Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-n9wrp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-18T12:54:53.189Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Racial Identity and the Civilizing Mission: Double-Consciousness at the 1895 Congress on Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2018

Abstract

The Congress on Africa was held in Atlanta, Georgia, in December 1895 as part of a campaign to promote African American involvement in Methodist missions to Africa. Held in conjunction with the same exposition where Booker T. Washington delivered his famous Atlanta Compromise address, the Congress in some ways shared his accommodationist approach to racial advancement. Yet the diverse and distinguished array of African American speakers at the Congress also developed a complex rationale for connecting the peoples of the African diaspora through missions. At the same time that they affirmed the need for “civilizing” influences as an indispensable element for racial progress, they also envisioned a reinvigorated racial identity and a shared racial destiny emerging through the interactions of black missionaries and Africans. In particular, the most thoughtful participants in the Congress anticipated the forging of a black civilization that combined the unique gifts of their race with the progressive dynamics of Christian culture. These ideas parallel and likely influenced W. E. B. Du Bois's concept of double-consciousness. At a time when the missionary movement provided the most important source of awareness about Africa among African Americans, it is possible to discern in the proceedings of the Congress on Africa the glimmerings of a new pan-African consciousness that was destined to have a profound effect on African American intellectual life in the twentieth century.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1. The 246,249 colored communicants in the M. E. Church counted by the 1890 census of churches constituted two-thirds of all colored communicants in colored organizations in racially mixed denominations, according to Carroll, H. K., The Religious Forces of the United States: Enumerated, Classified, and Described on the Basis of the Government Census of 1890 (New York: Christian Literature Co., 1893), 400404 Google Scholar.

2. Mason, M. C. B., “The Methodist Episcopal Church and the Evangelization of Africa,” in Africa and the American Negro: Addresses and Proceedings of the Congress on Africa, ed. Bowen, J. W. E. (Atlanta: Gammon Theological Seminary, 1896), 146 Google Scholar. The full proceedings are also available on the invaluable Documenting the American South Web site at http://docsouth.unc.edu/church/bowen/menu.html.

3. “Double-consciousness” was made famous by Du Bois, W. E. B., The Souls of Black Folk (1903; reprint, New York: New American Library, 1969), 45 Google Scholar. However, the essay in which it appears was adapted from an Atlantic Monthly article that appeared in August 1897. See Lewis, David Levering, W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919 (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1993), 198200 Google Scholar, 283. The concept, though not the term, can also be found in Bois, Du, “The Conservation of Races,” in Writings (New York: Library of America, 1986), 821–22Google Scholar. The paper was originally written for the American Negro Academy in 1897.

4. The richest study looking at missionary connections between African Americans and Africans is Campbell, James T., Songs of Zion: The African Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States and South Africa (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998)Google Scholar. For more general treatments, the standard works are: Jacobs, Sylvia M., ed., Black Americans and the Missionary Movement in Africa (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982)Google Scholar; and Williams, Walter L., Black Americans and the Evangelization of Africa, 1877–1900 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982)Google Scholar. See also Martin, Sandy D., Black Baptists and African Missions: The Origins of a Movement, 1880–1915 (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1989)Google Scholar; Mutero Chirenje, J., Ethiopianism and Afro-Americans in Southern Africa, 1883–1916 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987)Google Scholar; Park, Eunjin, “White” Americans in “Black” Africa: Black and White American Methodist Missionaries in Liberia, 1820–1875 (New York: Routledge, 2001)Google Scholar; and Kennedy, Pagan, Black Livingstone: A True Tale of Adventure in the Nineteenth-Century Congo (New York: Viking, 2002)Google Scholar. On the reflex influence of missions, see Bays, Daniel H. and Wacker, Grant, eds., The Foreign Missionary Enterprise at Home: Explorations in North American Cultural History (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2003)Google Scholar, especially the essays by John Saillant, Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp, and Jay Riley Case, which deal with race relations specifically.

5. Parks, E. L., “The Stewart Missionary Foundation for Africa and the Purpose of the Congress,” in Africa and the American Negro, ed. Bowen, , 910 Google Scholar; Stewart Missionary Foundation for Africa in Gammon Theological Seminary (Atlanta: Gammon Theological Seminary, 1895), 3–12, 23–24.

