How did terms like Black Messianism and Black Nationalism become an integral part of our

understanding of African American movements in the first half of the 20 th century. Discuss
with special reference to Marcus Garvey and WEB Du Bios?

Ans: In the century after the emancipation proclamation of 1863, black leaders and
organizations with or without the white approval and support continued to struggle against
the caste inequalities of the system of slavery. Free Negros occupied ambiguous, complex
and precarious positions in New world slave society, the very existence of the free people of
color profoundly affected the nature of slavery and the pattern of race relations- before and
after the general emancipation.
There was a growing militant moral nationalism of the black leaders from the mid 19 th
century onwards which separated them from the white abolitionists who rather declared
themselves pacifists and regarded their call for emancipation based on reason and moral
suasion. However, there were two basic elements of the racial ideology of the 19 th century:
racial pride and integration with the United States. But this period was also marked by rifts
and differential opinions within the black community with some propagating for black
separatism, emigration, voluntary repatriation and identification with Africa. They believed
that the idea of racial integration was rather illusionary.
The two most prominent leaders among them were Marcus Garvey and W.E.B Du Bois who
is the later years of his career as an Afro-American leader drew on such sentiments and
convictions for the formation of a new black nationalistic ideology.
By the turn of the 20th Cen the ascendency of Booker T Washington as a black leader
seemed unchallenged. His overlaid importance on industrial Education, emigration of
Negroes to Africa, opposition to the integration and diffusion of Negros in the north and
northwest and his espousal of Southern section of America where the Negro resided as
being the best place for him all came under substantial attack. Questions had been launched
on his education, political, economic and his social outlook and by the time of his Death in
1915 he had already been supplanted in the minds of young, socially aware blacks and
replaced by new leaders with new ideologies and philosophies.
These included Marcus Garvey who arrived in New York in 1916, inspired by Washington but
then later developed his own moral, foundational basis in his fight for black social justice
and emancipation. Also, W.E.B Du Bois whom many historians regarded as the greatest
black leader ever produced.
Du Bois career spanned for almost about 5 decades showed the espousal of the ideologies
for racial justice based on militant integrationism, Pan- Africanism, a separate black
economy and finally Revolutionary Socialism. By the time even before his widely publicized
break with Washington, Du Bois had already emerged as an exponent of Black Messianism
as called by the Historian Vincent Harding.
A socialist and Communist, an integrationist and advocate of a form of voluntary
segregation, a black nationalist and a pioneering pan-Africanist Du Bois advocated cultural
pluralism. As unashamed admirer of western cultural values and achievements, he was also
the impassioned spokesperson for racial pride and solidarities as the pre-requisites for black
advancement. His Identity of Afro-Americanism began to be constructed in his university
Fisk University where he experienced extreme racism. At Fisk he also encountered rural
black poverty and ignorance. These experiences confirmed Du Bois belief in the power of
education and reason to resolve racial conflict and secure racial advancement. But it was
here that he realizes what he calls the greatest ambivalence of being a Negro. There was a
yearning for the full recognition as an American citizen but at the same time he
experienced within the community something that was inherently and deeply his own. A
closed racial group with rites and loyalties, with shared history, culture, art and philosophy.
Du Bois most explicitly revealed the impact of oppression of American creed in creating
ambivalent loyalties towards race and nation in the minds of American negros. He did not
aspire to Africanize America for America had too much to teach the world and Africa. Also,
he did not want to bleach the negro soul in white Americanism i.e. the black to emulate the
American whites. He urged and wished for a man to be both Negro and an American and to
be respected for it. Du Bois this ambivalence a central motif of his ideology.

August Meier in his article: The Paradox of Du Bois traces various shifts and Paradoxes
within his leadership and ideologies and how they underwent change. He argues that
throughout his life Du Bois struggled/wrestled with the Paradox of how to achieve equality
in the American society with keeping the distinctive identity and qualities of Black Race.
John White also traces the changes in his outlook for the struggle for social justice for the
Blacks from the initial policies of integration to the later ideas of a separate Black Economy.
However, historians have also argued that for Du Bois the interrelatedness between
Economic and Political rights was of utmost importance, a philosophy that remains rather
solid throughout his leadership. He argued that without political rights Negros primarily, a
working group will not be able to secure economic opportunity.
By the time he graduated from Fisk the theory of race separation was very much in his
blood, the idea of ‘Negroes as a nation’. He adopted conciliatory policies until the 19 th
century. He was willing to accept education and property qualification for voting as long as
free school facilities were open to all. The stress was on the value of racial integrity.

