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The Afro-American Contribution to African Studies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

George Shepperson
George Shepperson
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
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Extract

The study of Africa began long before African studies in America. In the United States today the words ‘African studies’ imply a formalized, academic structure of centres, programmes, institutes, postgraduate theses, publications, professional associations, conferences, finances from the foundations, grants from the government, etc., etc. Three and a half centuries ago, when the first blacks came to the New World, the study of Africa in America was outrageously informal: the cherishing of the memories of the ancestral continent from which the slaves had been forced.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 8 , Issue 3 , December 1974 , pp. 281 - 301
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1974

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References

1 For a general bibliographical approach to the Afro-American interest in Africa, see Porter, Dorothy B., ‘A Bibliographical Checklist of American Negro Writers about Africa’, Africa from the Point of View of American Negro Scholars, edited by Davis, John A. (Paris, 1958, pp. 379–99Google Scholar; Hill, Adelaide Cromwell and Kilson, Martin, Apropos of Africa: Sentiments of Negro American Leaders on Africa from the 1880s to the 1950s (London, 1969)Google Scholar, especially ‘A Note on Negro American Writings on Africa’, pp. 386–90Google Scholar; StDrake, Clair, ‘Negro Americans and the African Interest’, The American Negro Reference Book (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1966), pp. 662–705Google Scholar; and Shepperson, George, ‘Notes on Negro American Influences on the Emergence of African Nationalism’, The Journal of African History (Cambridge, Eng.). 1 (1960), 299–312.Google Scholar

2 Compare here Blassingame, John W., The Slave Community (New York, 1972), Chapter IGoogle Scholar; Stuckey, Sterling, ‘Through the Prism of Folklore: The Black Ethos in Slavery’, The Massachusetts Review (Amherst), 9 (1968), 417–37Google Scholar; and Fisher, Miles Mark, Negro Slave Songs in the United States (Ithaca, N.Y., 1953)Google Scholar, with Botkin, B. A., Lay My Burden Down: A Folk History of Slavery (Chicago, 1958), especially pp. 37, 57, 58, 197, 234Google Scholar, and Stampp, Kenneth M., The Peculiar Institution: Negro Slavery in the American South (London, 1964), especially pp. 343–4.Google Scholar

3 Fisher, op. cit., passim.

4 The Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois (New York, 1969), p. 62.Google Scholar

5 Jahn, Janheinz, Muntu: An Outline of Neo-African Culture (London, 1961), p. 217Google Scholar. But compare here Blassingame, op. cit., pp. 19, 29, 31–2.

6 Compare, inevitably, here Herskovits, Melville J., The Myth of the Negro Past (New York, 1941).Google Scholar

7 Woodson, Carter G., The History of the Negro Church (Washington, D.C., 1945), p. 144.Google Scholar

8 There has been little serious study of the picture of Africa which is given in the Bible, especially in the Old Testament. Ullendorff, Edward's Ethiopia and the Bible (London, 1968)Google Scholar, although it does not neglect the wider associations of the Elizabethan and Jacobean meaning of ‘Ethiopia’ (see, for example, pp. 5–7, 14–16, etc.), is concerned mainly with ‘Ethiopia ’ in its modern, narrower meaning.

9 For an interesting example of the use of these ‘Ethiopian’ references by an Afro-American intellectual in the slavery days, see Garnet, Henry Highland, The Past and the Present Condition, and the Destiny of the Colored Race … (Troy, N.Y., 1848)Google Scholar, quoted in Bracey, John H. Jr, Meier, August, and Rudwick, Elliott M., editors, B/ac/ Nationalism in America (Indianapolis and New York, 1970), pp. 115–20.Google Scholar

10 Heeren was a prolific writer. The quickest guide to his work, from the point of view of black Africa, is his Historical Researches into the Politics, Intercourse, and Trade of the Carthaginians, Ethiopians, and Egyptians (London, 1857)Google Scholar. The esteem in which he was held by black American writers in the nineteenth century is represented by the distinguished Afro-American lawyer and diplomat, John Henry Smith, in a remark made in 1896: ‘There are two classics, African, which should be read: A. H. L. Heeren, African Researches, and a portion of Herodotus’ (quoted in Hill and Kilson, op. cit., p. 54).