6. Stewart quoted in Parks, “The Stewart Missionary Foundation for Africa,” 9. The foundation was also engaged in gathering material for a library and museum on Africa at the same time.

7. Thirkield, W. P., “Opening Remarks,” in Africa and the American Negro, ed. Bowen, , 14 Google Scholar.

8. Washington, T., Up from Slavery (1901), in Early African- American Classics, ed. Appiah, Anthony (New York: Bantam Books, 1990), 412 Google Scholar.

9. “Ethiopia's Hand,” Atlanta Constitution, December 14, 1895, 3. The Constitution published at least fourteen articles about the Congress.

10. Moore, Moses Nathaniel, “Orishatukeh Faduma and the New Theology,” Church History 63 (March 1994): 61 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11. Atkinson, W. Y., “Address of Welcome,” in Africa and the American Negro, ed. Bowen, , 15 Google Scholar; Keith Hulett, “William Y. Atkinson (1854–1899),” New Georgia Encyclopedia, http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-2803; Dittmer, John, Black Georgia in the Progressive Era, 1900–1920 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977), 8485 Google Scholar.

12. Carroll, H. K., “The Negro in the Twentieth Century,” in Africa and the American Negro, ed. Bowen, , 161 Google Scholar.

13. Jacobs, Sylvia M., The African Nexus: Black American Perspectives on the European Partitioning of Africa, 1880–1920 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1981), 4647 Google Scholar; Smith, Amanda, The Story of the Lord's Dealings with Mrs. Amanda Smith, the Colored Evangelist: An Autobiography, with an introduction by Bishop Thoburn (Chicago: Meyer and Bros., 1893), 232 Google Scholar.

14. Mason, “The Methodist Episcopal Church,” 145–46. The woeful condition of the Methodist mission in Liberia, their oldest, can be gleaned from the report of J. G. Tate, “News from Africa,” Christian Advocate, January 24 and 31, 1895. Joseph Hartzell, the missionary bishop for Africa, later acknowledged that Liberia “was for many years considered the forlorn hope of our foreign fields,” but he found the missions inaugurated by his predecessor, William Taylor, in no better shape. Taylor's mission in the Congo was abandoned, and efforts made to shore up the work in Angola, where the twenty-four survivors of the eighty-six sent out were “found, struggling in the midst of enormous difficulties, left by force of circumstances to mostly support themselves, fighting almost death itself largely from lack of proper hygienic conditions… . With our depleted force it is possible to do but little more than hold the ground and care for the properties until reinforcements can be sent.” “Address of the Missionary Bishop for Africa,” Christian Advocate, May 24, 1900, 829–32.

15. Ibid., 143, 147–48. 16. Turner, H. M., “The American Negro and the Fatherland,” in Africa and the American Negro, ed. Bowen, , 198 Google Scholar.

17. Lynch, Hollis R., Edward Wilmot Blyden: Pan-Negro Patriot, 1832–1912 (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), 105–23Google Scholar; Moses, Wilson Jeremiah, Alexander Crummell: A Study of Civilization and Discontent (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 146–61, 192–95Google Scholar.

18. “Washington Notes,” Christian Advocate, November 11, 1895. Lynch, , Edward Wilmot Blyden, 133–36Google Scholar, also stresses the convergence of Blyden's and Washington's views during the 1890s, and Blyden had recently published his more cautionary view of emigration in the North American Review.

19. Addison, Thomas G., “The Policy of the American Colonization Society,” in Africa and the American Negro, ed. Bowen, , 8586 Google Scholar.

20. Adams, Cyrus C., “Some Results of the African Movement,” in Africa and the American Negro, ed. Bowen, , 4445 Google Scholar.

21. Ibid., 44, 42.

22. Ibid., 40–44.

23. Thirkield, “Opening Remarks,” 13; Roy, J. E., “Africa and America Illustrated; Their Mutual Relation of History and of Service,” in Africa and the American Negro, ed. Bowen, , 222–23Google Scholar.