The years 1901-03 marked a transition in his philosophies. His transition from and
academician to a propagandist as John White calls it. By 1900 Du Bois was deeply engaged
in scholarship and was convinced that the rising racial prejudice and the worsening situation
required direct action.
His activities as the organizer of the Niagara Movement and the author of its manifesto and
his response to the call that led to the founding of NAACP completed this transition. He
grew more critical of Industrial education and more alarmed over the issue of
disenfranchisement. Industrious schools he argued trained its students in obsolete crafts
and produced few actual artisans. Votes and ballot were rather important for the Negro
laboring class working under racially discriminatory conditions to protect themselves. Du
Bois had come to believe that education and property qualification could not be equitably
applied. Throughout the early 20th century Du Bois can be seen as the consistent agitator,
ardent and brilliant fighter for integration and citizenship rights. He denounced the idea of
separate but equal doctrine.
Between 1920-28 DU Bois extensively travelled throughout Europe and Africa and argued
that America’s racial conflict needs to be set in the larger context of the universal concept of
color line. From 1930s-40s, what distinguished DU Bois from other black leaders during this
period was the belief that Race as an ideology was seriously underestimated in the theories
and strategies proposed to bring about racial change. There was a shift from his earlier
belief that black and white class solidarity was a practical or meaningful strategy for Negros
to peruse but he now rather proposed for the formation of a black economic cooperative
enterprise based on socialist principle racial self-help and cultural racial nationalism. Central
to his theory was the assumption that the black people as consumers held a powerful tool
within their hands which if properly utilized could provide an important foundation for
developing within the black community an independent base of power. Black self-
segregation as the ultimate path to black political and economic power. Blacks should
accept the persistence of racial prejudice, including the reality of segregation and develop
their own institutions and self-respect.
He propagated ‘BLACK ECONOMIC SEPARATISM’. His Economic nationalism was based on
the idea of a Negro group economy that would break the force of race prejudice and give
blacks the ability to enter national economy. Spiritual separation in economic life that would
involve only Negros trading among themselves. Members of talented tenth would become
planners of producer and consumer cooperatives which would form a Negro Nation within
a nation working through inner cooperation. This, he argued is the only hope for Negro in
America.

