US Colonization Movement, Evangelical Protestantism, & the popularization of "Negro"

(CW for discussion of multivalent racism)

In the 1820s, the American Colonization Society [which advocated deporting American Blacks to the newly-established US colony Liberia] grew into the preeminent race-relations reform organization in the United States. [Thomas] Jefferson was again endorsing colonization, and calculating segregationists were beginning to see it as a solution to Black resistance. Altruistic assimilationists figured that it was a way to develop Black people in both America and Africa. In 1825, a twenty-eight-year-old Yale alumnus, Ralph Gurley, became the new ACS secretary. He held the position until his death in 1872, while also serving twice as the chaplain of the House of Representatives. Gurley had a vision: he believed that to win the minds and souls of Americans to the colonization cause, it had to be linked to the Protestant movement. His timing was good, because the Second Great Awakening was at hand as he began his ACS post.

The American Bible Society, the American Sunday School Union, and the American Tract Society were all established in this period, and they each used the printing press to besiege the nation with Bibles, tracts, and picture cards that would help to create a strong, unified, Jesus-centered national identity. A good tract "should be entertaining," announced the American Tract Society in 1824. "There must be something to allure the listless to read." Allurement—those pictures of holy figures—had long been considered a sinful trick of Satan and "devilish" Catholics. No more. Protestant organizations started mass-producing, mass-marketing, and mass-distributing images of Jesus, who was always depicted as White. Protestants saw all the aspirations of the new American identity in the White Jesus—a racist idea that proved to be in their cultural self-interest. As pictures of this White Jesus started to appear, Blacks and Whites started to make connections, consciously and unconsciously, between the White God the Father, his White son Jesus, and the power and perfection of White people. "I really believed my old master was almighty God," runaway Henry Brown admitted, "and that his son, my young master, was Jesus Christ."

As the revived Protestant movement ignited the enthusiasm of students, professors, clergymen, merchants, and legislators in New England, the American Colonization Society drew more people into its fold. While southern colonizationists sought to remove free Blacks, northerns sought to remove all Blacks, enslaved and freed. Northern race relations had grown progressively worse since the 1790s, defying uplift suasion. Each uplifting step of Black people stoked animosity, and runaways stoked further animosity. Race riots embroiled New York City, New Haven, Boston, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh in the 1820s. As racial tensions accumulated, the ACS continued to gain adherents to the cause. Its agents argued forcefully that White prejudice and Black slavery would be eternal, and that freed Blacks must use the talents they had acquired from Whites to go back and redeem unenlightened Africa. By 1832, every northern state legislature had passed resolutions of endorsement for the colonization idea.

Free Blacks remained overwhelmingly against colonization. Their resistance to the concept partly accounted for the identifier "Negro" replacing "African" in common usage in the 1820s. Free Blacks theorized that if they called themselves "African," they would be giving credence to the notion that they should be sent back to Africa. Their own racist ideas were also behind the shift in terminology. They considered Africa and its cultural practices to be backward, having accepted racist notions of the continent. Some light-skinned Blacks preferred "colored," to separate themselves from dark-skinned Negroes or Africans.

—Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (bolding added)

I was more familiar with the mirror-image politics around the popularization of "African American" in the 20th century, but didn't know this anti-colonizationist context for the early 19th century shift to "Negro" as a preferred identifier. Interesting.

Also, gotta love that White Jesus.

Research flotsam & jetsam

I had today off work and spent the whole afternoon starting (or... continuing, but it's still early days) the process of taking apart my novel outline and looking at interweaving a second, home-front narrative arc. So far I can say that I really like what this does for the early section of the story; it solves some problems with events that formerly seemed overly coincidental and authorial and are now solidly character-arc-driven; and it also sets up some productive tensions for later in the book between my two POV characters. But I'm also feeling a bit overwhelmed by how to target my research at this point; it's a big project and there are so many areas to explore and flesh out. Which, I knew that was true before I started the restructure—it was true even with my old high-level outline—but even more so now. As I was telling greywash earlier today, I get so much joy out of working inside these very detailed, solid historical frameworks... but constructing said frameworks for myself is a lot of work! I'd been working inside the Unreal Cities framework for so long that I kind of forgot how much work it was to make.

Anyway, a few notes of interest that I happened across in my reading:

• Did you know that "hinterland" has a technical definition? Apparently, in maritime terms, the area which brings its goods to a port for export and receives the imports processed through that port, is that port's "hinterland." (In more general economic terms the same can be said of an area outside an urban center, even if that center's not a port.) I always just thought it meant "the boonies." *themoreyouknow.gif*



• Three of the four surviving issues of the Atlantic Advocate, which today I learned was Nova Scotia's first Black Canadian newsmagazine (starting publication in 1915) are available online to browse at one's leisure: January 1917; April 1917; and May 1917. I haven't had time yet to read them all in full, but skimming through, they're an interesting read: extremely moral-suason-y—the January issue promises "All the news of interest: Of the Race; Their Doings; Their Progress"—but it gives a sense of how a certain group of Black Canadians were talking about their lives & activism at the time.



• You can also browse the entire run of issues of the Dalhousie Gazette, the Dalhousie University student newspaper, from its inception in 1869 right up until the present day. In case you wanted to know what Professor Martin had to say about dreams in his lecture to the medical school, or what happened on the Senior Night Walk of November 30, 1916.



• Archives of mainstream Nova Scotia newspapers are, on the other hand, bizarrely difficult to find online?? Apparently I need to track down a ProQuest membership in order to look at back issues of the Halifax Chronicle(/Herald)?? My life is hard, etc. etc.



• Speaking of Halifax, did you know that the Great Halifax Explosion, in which a ship laden with high explosives exploded in the harbor, was the largest man-made explosion in history prior to the atomic bomb? Now you do.