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“The Future Golden Day of the Race”: Millennialism and Black Americans in the Nadir, 1877–1901*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Timothy E. Fulop
Timothy E. Fulop
Affiliation:
Princeton University
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Extract

At the turn of the century, Edward W. Blyden, resident of Liberia and former Presbyterian missionary from America, read to some African natives the following description from the New York Independent of the burning of a black man in Georgia:

Sam Hose was burned on Sunday afternoon in the presence of thousands of people. Before the fire had been kindled the mob amused themselves by cutting off the ears, fingers, toes, etc. to carry away as mementos. After the burning, and before the body was cool, it was cut to pieces, the heart and liver being especially cut up and sold. Small pieces of bone brought 25 cents, and “a bit of liver, crisply cooked, sold for 10 cents.” So eager were the crowd to obtain souvenirs that a rush for the stake was made, and those near the body were forced against and had to fight for their escape.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 84 , Issue 1 , January 1991 , pp. 75 - 99
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1991

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References

1 Blyden, Edward W., “The Negro in the United States,” A.M.E. Church Review 16 (01 1900) 309Google Scholar.

2 Ibid.

3 See Logan, Rayford W., The Negro in American Life and Thought: The Nadir, 1877-1901 (New York: Dial, 1954)Google Scholar.

4 Peabody, George B., “The Hope of Africa,” A.M.E. Church Review 7 (07 1890) 59Google Scholar.

5 For background on this era, see Moses, Wilson Jeremiah, The Golden Age of Black Nationalism, 1850-1925 (Camden, CT: Archon, 1970)Google Scholar; Fredrickson, George M., The Black Image in the White Mind: The Debate on Afro-American Character and Destiny, 1817-1914 (New York: Harper & Row, 1971)Google Scholar; White, Ronald C., Liberty and Justicefor All: Racial Reform and the Social Gospel, 1877-1925 (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990); andGoogle ScholarMeier, August, Negro Thought in America, 1880-1915: Racial Ideologies in the Age of Booker T. Washington (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1963)Google Scholar.

6 Sweet, Leonard, “Millennialism in America: Recent Studies,” TS 40 (1979) 530Google Scholar. Other important bibliographic surveys of millennialism include Smith, David E., “Millenarian Scholarship in America,” American Quarterly 17 (1965) 535–49; andCrossRefGoogle ScholarSchwartz, Hillel, “The End of the Beginning: Millenarian Studies, 1969-1975,” RelSRev 2 (1976) 1–14Google Scholar.

7 Sweet, , “Millennialism in America,” 523–24Google Scholar; one must keep in mind Sweet's warning of the “infestatious definitional imprecision” endemic in studies of millennialism, though I would add that one must also recognize a certain elasticity in millennial language.

8 Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, “The Negro Spirituals,” Atlantic Monthly 19 (1867) 687–88. See alsoGoogle ScholarLevine, Lawrence W., Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977) 33–55Google Scholar.

9 See Mathews, Donald G., Religion in the Old South (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977) 223–25;Google ScholarMoorhead, James H., “Millennialism,” in Hill, Samuel S., ed., Encyclopedia of Religion in the South (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1984) 477–79; andGoogle ScholarRaboteau, Albert J., Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978) 311–13Google Scholar.

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11 George W. Clinton, “Christianity Under the Searchlight,” in idem, ed., Christianity Under the Searchlight (Nashville: National Baptist Publishing Board, 1909) 36.

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17 Cain, R. H., “The Negro Problem of the South,” A.M.E. Church Review 2 (01 1886) 145Google Scholar. The numbering of the Review is problematic in this issue, and the dating may not be exact.

18 The major exception being premillennial dispensationalism, cf. Weber, Timothy P., Living in the Shadow of the Second Coming: American Premillennialism, 1875-1982 (rev. ed.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987)Google Scholar.

19 See Tuveson, Ernest Lee, Redeemer Nation: The Idea of America's Millennial Role (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968)Google Scholar.

