Classical Black Nationalism

An examination of black nationalist thought from its earliest proto-nationalistic phase in the 1700s to the Garvey movement in the 1920s.

Wilson Jeramiah Moses, whom the Village Voice called one of the foremost historians of black nationalism, has here collected the most influential speeches, articles, and letters that inform the intellectual underpinnings of contemporary black nationalism, focusing on its inception. The goal of early black nationalists was the return of the African-American population to Africa to create a sovereign nation-state and to formulate an ideological basis for a concept of national culture. Most early black nationalists believed that this return was directed by the hand of God.

Providing documents that illustrate the motivations of both whites and blacks as they sought the removal of the black population, Moses cites Thomas Jefferson, who held that it was self-evident that black and white populations could not intermingle on an equal basis or merge to form one happy society, and who toyed with the idea of a mass deportation of the black American population. He reveals how profit motivates any nationalist movement in the letters between African American capitalists Paul Cuffe and James Forten. Among the more difficult selections to classify in this collection, Robert Alexander Young's “Ethiopian Manifesto” prophesied the coming of a prophetic liberator of the African race. The Christian nature of nineteenth century black nationalism is evident in Blyden's “The Call of Providence to the Descendants of Africa in America.”

Featuring contributions from more well-known voices such as Marcus Garvey, W.E.B. Dubois, and Frederick Douglass, Classical Black Nationalism presents a foundational knowledge of the disparate voices behind this often discussed but seldom understood movement.