11 Quoted in Thorpe, Earl E., Negro Historians in the United States (Baton Rouge, 1958), p. 19.Google Scholar

12 Bracey, op. cit., pp. 115–20.

13 Douglass, in ‘The Claims of the Negro Ethnologically Considered’, quoted in Brotz, Howard, editor, Negro Social and Political Thought 1850–1920: Representative Texts (New York, 1966), pp. 235–8.Google Scholar

14 Quoted in McPherson, James M., The Negro's Civil War (New York, 1967), pp. 109–10.Google Scholar

15 See, for example, Cuffee, Paul, Brief Account of the Settlement and Present Situation of the Colony of Sierra Leone (New York, 1812)Google Scholar; Coker, Daniel, Journal of Daniel Colker …. on a Voyage for Sherhro, in Africa …. with Three Agents and about Ninety Persons of Colour (Baltimore, 1820)Google Scholar; Peterson, Daniel H., The Looking-Glass: Being a True Report and Narrative of the Rev. Daniel H. Peterson … Including His Visit to Western Africa (New York, 1854)Google Scholar. Compare also Anderson, Benjamin J. K., Narrative of a Journey to Musardu, the Capital of the Western Mandingoes (New York, 1870).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 Clendenen, Clarence C. and Duignan, Peter, Americans in Black Africa up to 1865 (Stanford, 1964), pp. 60–61Google Scholar. The publications concerning the Delany and Campbell expedition are Delany, M. R., Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party (New York, 1861)Google Scholar; Campbell, Robert, A Few Facts Relating to Lagos, Abeokuta, and other sections of Central Africa (Philadelphia, 1860)Google Scholar and A Pilgrimage to my Motherland: an Account of a Journey among the Egbas and Yorubas of Central Africa, in 1859–60 (New York, 1861).Google Scholar

17 See Fyfe, Christopher, Africanus Horton (New York, 1972)Google Scholar and Nicol, Davidson, Africanus Horton …. Extracts from the political, scientific and medical writings of J. A. B. Horton, M.D., 1835–1883 (London, 1870), especially pp. 119–23, 135–75Google Scholar. But compare the writings by two Afro-American doctors, Madison Spencer Briscoe and Hildrus Augustus Poindexter, on medical problems in West Africa listed in Porter, op. cit., pp. 382 and 392.

18 See Drake, op. cit., pp. 679–685; Harlan, Louis R., ‘Booker T. Washington and the White Man's Burden’, American Historical Review, 71 (1966), 441–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 See King, Kenneth J., The American Background of the Phelps-Stokes Commissions and their Influence on Education in East Africa (Ph.D. thesis: Edinburgh, 1968)Google Scholar and Pan-Africanism and Education (Oxford, 1971).Google Scholar

20 Drake, op. cit., pp. 683–4; Harlan, op. cit., pp. 464–7.

21 Rudwick, Elliot and Meier, August, ‘Black Men in the White City: Negroes in the Columbian Exposition, 1893’, Phylon (Atlanta, 1965), 26, 354–61Google Scholar; Redkey, Edwin S., Black Exodus: Black Nationalist and Back-to-Africa Movements 1890–1910 (New Haven, 1969), pp. 181–3Google Scholar. Few official records of this Chicago Conference appear to have survived but the Chicago Historical Society has two documents which should be consulted for Afro-American participation in the Conference: The World's Congress Auxiliary of the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 … Official Programme of the Congress on Africa, Commencing August 14, 1893 …. Chicago; and The World's Congress Auxiliary … Department of Science and Philosophy. General Division of African Ethnology. Report …. by … Joseph E. Roy, D.D.

22 Bowen, J. W. E., editor, Africa and the American Negro (Atlanta, 1896).Google Scholar

23 Orishatukeh Faduma is a fascinating representative of the African diaspora, spanning the Caribbean (Guyana), black America and Africa itself. His publications (largely occasional articles) were many and varied, and include ‘Religious Beliefs of the Yoruba People in West Africa ‘and’ Success and Drawback of Missionary Work in Africa by an Eye-Witness’ in Bowen, op. cit., pp. 31–6 and 125–36; The Dejects of the Negro Church (American Negro Academy Occasional Paper, No. 10, Washington, D.C., 1904).Google Scholar

24 Thorpe, op. cit., pp. 118–123; Meier, August, Negro Thought in America, 1880–1915 (Ann Arbor, 1966), pp. 260–5.Google Scholar

25 The other was the Journal of the Royal African Society which started publication in 1901.

26 Thorpe, op. cit., pp. 93, 119–120, 168. A detailed, full-scale biography of Schomburg is urgently needed for both African and Afro-American studies.