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22 From the symposium “What Should Be the Policy of the Colored American Toward Africa?” A.M.E. Church Review 2 (07 1885) 69Google Scholar.

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26 Ruffin, , “A Look Forward,” 29.Google ScholarStrong, Though (Our Country [Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1963] 202, 209-11) definedCrossRefGoogle Scholar Anglo-Saxon “somewhat broadly to include all English-speaking peoples,” it is doubtful that he included black Americans in his definition. For an argument that black Americans be designated “Negrosaxons,” see Ferris, William H., The African Abroad, or His Evolution in Western Civilization (2 vols.; New Haven, CT: Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor, 1913) 1. 296–311Google Scholar.

27 Washington Bee (District of Columbia, 9 11 1889) quoted inGoogle ScholarWashington, James M., Frustrated Fellowship: The Black Baptist Questfor Social Power (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1986) 155Google Scholar.

28 Globe-Democrat (Louis, St., 19 03 1879) quoted inGoogle ScholarPainter, Nell Irvin, “Millenarian Aspects of the Exodus to Kansas of 1879,” Journal of Social History 9 (1976) 333CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Painter argues that there was also a non-millenarian movement to Kansas that was more deliberate about the move in contrast to the millenarian exodus that she characterizes as imminent, collective, and total. The former group, however, also made use of the biblical exodus imagery, which demonstrates the elasticity of religious symbols and millennial rhetoric. See also Painter, Nell Irvin, Exodusters: Black Migration to Kansas after Reconstruction (New York: Knopf, 1977) andGoogle ScholarAthearn, Robert G., In Search of Canaan: Black Migration to Kansas, 1879-80 (Lawrence, KS: Regents Press of Kansas, 1978)Google Scholar.

29 See Fleming, Walter G., “‘Pap’ Singleton, The Moses of the Colored Exodus,” American Journal of Sociology 15 (1909) 67–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 Blyden, , “The Negro in the United States,” 309–10Google Scholar.

31 “The Negro Has Not Sense Enough,” Voice of Missions (Atlanta, 1 07 1900); reprinted inGoogle ScholarBracey, John H., et al., Black Nationalism in America (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970) 173Google Scholar. The standard history of black emigration to Africa is Redkey, Edwin S., Black Exodus: Black Nationalist and Back-to-Africa Movements, 1890-1910 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969)Google Scholar, but Redkey does not discuss millennialism.

32 Gilbert, Peter, ed., The Selected Writings of John Edward Bruce: Militant Black Journalist (New York: Arno, 1971) 47–49Google Scholar. In a 1900 article, Bruce, (Selected Writings, 65)Google Scholar counseled parents to teach children that “in God's own time Ethiopia will suddenly stretch her hands unto him who shapes the destinies of nations and individuals.” He later became an official in the Universal Negro Improvement Association and identified Marcus Garvey as the Jesus of the black race; cf. Burkett, Randall K., Black Redemption: Churchmen Speak for the Garvey Movement (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1978) 149–56Google Scholar.

33 Raboteau, Albert J., “‘Ethiopia Shall Soon Stretch Forth Her Hands’: Black Destiny in Nineteenth-Century America,” University Lecture in Religion, Arizona State University, 27 01 1983, 5. See alsoGoogle ScholarMoses, , Golden Age of Black Nationalism, 156–69Google Scholar.

34 Tuveson, (Redeemer Nation, 78)Google Scholar argues “more than anything else, the end of history is not the establishment of things new, but the restoration of the very oldest—the primeval heritage of mankind, of which man has been defrauded by a super-human Enemy.”

35 Perry, Rufus, The Cushite, or the Descendants of Ham (Springfield, MA: Willey, 1893) ix, xGoogle Scholar.

36 Brent, George W., “The Ancient Glory of the Hamitic Race,” A.M.E. Church Review 12 (10 1895) 272–75Google Scholar.

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38 Peabody, , “The Hope of Africa,” 56–61Google Scholar.