24. Clendenen, Clarence C., Collins, Robert O., and Duignan, Peter, Americans in Africa, 1865–1900 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University, Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, 1966), 4654 Google Scholar; Jacobs, , The African Nexus, 8389 Google Scholar; Redkey, Edwin S., Black Exodus: Black Nationality and Back-to-Africa Movements, 1890–1910 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969), 61 Google Scholar.

25. Hartzell, J. C., “The Division of the Dark Continent,” in Africa and the American Negro, ed. Bowen, , 5456 Google Scholar.

26. Ibid., 56; Hartzell's view of the Congo Free State was echoed in Orishatukeh Faduma, “Successes and Drawbacks of Missionary Work in Africa by an Eye-Witness,” in Africa and the American Negro, ed. Bowen, 133.

27. July, Robert W., The Origins of Modern African Thought: Its Development in West Africa during the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (New York: Praeger, 1967), 4866, 178–79.Google Scholar

28. Noble, Frederic Perry, “The Outlook for African Missions in the Twentieth Century: Epitome of an Essay at the Congress on Africa,” in Africa and the American Negro, ed. Bowen, , 62.Google Scholar

29. Clendenen, , Collins, , and Duignan, , Americans in Africa, 116–18Google Scholar.

30. Héli Chatelain, “African Slavery; Its Status and the Anti- Slavery Movement in Europe,” in Africa and the American Negro, ed. Bowen, 103–12; “Minutes of the Congress on Africa,” in Africa and the American Negro, ed. Bowen, 233–34.

31. Chatelain, “African Slavery,” 105.

32. Blyden, E. W., “Letter of Greeting and Commendation,” in Africa and the American Negro, ed. Bowen, , 16 Google Scholar.

33. Blyden, Edward W., Christianity, Islam, and the Negro Race (1887; reprint, Edinburgh: University Press, 1967), 309, 186–88, 5–15, 281–83Google Scholar.

34. Blyden, Edward W., “The African Problem,” North American Review 161 (September 1895): 334Google Scholar; Lynch, , Edward Wilmot Blyden, 183–85, 191–92, 198–205Google Scholar.

35. Jacobs, , The African Nexus, 7374, 94–95Google Scholar; Fortune, T. Thomas, “The Nationalization of Africa,” in Africa and the American Negro, ed. Bowen, , 201–3Google Scholar. Fortune does not appear to have played a part in organizing the first Pan-African conference that took place in 1900, but his public support of Pan-Africanism predated W. E. B. Du Bois’s, who would become its leading African American advocate. See Geiss, Imanuel, The Pan-African Movement: A History of Pan-Africanism in America, Europe, and Africa, trans. Ann Keep (New York: Africana, 1974), 177–98Google Scholar.

36. Hammond, E. W. S., “Africa in Its Relation to Christian Civilization,” in Africa and the American Negro, ed. Bowen, , 205 Google Scholar.

37. Ibid., 205, 207–8. Emphasizing Africa's isolation to refute racist preconceptions is the central theme of Hamilton, J. W., “Occult Africa,” in Africa and the American Negro, ed. Bowen, , 175–85Google Scholar; see also Hartzell, “The Division of the Dark Continent,” 48, and Fortune, “The Nationalization of Africa,” 199–200.

38. Hammond, “Africa in Its Relation to Christian Civilization,” 205, 208–10.

39. Clair Drake, St., The Redemption of Africa and Black Religion (Chicago: Third World Press, 1970), 50 Google Scholar; Adeleke, Tunde, UnAfrican Americans: Nineteenth-Century Black Nationalists and the Civilizing Mission (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1998), 102 Google Scholar.

40. Turner, “The American Negro,” 195. 41. Angell, Stephen Ward, Bishop Henry McNeal Turner and African-American Religion in the South (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992), 263 Google Scholar.

42. Van Pelt, J. R., “John Wesley Edward Bowen,” Journal of Negro History 19 (April 1934): 217–21Google Scholar; Monroe, David S., ed., Journal of the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church Held in Cleveland, Ohio, May 1–28, 1896 (New York: Eaton and Mains, n.d.), 439–40Google Scholar. The method of electing Methodist bishops is much like that for choosing party presidential candidates at conventions, where repeated ballots are taken until candidates receive the requisite majority. In 1896, Bowen received the highest vote total on the first ballot, but he failed to gain enough additional votes as other candidates dropped out on subsequent ballots. He remained a candidate at the next two general conferences, and he also authored a long pamphlet entitled An Appeal for Negro Bishops, But No Separation (New York: Eaton and Mains, 1912).

