Today's black nationalism grows from a tradition which originated long before Marcus Garvey excited urban blacks in the 1920s. Mr. Redkey has detailed - often in the poignant words of the participants - the reasons for and the fate pf several back-to-Africa schemes in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. An expression of despair and militancy, emigration seemed to many impoverished black farmers their only salvation. Their dreams were inspired and encouraged by a black American - Henry M. Turner, Bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church - who had himself risen from a background of poverty and ignorance. /combining his bitterness against white American society with a romantic fascination for Africa as the site of a nation in which romantic fascination for Africa as the site of a nation in which Afro-Americans could find economic, political, and social success, Turner strongly backed the efforts of various groups, including the American Colonization Society, to send boatloads of emigrants to Liberia, Despite the enthusiasm of Turner and his followers, however, the movement failed to gain needed financial support or endorsement by other black leaders, and the dream of large-scale emigration was never realized.
Description:
Today's black nationalism grows from a tradition which originated long before Marcus Garvey excited urban blacks in the 1920s. Mr. Redkey has detailed - often in the poignant words of the participants - the reasons for and the fate pf several back-to-Africa schemes in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. An expression of despair and militancy, emigration seemed to many impoverished black farmers their only salvation. Their dreams were inspired and encouraged by a black American - Henry M. Turner, Bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church - who had himself risen from a background of poverty and ignorance. /combining his bitterness against white American society with a romantic fascination for Africa as the site of a nation in which romantic fascination for Africa as the site of a nation in which Afro-Americans could find economic, political, and social success, Turner strongly backed the efforts of various groups, including the American Colonization Society, to send boatloads of emigrants to Liberia, Despite the enthusiasm of Turner and his followers, however, the movement failed to gain needed financial support or endorsement by other black leaders, and the dream of large-scale emigration was never realized.