39 Studies of black missions to Africa are found in Williams, Walter L., Black Americans and the Evangelization of Africa (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982), andGoogle ScholarJacobs, Sylvia M., ed., Black Americans and the Missionary Movement in Africa (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1982)Google Scholar. For a study of the theological background of the foreign mission movement, see Hutchison, William R., Errand to the World: American Protestant Thought and Foreign Missions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987)Google Scholar.

40 Cole, , “The Negro at Home and Abroad,” 401Google Scholar.

41 Ibid.

42 Ibid., 402.

43 Ibid., 394-402. See also the poem based on Ps 68:31 by Coppin, L. J. in “The Negro's Part in the Redemption of Africa,” A.M.E. Church Review 19 (10 1902) 511-12Google Scholar.

44 Bois, W. E. Burghardt Du, The Conservation of Races (Washington, DC: American Negro Academy Occasional Papers, No. 2, 1897) 12Google Scholar.

45 Ibid., 15. Becker, William H. (“The Black Church: Manhood and Mission,” JAAR 40 [1972] 316–33)Google Scholar argues that the nineteenth-century dogma that it was the black American's divine calling to evangelize Africa was related to the need to demonstrate black leadership, independence, identity, and vocation.

46 Gaines, W. J., The Negro and the White Man (Philadelphia: A.M.E. Publishing House, 1897) 65Google Scholar.

47 Downing, George T., “The Africo-American Force in America,” A.M.E. Church Review 1 (10 1884) 159Google Scholar. See also Alex Crummell's 1877 sermon, “The Destined Superiority of the Negro,” in idem, The Greatness of Christ and Other Sermons (New York: Thomas Whitaker, 1882) 332-52; and Moses, Wilson Jeremiah, Alexander Crummell: A Study of Civilization and Discontent (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989)Google Scholar. For an identification of blacks with the suffering servant of Isaiah, see Miller, Kelly, Race Adjustment: Essays on the Negro in America (New York: Neale Publishing Company, 1908) 150–51Google Scholar.

48 Raboteau, , “Ethiopia Shall Soon Stretch Forth Her Hands,” 11Google Scholar. The selections from Walker and Douglass are reprinted in Sernett, Milton C., ed., Afro-American Religious History: A Documentary Witness (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1985) 100–108Google Scholar, 188-95. Perry, (The Cushite, 146–47)Google Scholar traces this belief of the moral superiority of blacks to the ancient Cushites. Moses, Wilson Jeremiah (Black Messiahs and Uncle Toms: Social and Literary Manipulations of a Religious Myth [University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1982])Google Scholar examines what he calls the “Afro-American messianic myth.”

49 Holly, James T., “The Divine Plan of Human Redemption in its Ethnological Development,” A.M.E. Church Review 1 (10 1884) 79–85Google Scholar.

50 Ibid., 81.

51 Ibid., 84.

52 Steward, T. G., The End of the World; or, Clearing the Way for the Fullness of the Gentiles (Philadelphia: A.M.E. Church Book Rooms, 1888) 4–7Google Scholar, 18-20, 67-75, 79-99, 112-27.

53 Ibid., 125-26.

54 I contend for my threefold typology in contrast to the more common categories of premillennialism and postmillennialism, which do not adequately describe black millennialism. The latter are retained, however, as helpful secondary heuristic devices that also orient the discussion to other works on nineteenth-century millennialism.

55 Holly, , “The Divine Plan of Human Redemption,” 81Google Scholar.

56 Holly, , “Sacred Chronology,” 9–13Google Scholar.

57 Steward, , The End of the World, 20Google Scholar.

58 Gaines, , The Negro and the White Man, 213Google Scholar.

59 Herbert, , “Government of the Future”, 148-49.Google Scholar

60 Clinton, , “Christianity under the Searchlight,” 80. See alsoGoogle ScholarNewton, A. H., Out of the Briars (Philadelphia: A.M.E. Book Concern, 1910) 177–85, 245, 248Google Scholar.