27 On George Washington Williams and the Congo, see Bontinck, François, Aux Origines de L'Etat Indépendant dn Congo: Documents tirés d'Archives Américaines (Louvain and Paris, 1966), pp. 441–9Google Scholar; Hill and Kilson, op. cit., pp. 98–107; Franklin, John Hope, ‘George Washington Williams, Historian’, Journal of Negro History, 31 (1946), 60–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and George Washington Williams and Africa (Washington, D.C., 1971), pp. 21–29.Google Scholar

28 Thorpe, op. cit., p. 33.

29 Woodson, op. cit., p. 220.

30 See, for example, the numerous works of J. A. Rogers.

31 See Drake, op. cit., pp. 666, 670, 690; Shepperson, op. cit., pp. 304, 309, 311–12; King, op. cit., passim, and ‘Early Pan-African Politicians in East Africa’, Mawazo (Kampala: Makerere University College), 2 (1969), 2/10Google Scholar, and ‘Africa and the Southern States of the United States of America: Notes on J. H. Oldham and American Negro Education for Africans’, Journal of African History (Cambridge, 1969), 10, pp. 659–77.Google Scholar

32 Shepperson, op. cit., p. 309; Ulysses Lee, , ‘The ASNLH, The Journal of Negro History, and American Scholarly Interest in Africa’, Africa …Google Scholar, edited by John A. Davis, op. cit., pp. 403–13; Thorpe, , pp. 89–108.Google Scholar

33 Logan, Rayford W., ‘The American Negro's View of Africa’, Africa ….Google Scholar, edited by John A. Davis, op. cit., p. 220.

34 Argyle, W. J., ‘The Concept of African Collectivism’, Mawazo (Kampala: Makerere University College), 1 (1968), 39, footnote 21.Google Scholar

35 Thorpe, op. cit., p. 77.

36 See Wesley, Charles H., ‘W. E. B. Du Bois the Historian’, and William Leo Hansberry, ‘W. E. B. Du Bois’ influence on African History’, Freedomways (New York), 5 (1965), 59–87Google Scholar; also Kaiser, Ernest, ‘A Selected Bibliography of the Published Writings of W. E. B. Du Bois’Google Scholar, and other articles in this W. E. B. Du Bois Memorial Issue.

37 The Negro (New York, 1915)Google Scholar; Black Folk, Then and Now: An Essay in the History and Sociology of the Negro Race (New York, 1939)Google Scholar; The World and Africa: An Inquiry into the Part which Africa has Played in World History (New York, 1947).Google Scholar

38 (New York, 1965 edition), pp. xi–xii.

39 Du Bois, W. E. B., Dusk of Dawn (New York, 1940), pp. 322–4Google Scholar; see also Ivy, James W., ‘Traditional NAACP interest in Africa as reflected in the pages of “The Crisis”’, Africa …Google Scholar, edited by John A. Davis, op. cit., p. 231.

40 Encyclopaedia of the Negro. Preparatory Volume, with Guy B. Johnson (New York, 1945).Google Scholar

41 Thorpe, op. cit., pp. 110–12.

42 Listed in Porter, op. cit., p 397.

43 Pp. 34–41.

44 Work, Bibliography of the Negro, op. cit., p. xii.

45 Thorpe, op. cit., pp. 145, 158; Hansberry, op. cit.; Hansberry articles listed in Porter, op. cit., p. 388; and Hansberry, , ‘Indigenous African Religions’, Africa …Google Scholar, edited by John A. Davis, op. cit., pp. 83–100.

46 Logan, Rayford W., ‘The Historical Aspects of Pan-Africanism, 1900–1945’, Pan-Africanism Reconsidered, edited by the American Society of African Culture (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1962), pp. 37–52Google Scholar; Diplomatic Relations Between the United States and Haiti, 1776–1891 (Chapel Hill, 1941)Google Scholar; Haiti and the Dominican Republic (London, 1968)Google Scholar. For Logan and the Pan-African milieu, see Geiss, Imanuel, The Pan-African Movement (London, 1974), passim.Google Scholar

47 The Senate and the Versailles Mandates System (Washington, D.C., 1945)Google Scholar; The African Mandates in World Politics (Washington, D.C., 1948)Google Scholar; The Operation of the Mandate System in Africa (Washington, D.C, 1942).Google Scholar

48 Gifford, Prosser and Louis, William Roger, Britain and Germany in Africa (New Haven, 1967), Pp. 736, 785.Google Scholar

49 Du Bois was not able to produce more than an essay on this subject: ‘An Essay Toward a History of the Black Man in the Great War’, The Crisis (New York), 18 (June 1919), 63–87Google Scholar, especially p. 64.

