 270 Lincoln, Abraham 73, 108 Livingstone College, AMEZ 177 Livingstone, David 75, 76, 82, Livingstonia Mission 259 London 23, 96, 153, 160, 205, 209

Index

Loram, Charles T. 260 Lott Carey Baptist Foreign Mission Convention 22 Lott, M. S. 245 Lugard, Frederick J. D. 199 Lumumba, Patrice 269 M Magaya, Edward 259 Magbele 243, 244 Mahera 245 Malawi 18, 257, 267, 270 Mamdani, Mahmood 199 Mange 243, 244, 253 Martyn, E. T. 245 Maryland 108, 109, 205 Mason, Amanda P. 218, 251, 254–55, 256 Mau Mau 269 Maxeke, Charlotte Manye 134, 213, 218, 258, 259 Maxeke, Edward Clarke 259 Maxeke, Marshall 259 McKenzie, Fayette A. 180 Mende 247 Men’s Missionary League, AME 115–16, 119, 120, 137, 265 Methodist Episcopal Church 58, 164 Miller, Kelly 180 Missionary Research Library 46, 171 Missionary Review of the World, The 179 Missionary Situation After the War, The 184 Mokone, Jonathan M. 218–19, 257–59 Mokone, Mangena Maake 256 Monrovia 134, 206, 214 Monrovia College and Industrial Training Institute, AME 178, 249 Moore Memorial AME Church 244 Morake, Eva 217, 259, 270 Morris Brown College 218 Mother AMEZ Church 133 Mother Bethel AME Church 58, 135 Moton, Robert 185, 186, 239, 240 Mott, John R. 147, 151, 154, 155 Msikinya, Henry 259 Mtshwelo, Z. C. 259–60 N Natal 204, 247, 256 National Afro-American Council 105 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People 105, 106, 132, 133, 135 National Baptist Convention 22, 159, 203

National Congress of British West Africa 183, 250 National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA 268 National Liberation Front 269 National Urban League 133 Native Commission of the Cape Colony 260 Negri, Antonio 43 Negro as an American Protestant Missionary in Africa, The 28 Negro Journal of Religion, The 150 Negro Problem Solved, The 88 Negro World, The 135 New York 44, 48, 57, 96, 103, 128, 129, 132, 137, 146, 155, 159, 171, 204, 206, 207, 231 New Zion AME Church 232, 243 Newton, Huey P. 269 Niebuhr, Reinhold 156 Nigeria 182, 198, 245, 246, 247, 267 Nkrumah, Kwame 267, 268, 269, 270 Non-European Affairs Committee of the Witwatersrand Church Council 178 North Carolina 177 North China Herald, The 187 Notre Colonie 187 Ntsiko, Osborne 259 Ntsiko, Pearl 259 Nyasaland 17, 94, 182, 200, 212, 218, 257, 258, 267 O Obama, Barack 274 Observations of Persons and Things in South Africa 79, 103 Ohlange Institute 39 Oldham, Joseph H. 147, 153, 155–57, 173, 179, 182, 184, 185 Opportunity, The 133 Orange Free State 204, 212 Order of Ethiopia 230, 232 Organization of Foreign Mission Secretaries of Negro Churches 203 P Padmore, George 106 Pan-African Congress 22, 103, 106, 235, 270 pan-Africanism 22, 23, 29, 30, 33, 37, 49, 56, 70, 80, 102, 103, 105, 108, 137, 138, 242, 262, 263, 264, 266 Parker, Joseph I. 233 Parks, Henry B. 114, 125, 130, 160, 166, 169

301

302

Index

Payne, Daniel Alexander 60, 64, 74 Peabody, Lucy 120 Pedi 178 Phelps-Stokes Commission on Education in Africa 153, 179, 182, 185, 235, 238, 239 Phelps-Stokes Fund 153, 176, 184, 186, 238, 251 Philadelphia 57, 58, 105, 111, 132, 135, 270 Phiri, Hanock Msokera 257, 258 Pietermaritzburg 256 Plaatje, Sol 37, 270 Port Lokkoh 243, 244, 245 Postcolonial studies 22, 44, 263, 271 Pratt, Mary L. 23, 82 Pretoria 230, 232, 257 Prince of Wales 258 Prince of Wales College and Achimota School 177, 249, 270 Protestant League of Nations 144 Providence Industrial Mission 39 Q Queen Victoria 258 Queenstown, Cape Colony 232 Quinn, W. Paul 64 R Randall, E. J. 246 Rankin, J. W. 206, 207, 221 Ransom, Reverdy C. 167, 168–69 Rhodesia 112, 177, 198, 204, 210, 212, 260, 267; Northern 182, 209; Southern 218, 259 Rockefeller Foundation 154 Rotumba 244 S Said, Edward 42 Salisbury 259 Schermerhorn, William David 175–76, 179 Schomburg Center of Research in Black Culture 44 Scott, David 41, 43, 106 Seale, Bobby 269 Sekondi 246 Seminary for Boys, AME 248 Sendugu 244 Sesuto 178 Shelton, Hattie L. 130 Sheppard, H. William 21 Shepperson, George 80 Sierra Leone 46, 47, 62, 63, 64, 65, 74, 80, 91, 98, 128, 137, 162, 172, 177, 195,