61 Bowen, , “What Shall the Harvest Be?” 7, 8Google Scholar.

62 Holsey, “Christianity Shiloh's Empire,” in idem, Autobiography, 71-74. In this sermon, Holsey identifies “Shiloh” in Gen 49:10 with Christ but expands this identification to the millennial reign of Christ.

63 Wheeler, , Uplifting the Race, 37–59Google Scholar.

64 Holly, , “Sacred Chronology,” 12, 13Google Scholar. In addition, Holly argued that the secret number of the elect, known only by God, must be accompanied by the “faithful preaching of the Gospel of the coming Kingdom.” In conversation with the author, James Moorhead has noted the similarities between Holly's dates and those of Charles Taze Russell of the Millennial Dawn (Jehovah's Witnesses) movement. I am unaware of any direct connection, but this interesting similarity may warrant further research.

65 Steward, , The End of the World, 79–110Google Scholar.

66 Moorhead, James H., “The Erosion of Postmillennialism in American Religious Thought, 1865-1925,” CH 53 (1984) 61–62Google Scholar.

67 Holsey, , “Christianity Shiloh's Empire,” 77Google Scholar. In another sermon, Holsey (“From Repentance to Final Restitution,” in idem, Autobiography, 111-23) demonstrated that the postmillennial and premillennial typology is not always clearly marked and cannot be forced, for he speaks of a conflation of the millennium with the apocalyptic second coming.

68 Bowen, , “What Shall the Harvest Be?” 1Google Scholar.

69 Bowen, , “The Disciplinary Character of Affliction,” 18Google Scholar.

70 Matthews, William, “Money as a Factor in Human Progress,” A.M.E. Church Review 1 (04 1885) 327, 328Google Scholar.

71 See Bellah, Robert N., “Civil Religion in America,” Daedalus 96 (1967) 1–21Google Scholar.

72 Hood, J. W., The Plan of the Apocalypse (York, PA: Anstadt, 1900) 164–77Google Scholar. See also idem, The Negro in the Christian Pulpit (Raleigh, NC: Edwards, Broughton, 1884) 148-64, 178-89. The formal exposition of theology by B. T. Tanner contains no discussion of the millennium, cf. Theological Lectures (Nashville: A.M.E. Church Sunday School Union, 1894)Google Scholar.

73 Anderson, S. W., “The World to Come,” in Brawley, E. M., ed., The Negro Baptist Pulpit: A Collection of Sermons and Papers on Baptist Doctrine and Missionary and Educational Work (Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1890) 175–87Google Scholar. Another essay in the volume, however, exudes with millennial confidence that all of America will soon be converted to Christianity; cf. Vann, M., “Baptists and Home Missions,” 251Google Scholar.

74 See Grimke's 1892 sermon to the Washington, D.C. Council, Ministers, “The Afro-American Pulpit in Relation to Race Elevation,” in Woodson, Carter G., ed., The Works of Francis J. Grimke, vol. 1: Addresses Mainly Personal and Racial (Washington, DC: Associated Publishers, 1942) 223–34Google Scholar.

75 Bois, W. E. B. Du, “The Present Outlook for the Dark Races of Mankind,” A.M.E. Church Review 17 (10 1900) 100Google Scholar.

76 Schwartz, , “The End of the Beginning,” 1Google Scholar.

77 Smith, Timothy L., “Slavery and Theology: The Emergence of Black Christian Consciousness in Nineteenth-Century America,” CH 41 (1972) 512Google Scholar.

78 See Quandt, Jean B., “Religion and Social Thought: The Secularization of Postmillennialism,” American Quarterly 25 (1973) 390–409CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

79 See Raboteau, , “Ethiopia Shall Soon Stretch Forth Her Hands,” 4–7Google Scholar.