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“Poking Holes in the Sky”: Professor James Thaele, American Negroes, and Modernity in 1920s Segregationist South Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2014

Amanda D. Kemp  and
Robert Trent Vinson
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Abstract:

In 1920s South Africa, white segregationists justified accelerated racially discriminatory legislation by casting blacks as “uncivilized primitive natives” undeserving of full citizenship rights. Africans often countered this discourse by pointing to African Americans as proof of black capacities to modernize and as role models worthy of emulating in antisegregationist activity. Black South African leaders often associated themselves with African Americans to further legitimize their respective political activities. This article explores this phenomenon with the example of James Thaele, the American-educated president of the African National Congress (Cape Western Province), perhaps the most actively militant organization in the late 1920s. Previous scholars have viewed Thaele's flamboyant dress and hyperbolic language as evidence of a curious eccentric. Instead, we show that Thaele's dress and language were important performative tools that subverted, mocked, and reversed white modernity narratives that locked Africans into static “uncivilized native” categories. Black America was an indispensable aspect of Thaele's antisegregationist attacks. At historically black Lincoln University (Pennsylvania), he earned two degrees, attaining an educational level then unavailable in South Africa, and he became enamored of Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (U.N.I.A.). Upon his return to South Africa, Thaele legitimized his political organizing, public speeches, and writings by emphasizing his celebrated American background and pointing to the U.N.I.A. as a model for antisegregationist organizing in South Africa.

Résumé:

Résumé:

Dans l'Afrique du Sud des années 1920, les ségrégationnistes blancs justifièrent l'accélération de la législation de discrimination raciale en qualifiant les noirs d' “indigènes primitifs non-civilisés” ne méritant pas de droits civiques entiers. Les Africains ont souvent contré ce discours en citant les Africains Américains comme preuve de la compétence noire à se moderniser et comme modèles dignes d'être imités dans leurs activités antiségrégationnistes. Les dirigeants noirs sud-africains s'identifient souvent aux Africains Américains afin d'appuyer la légitimité de leurs activités politiques respectives. Cet article examine ce phénomène à l'aide de l'exemple de James Thaele, le président éduqué en Amérique du Congrès National Africain (Province de Cap Ouest), peut-être l'organisation militante la plus active à la fin des années 1920. Des chercheurs précédents ont vu dans les tenues extravagantes et le langage hyperbolique de Thaele la preuve d'une bizarre excentricité. Au lieu de cela, nous montrons que les tenues et le langage de Thaele étaient des outils performatifs importants qui subvertissaient, parodiaient et renversaient les discours blancs sur la modernité enfermant les Africains dans des catégories statiques d'“indigènes non civilisés.” L'Amérique noire était un aspect indispensable des attaques antiségrégationnistes de Thaele. A Lincoln University (PA), une université historiquement noire, il obtint deux “degrees,” atteignant ainsi un niveau d'éducation alors impossible à avoir en Afrique du Sud, et se passionna pour la Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA) de Marcus Garvey. A son retour en Afrique du Sud, Thaele légitimera son organisation politique, ses discours publics et écrits en mettant en valeur ses célèbres antécédents américains, et en attirant l'attention sur l'UNIA en tant que modèle de l'organisation antiségrégationniste en Afrique du Sud.

Type
Special Issue on the Diaspora
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 43 , Issue 1: Africa's Diaspora: A Special Issue , April 2000 , pp. 141 - 159
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2000

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