197, 198, 200, 206, 210, 216, 218, 230, 231–33, 242, 243, 245–48, 251–53, 256, 258, 267 Smith, Charles S. 51, 53–55, 73–99, 114, 123, 164, 165, 169, 205, 246 Smith, Christine S. 200 Smuts, Jan 234 Songs of Zion 257 South African Christian Recorder, The 178 South African Native National Congress 37, 270 South African Outlook, The 239, 240 South Bristol Endeavourer, The 167 South Carolina 73 Southern Christian Leadership Conference 268 St. George’s Methodist Church 57 St. Grassfield 244 St. Luke’s Dining Room 130 St. Mark’s AME Church 132 St. Paul de Loanda 80, 90, 91 Stanley, Henry Morton 76, 82, 89 Steady, Grace B. 248, 251, 254 Steady, H. M. 128, 137, 245–56 Steady, Hannah B. 245, 248, 251 Steady, Isaac E. C. 246, 251, 255, 258 Stewart Missionary Foundation 63 Stolpman, P. 139, 141 Student Volunteer Movement 184 Sunday School Union, AME 54, 73, 76 Svenska Dagblacht 187 Swaziland 198, 204, 213, 231, 267 T Táíwò, Olúfémi 194 Tantsi, Harsant 259 Tantsi, James 259 Taylor, Nora F. 214 Terrell, Mary Church 167 Thomas, Greg 55 Thompson, Melissa E. 112–13 Through the Dark Continent 89 Tile, Nehemiah 38 Tombo 244 Toronto 73 Transkei 259 Transvaal 45, 178, 193, 204, 232, 241, 259 Turner Memorial Church 245 Turner, Henry McNeal 63, 68–70, 73–79, 94–96, 99, 100, 103, 114, 123, 170, 205, 232, 245, 268 Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute 39, 48, 60, 111, 161, 180, 185–86, 194,

Index

238–40, 242, 249, 257, 260, 270 Tuskegeeism 238–40, 242, 253, 255, 260, 273 Tyrrell, Ian 27 U U.S. Department of Education 176 U.S. State Department 135–36 Union of South Africa 94, 177, 184, 188, 198, 204, 207, 209, 231, 256, 267 United Council for Missionary Education 155 United Free Church of Scotland 259 Universal Negro Improvement Association 103, 106, 135, 250 Unwritten History 79, 103–105, 107–109, 111, 114, 119, 120 V Vernon, William T. 123, 125, 133, 237, 240, 257 Viaene, Vincent 142 Voice of Missions, The 44, 68–70, 79, 80, 117, 127, 133, 136, 137, 141, 162, 167, 182, 191, 210, 219, 240, 241 W Walters, Alexander 105 Washington, Booker T. 39, 48, 60, 111, 156, 157, 179, 182, 185–86, 194, 238, 240, 270, 272 Waterloo 245 Wells, Ida B. 106 Wesleyan Church 245, 247 Wesleyan Methodist Church 232, 256 West Africa: An Open Door 79 White, Amos Jerome 79, 223 White, Luella Graham 79, 223–25 Who’s Who in America 74 Wilberforce Institute, AME 178, 223–25, 241, 259 Wilberforce University, AME 60–61, 134, 205, 213, 217, 218, 223, 245, 251, 258, 270 Williams, George W. 61, 76 Wilson, Woodrow 149 Women’s Christian Alliance 105 Women’s Christian Recorder, The 68 Women’s Home and Foreign Missionary Society, AME 68, 115, 130, 210 Women’s Missionary Society of South Africa, AME 212 Women’s Christian Temperance Union 138