Du Bois’s black nationalism took several forms—the most influential being his

pioneering advocacy of Pan-Africanism, the belief that all people of African descent had
common interests and should work together in the struggle for their freedom. Concern with
Africa, the ancestry and the culture of Afro-Americans, and the liberation of African
continent from the European colonialism became central themes of Du Bois thoughts and
writings. Du Bois conception of American was that of a romantic racialist. This philosophy
and glorification on the African black way of life was intended to awake in Black Americans
pride in Africa and by implication, pride in themselves, in being black dark individuals. John
White argues that though Bois criticized Garvey’s glorification of blackness, but he himself
was a racial chauvinist holding for all his life a near obsession of color. Also, his ideas of
black Aryanism tracing every civilized worldly thing to an African Origin. Unlike Garvey Du
Bois for all his Romanization of Africa did not appeal for a return of Afro-Americans to their
ancestral homeland and perhaps his African nationalism was more democratic than Garvey.
At the height of Garvey movement in America he argues that Africa belongs to the Africans
and they have no will in giving up their land to foreigners either blacks or whites
However, Du Bois himself blamed the failure of pan-Africanism in a short term on
opposition to colonial power, the patronizing and selfish attitudes of whites to Africa and
the indifference of American blacks to the plight of their African contemporaries.
Eric Foner calls Du Bois image of American society similar to the modern idea of cultural
pluralism. He stressed on the equality of rights and opportunities for all ethnic groups while
maintaining their unique and special identity. He argued that these distinct groups should
not be homogenized in the ‘melting pot’ - which he probably referred to the racial politics of
the times.
Black Messianism another important and fundamental outlook of it was based on his idea
that the educated blacks or the talented Tenth must provide racial leadership. Unless this
occurred, blacks would have to accept the leadership of the whites, and thus, lose their
racial identity. His messianism also brings forth the puzzlingly dilemma of a black American -
if he was an American or a Negro or if he could be both. That if by being a negro he was not
actually perpetuating the racial gulf that already existed in America or if Negros have in
America a distinct mission as a race.
However, the most prolific and gifted of all Afro-American intellectual Du Bois was never a
successful leader and organizer. After his resignation from the NAACP at the age of 66 in
1934 Bois became as F.L Broderick’s remarked ‘a leader without followers’.
Marcus Garvey was another prominent leader, a Maroon Descendant from Jamaica he was
proud of his blackness and suspicious of the light skinned people. Black Nationalism among
Negroes given the clearest and the loudest expression by Garvey His Biographer Edmund
Cronon described Garvey as ‘A largely self-educated by, highly confident black man’.
The most fundamental aspect of Garveyism can be encapsulated in his idea of uniting all the
Negroes of the world into one great body and under a government and country of their
own. A new world of black men, a nation of sturdy men making their impress upon
civilization and causing a new light to dawn upon human race. With this aim he founded the
UNIA- Universal Negro Improvement and Conservation Association in Jamaica in 1914. Open
for the Persons of African or Negro Parentage, the UNIA was a crusade for the rehabilitation
and redemption of the Black race.
The context is which his leadership and ideologies take shape is rather important. The whole
of Africa expect for Liberia, Egypt and Ethiopia was colonized and in the New World the
optimism that followed in the post-bellum period after the emancipation of Slaves had
waned, the integration of Blacks in the American society seemed like a rather impractical
distant idea. Black Codes collapse of reconstruction. South: attempts towards re-
enslavement, violence and lynching meted out on the blacks and denial of the most
elementary citizenship rights. North - The blacks constituted the lowest of the urban
proletariat. Also, the concentration of a large disillusioned and urbanized black proletariat in
the Ghettos of the Northern states the most popular of which was Harlem of the US
provided a base for his militant nationalism
He arrived at Harlem in March 1916. His arrival to the US was timely. With the death of the
sage of Tuskegee and the leadership contest which for 20 years has been raged between
Washington and Du Bois was not resolved, in a sense he filed the vacuum left by
Washington and was more savagely attacked by Du Bois and the black intelligentsia.
Also, the disillusionment among the Negro race increased nearing the end of World War I
because they thought that the cause they had laid their lives i.e. defense of democracy, for
would be extended to them back at home. However, in spite of their sacrifice there was
little improvement in the status of Negroes.
Garvey established a branch of UNIA in America in 1917 as a Pan- African Nationalist. He
evoked the slogan ‘Africa for the black people of the world’ and argued all the people and
other races have country of their own and it is time for the Negroes to reclaim Africa and
Afro-Americans should lead this struggle. Garveyism often characterized as ‘Back-to-Africa
Movement’. Africa for Garvey symbolized the past and future for the greatness of Black
race and his emphasis on African homeland was a part of his greater stress laid on Black
pride. Blacks he argued should be viewed with pride.
Economic base as argued by John White as an indispensable unit of racial emancipation.
Effective economic organization would make the blacks self-reliant. This included the
establishment of Black Star Steamship Company and the Negro Factory Cooperation. While