50 A contribution by a white American to this subject which is frequently overlooked is Davis, Shelby Cullom, Reservoirs of Men: A History of the Black Troops of French West Africa (thesis presented at the University of Geneva: Chambéry, 1934).Google Scholar

51 Johnson, James Weldon, Africa in the World Democracy: Address Delivered at the Annual Meeting of the NAACP, Jan. 6, 1919 (New York, 1919), pp. 13–23.Google Scholar

52 The African writings of Ellis and Stewart are listed in Porter, op. cit., pp. 386–7 and 395.

53 ‘The Reconstruction of History’, The Journal of Negro History (Washington, D.C.), 20 (1935). 421.Google Scholar

54 SeeLocke, Alain Leroy, ‘A Note on African Art’, Opportunity (African Art Number), 2 (05 1924), 134–8Google Scholar; ‘Collection of Congo Art’, Arts Magazine, 2 (February 1927), 60–70Google Scholar; ‘Art Lessons from the Congo’, Survey, 57 (February 1927), 587–89Google Scholar, etc. … See also Cook, Mercer, Five French Negro Authors (Washington, D.C., 1943)Google Scholar; with Henderson, Stephen E., The Militant Black Writer in Africa and the United States (Madison, 1970)Google Scholar; Allen, Samuel W., ‘Tendencies in African Poetry’, Africa …Google Scholar, edited by John A. Davis, op. cit., pp. 175–198.

55 Stewart, Gail and Hair, P. E. H., ‘A Bibliography of the Vai Language and Script’, Journal of West African Languages (Cambridge), 6 (1969), 109.Google Scholar

56 Southern Workman (Hampton), 37, 518–26.Google Scholar

57 Thomas E. Besolow and Momolu M. Massaquoi. (I am grateful to Dr P. E. H. Hair of the University of Liverpool for these and other details on the Vai language.) Both men published in the United States: Besolow, Thomas E., From the Darkness of Africa to the Light of America: The Story of an African Prince (Boston, 1890)Google Scholar; Massaquoi, Momolu, ‘The Vey Language’, Spirit of Missions (New York), 64 (1899), 577–9.Google Scholar

58 Watkins, Mark Hanna, A Grammar of Chichewa: A Bantu Language of British Central Africa (in Language Dissertations Published by the Linguistic Society of America: Supplement to ‘Language’, Journal of the Linguistic Society of America (Philadelphia), 24 (04–06 1937), 1–158.Google Scholar

59 ‘Mr Banda was a very excellent informant’, p. 7Google Scholar. There are both explicit and implicit biographical details about President Banda in Watkins's Grammar of Chichewa which should not be neglected by students of this African politician.

60 ‘African Survivals in the New World with Special Emphasis on the Arts’, Africa, … edited by Davis, John A.Google Scholar, op. cit., pp. 101–116.

61 ‘Some contacts of Brazilian Ex-Slaves with Nigeria, West Africa’, Journal of Negro History, 27 (1942), 56–67.Google Scholar

62 See Dalby, David, ‘Americanisms that may once have been Africanisms’, The Times (London), 19 07 1969, p. 9Google Scholar; Hair, P. E. H., ‘Sierra Leone Items in the Gullah Dialect of American English’, Sierra Leone Language Review, 4 (1965), 79–84.Google Scholar

63 See, passim, Herskovits, Melville J., The New World Negro: Selected Papers in Afro-American Studies (Indianapolis, 1966), edited by Herskovits, Frances S..Google Scholar

64 ‘The Land Equation in Kenya Colony’, Journal of Negro History, 24 (1939), 33–43Google Scholar; ‘The Irua Ceremony among the Kikuyu of Kiambu District’, Journal of Negro History, 26 (1941), 16–65Google Scholar. Bunche's Harvard Ph.D. thesis, however, was on a West not an East African topic: a comparative study of the administration of Togoland and the Cameroons.