Women’s League, ANC 218 Women’s National Committee for Law Enforcement 120 Women’s Parent Mite Missionary Society, AME 64, 68, 111, 115, 130, 214, 217, 232, 247, 251 Woodson, Carter G. 132, 133 Woodstock 215 World Atlas of Christian Missions 231 World Congress of Faiths 167 World Council of Churches 268 World Evangelical Alliance 148 World League Against Alcohol 138 World Methodist Council 268 World Missionary Atlas 171 World Missionary Conference, in Edinburgh 147, 160, 171; in Jerusalem 148, 152, 160; in Le Zoute 186, 188, 189; in Tambaram 148, 160 World Sunday School Convention 178, 205 World’s Ecumenical Conference of Methodism 160 World’s Fair 167 World’s Christian Endeavor Convention 141, 166 World’s Columbian Exposition 160 World’s Parliament of Religions 148, 160 Wright, Charlotte Crogman 80, 97, 215, 222–25 Wright, Richard R., Jr. 45, 167–69, 212, 213, 214, 215, 259 X X, Malcolm 269 Xhosa 178, 258 Xuma, Alfred B. 38, 251, 256, 259, 270 Y Yale University 245 Year of Africa 269 Yoruba Land 257 Young Men’s Christian Association 133, 138 Z Zion Chapel 232, 245, 256, 257 Zulu 258

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t r a n s at l a n t i s c h e h i s t o r i s c h e s t u d i e n Veröffentlichungen des Deutschen Historischen Instituts Washington, DC

Herausgegeben von Hartmut Berghoff, Mischa Honeck, Jan C. Jansen und Britta Waldschmidt-Nelson.

Franz Steiner Verlag

ISSN 0941–0597

45. Ulrike Weckel Beschämende Bilder Deutsche Reaktionen auf alliierte Dokumentarfilme über befreite Konzentrationslager 2012. 672 S. mit 22 Abb. und 4 Tab., geb. ISBN 978-3-515-10113-4 46. Jan Surmann Shoah-Erinnerung und Restitution Die US-Geschichtspolitik am Ende des 20. Jahrhunderts 2012. 302 S., geb. ISBN 978-3-515-10157-8 47. Rainald Becker Nordamerika aus süddeutscher Perspektive Die Neue Welt in der gelehrten Kommunikation des 18. Jahrhunderts 2012. 424 S. mit 9 Tab. und 15 Taf., geb. ISBN 978-3-515-10185-1 48. Levke Harders American Studies Disziplingeschichte und Geschlecht 2013. 341 S. mit 11 Abb. und 9 Tab., geb. ISBN 978-3-515-10457-9 49. Adelheid von Saldern Amerikanismus Kulturelle Abgrenzung von Europa und US-Nationalismus im frühen 20. Jahrhundert 2013. 428 S., geb. ISBN 978-3-515-10470-8 50. Jochen Krebber Württemberger in Nordamerika

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Migration von der Schwäbischen Alb im 19. Jahrhundert 2014. 317 S. mit 10 Abb., 10 Ktn. und 42 Tab., geb. ISBN 978-3-515-10605-4 Leonard Schmieding „Das ist unsere Party“ HipHop in der DDR 2014. 267 S. mit 23 Abb. und 15 Farbtafeln, geb. ISBN 978-3-515-10663-4 Anja Schäfers Mehr als Rock ’n’ Roll Der Radiosender AFN bis Mitte der sechziger Jahre 2014. 454 S. mit 13 Abb., geb. ISBN 978-3-515-10716-7 Alexander Pyrges Das Kolonialprojekt EbenEzer Formen und Mechanismen protestantischer Expansion in der atlantischen Welt des 18. Jahr­ hunderts 2015. 507 S., geb. ISBN 978-3-515-10879-9 Melanie Henne Training Citizenship Ethnizität und Breitensport in Chicago, 1920–1950 2015. 378 S., geb. ISBN 978-3-515-10955-0 Larissa Schütze William Dieterle und die deutschsprachige Emigration in Hollywood Antifaschistische Filmarbeit bei Warner Bros. Pictures, 1930-1940 2015. 347 S., geb. ISBN 978-3-515-10974-1

In Encountering Empire, Elisabeth Engel traces how black American missionaries – men and women grappling with their African heritage – established connections in Africa during the heyday of European colonialism. Reconstructing the black American ‘colonial encounter,’ Engel analyzes the images, transatlantic relationships, and possibilities of representation African American missionaries developed for themselves while negotiating colonial regimes. Between 1900 and 1939, these missionaries paved the way for the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the oldest independent black American institution, to establish a presence in Britain’s sub-Saharan colonies. Illuminating a neglected chapter of Atlantic history, Engel demonstrates that African Americans used imperial structures for their own self-determination. Encountering Empire thus challenges the notion that pan-Africanism was the only viable strategy for black emancipation.

ISBN 978-3-515-11117-1

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