the Negro Statesmen company would facilitate the inking the Negroes of the world in
commercial and industrial intercourse, the NFC was to build and operate factories in the big
industrial centers of the US, Central America, West Indies and Africa to manufacture every
marketable commodity. However, these failed due to incompetence and sabotage both
from within and outside and Garvey was charged and booked for fraudulent measures.
However, his fight for African Homeland was complex and layered asserted Eric Foner. He
argued that fight for African redemption did not mean giving up on the fight for pollical
justice and economic and industrial rights. In 1924 he established the Negro Political Union:
to consolidate the political union of the Negro through which the race would express their
political opinion and participated in the domestic politics of US. There was also a Spiritual
and Religious component of Garveyism. The African orthodox church was established in
Harlem 1921. Garvey argued that God was made in the image of a man, so black man ought
to visualize a black god and black Christ.
Sociologist E. Franklin Frazier visualized that one of the most picturesque phases of
Garveyism has been the glorification of blackness which had been made an attribute of the
celestial hierarchy. Culturally Garveyism exalted and instilled racial pride among blacks
throughout the world. Most important element of Garveyism was emphasis on its return to
Africa whether in physical or spiritual sense, the expulsion of European powers from African
continent and the belief that once a strong and independent African nation was established
Negroes would automatically gain in strength and prestige.
Garvey saw the emergence of a west Indian prophet and visionary who injected a
compelling appeal to blacks who lived in an all-black separatist environment. Thus,
established a provisional government in exile for Africa with him as the head, a black
cabinet, black generals, black flyers with a spiritual element to it awakening a racial
consciousness
More than any of his contemporaries Garvey appreciated the political, social and economic
sub-ordination of Negroes in and outside Africa. The profound social and cultural alienation
that the Negroes went through in the New World especially America and their search for
identity in that setting. He believed that the affirmation and assertation of African cultural
Heritage was inalienable for the liberation of Negroes and wanted to instill a sense of pride
and patriotism among the blacks for their ‘fatherland’ Today this idea is expressed in the
cultural concept of Nergitude.
He was aware of the Needs of the Negro people in and outside Africa to be exposed to
western education especially science and technology.
Africans westernized in. a narrow sense so that they could develop industries for the benefit
of the black people i.e. westernization within the framework of African identity and
Humanism. Acquisition of power by the Negroes in Africa was fundamental and of utmost
importance. Negro unity necessary for the true emancipation of Negro race.
Garvey accused of Racism, because of his opposition of miscegenation and advocacy for
racial purity. He was not a hater of the white because they were whites, but he hated their
actions that way they have abused and treated the blacks in modern time. He was against
the idea that Negro people should use their prowess to dominate the human race rather he
believed that the blacks should use their strength physically, morally and otherwise to
protect humanity and civilization
The impact of Garveyism in boosting the morale in instilling a sense of self-esteem and racial
pride among the Negro proletariat in the New World was considerable. E.U Essien argues
that the lives of the people in the ghettos were devoid of meaning. They were estranged
from the larger society that they seek to enter but which reject them. The desperate
character of the situation of lower-class Negroes in the larger northerner makes Black
Nationalist movement like those led by Garvey succeed because it believes meaning to their
lives and an identification with a power center which in non-white and openly challenges
white domination. Harlem minister Adam clayton argued that ‘Garvey was the only leader
working towards emancipation of blacks who made Negroes, blacks who are not ashamed
of their color’.
Thus, one can very well see the different manifestations of Black nationalism and
Messianism in case of two of the most prominent Black leaders of America, Du Bois and
Garvey. While both worked for the committed cause of ensuring social justice for the blacks
and their emancipation the tools they used, the ideologies they evoked differed. While Du
Bois commitment for both political and economic upliftment of the blacks remained
incessant, his ideologies underwent changes. Marking a shift for being in favor of separatism
then an integrationist and finally ending his career by espousing for separation of the blacks
and whites. An idea of Pan- Africanism though stressed on the roots to Africa for the blacks
but unlike Garvey he did not propagate an emigration of the blacks to their ‘Original
Homeland’ that is Africa. Though both were concerned with instilling a sense of racial pride,
Garvey’s chauvinism is often harped upon, while Du Bois whose paradox as a leader is seen
even in this context. While initially complacent with believing that the blacks were less abled
than the whites, he later marked a shift in his ideology and drew upon ideas of black
Aryanism. Thus, two the two leaders’ sense of black nationalism and how they came out to
be a messiah for the larger black community differed they did leave a major imprint in the
American black history and emancipation movement.

Bibliography
1. John White: Black Leadership in America 1895-1968
2. Eric Foner: America’s Black past
3. Garvey and Garveyism: E.U Essien Udom
4. August Meier: The Paradox of Du Bois
5. Clarence G Contee: The Emergence of Du Bois as an African Nationalist
6. http://exhibitions.nypl.org/africanaage/essay-garvey.html