65 Hill and Kilson, op. cit., p. 320.

66 There is a useful but not absolutely complete listing of the African collections of black colleges and institutions in Duignan, Peter, Handbook of American Resources for African Studies (Stanford, 1967)Google Scholar. See entries under Atlanta University (pp. 4–5); Fisk University (pp. 27, 183);Google ScholarHampton Institute (p. 28)Google Scholar; Howard University (pp. 33, 184)Google Scholar; Lincoln University (pp. 51–2, 185)Google Scholar; the Schomburg Collection of Negro Literature and History (pp. 101–4, 66, 188)Google Scholar; Wilberforce University (p. 130)Google Scholar; African Methodist Episcopal Church (pp. 139–40)Google Scholar; African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (p. 140)Google Scholar; National Baptist Convention (p. 160)Google Scholar; Tuskegee Institute (pp. 191–2).Google Scholar

67 See Hill, Adelaide C., ‘African Studies Programs in the United States’, Africa in the United States, edited by McKay, Vernon (New York, 1969), pp. 65–88.Google Scholar

68 The proceedings of this important Conference {Présence Africaine, Nos. 8–9–10, June-November 1956) should be compared with the proceedings of the second Conference {Presence Africaine, 1, Nos. 24–25, February–May 1959, and 11, Nos. 27–28, August–November 1959), not only for an estimate of the parts played in it by Afro-Americans, but for a sketch-plan, as it were, of the problems and prospects for the study of the African diaspora today.

69 Coan, Josephus R., The Expansion of Missions of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Africa, 1896–1908 (Hartford Seminary Foundation, Ph.D., 1961)Google Scholar. On Ethio-pianism, see Shepperson, George, ‘Ethiopianism: Past and Present’, Christianity in Tropical Africa, edited by Baëta, C. G. (Oxford, 1968), pp. 249–68.Google Scholar

70 As an introduction to this, see Harr, Wilber C., The Negro as an American Protestant Missionary in Africa (University of Chicago, Ph.D., 1945).Google Scholar

71 For some indication of these possibilities see Hammond, Peter B., ‘Afro-American Indians and Afro-Asians: Cultural Contacts between Africa and the Peoples of Asia and Aboriginal America’Google Scholar and Stuckey, Sterling, ‘African and Afro-American Relationships: Research Pos sibilities’, Expanding Horizons in African Studies, edited by Carter, Gwendolen M. and Paden, Ann (Evanston, 1969), pp. 275–90, 291–300.Google Scholar

72 For an introduction to this, see Shepperson, George, ‘The African abroad or the African diaspora’, Emerging Themes of African History, edited by Ranger, T. O. (Nairobi, 1968), pp. 152–76Google Scholar; also Harris, Joseph E., ‘Introduction to the African diaspora’, pp. 146–151.Google Scholar

73 See SirJohnston, Harry, The Negro in the New World (New York: reprint of 1969)Google Scholar, with a new introduction by George Shepperson; also, for general stimulation, Freedom ways (New York), 4 (1964), No. 3Google Scholar, special issue on ‘The People of The Caribbean Area ’.

74 See, for example, Lynch, Hollis R., Edward Wilmot Blyden, Pan-Negro Patriot, 1832 –1912 (London, 1967)Google Scholar; Rodney, Walter, A History of the Upper Guinea Coast, 1545 to 1800 (Oxford, 1970).Google Scholar

75 See Hammond, op. cit.; Harris, Joseph E., ‘African History from Indian Sources’, Africa Quarterly (New Delhi), 04–06 1968, pp. 4–9Google Scholar; Allen, J. de V., ‘A Proposal for Indian Ocean Studies’, Mawazo (Kampala: Makerere University College), 2 (1969), 23–32Google Scholar. (Since this essay was written, the publication of The African Presence in Asia, Evanston, 1971)Google Scholar, by the Afro-American scholar Joseph E. Harris, is a further indication of the interest of Afro-American scholars in neglected aspects of the study of the African diaspora, as is also Snowden, Frank W. JrBlacks in Antiquity. Ethiopians in the Greco-Roman Experience (Cambridge, Mass., 1970.)Google Scholar

76 I am most grateful to the Regents of the University of California and to the African Studies Center of the University of California, Los Angeles, for one of whose colloquia this paper was originally commissioned, for permission to print this revised version of it.