43. Bowen, J. W. E., “The Comparative Status of the Negro at the Close of the War and of To-day,” in Africa and the American Negro, ed. Bowen, , 164, 168–69Google Scholar; for similar views, see Mason, “The Methodist Episcopal Church,” 145–46.

44. Smyth, John H., “The African in Africa, and the African in America,” in Africa and the American Negro, ed. Bowen, , 7273 Google Scholar. The passage is lifted from Blyden's inaugural address as president of Liberia College, delivered in 1881 and published in Blyden, , Christianity, Islam, and the Negro Race, 83 Google Scholar.

45. Turner, “The American Negro,” 196.

46. Bacon, Alice M., “The Study of Folk-Lore,” in Africa and the American Negro, ed. Bowen, , 187, 189Google Scholar.

47. Baker, Lee D., “Research, Reform, and Racial Uplift: The Mission of the Hampton Folk-Lore Society, 1893–1899,” in Excluded Ancestors, Inventible Traditions: Essays toward a More Inclusive History of Anthropology, ed. Handler, Richard (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2000), 57 Google Scholar.

48. Faduma, “Successes and Drawbacks of Missionary Work,” 126–28, 133–35.

49. Faduma, Orishatukeh, “Religious Beliefs of the Yoruba People in West Africa,” in Africa and the American Negro, ed. Bowen, , 3132, 35–36.Google Scholar

50. Okonkwo, Rina, Heroes of West African Nationalism (Nigeria: Delta, 1985), 7787 Google Scholar; Moore, “Faduma and the New Theology,” 71–72.

51. Moore, “Faduma and the New Theology,” 67–68, quoting Orishatukeh Faduma, “Thoughts for the Times; Or, The New Theology,” AME Church Review 7 (October 1890): 142–43.

52. Adams, “Some Results of the African Movement,” 46.

53. Harris, Paul William, Nothing but Christ: Rufus Anderson and the Ideology of Protestant Foreign Missions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999)Google Scholar.

54. Luker, Ralph E., The Social Gospel in Black and White: American Racial Reform, 1885–1912 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1911), 4, 136, 140.Google Scholar

55. On indigenous Africans’ desire for industrial education, see Campbell, James T., Songs of Zion: The African Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States and South Africa (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 174, 192–93, 199–201Google Scholar.

56. Taylor, William, “Self-Supporting Missions in Africa,” in Africa and the American Negro, ed. Bowen, , 151 Google Scholar.

57. Barclay, Wade Crawford, History of Methodist Missions, vol. 3, Widening Horizons, 1845–95 (New York: Board of Missions of the Methodist Church, 1957), 900904 Google Scholar.

58. French-Sheldon, M., “Practical Issues of an African Experience,” in Africa and the American Negro, ed. Bowen, , 9899 Google Scholar.

59. Rust, R. S., “The Needs of Africans as Men,” in Africa and the American Negro, ed. Bowen, , 212–13Google Scholar.

60. Crummell, Alexander, “Civilization as a Collateral and Indispensable Instrumentality in Planting the Christian Church in Africa,” in Africa and the American Negro, ed. Bowen, , 121 Google Scholar.

61. Ibid., 123–24, 122, 119.

62. Hutchison, William R., Errand to the World: American Protestant Thought and Foreign Missions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 111 Google Scholar.

63. Crummell, Alexander, “The Absolute Need of an Indigenous Missionary Agency for the Evangelization of Africa,” in Africa and the American Negro, ed. Bowen, , 137–38, 141Google Scholar.

64. Moss, Alfred A. Jr., The American Negro Academy: Voice of the Talented Tenth (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981), 1823 Google Scholar.

65. Crummell, Alexander, “Civilization—The Primal Need of the Race,” in The American Negro Academy: Occasional Papers 1–22 (New York: Arno Press and the New York Times, 1969), 34, 6.Google Scholar

66. Crummell, Alexander, “The Attitude of the American Mind toward the Negro Intellect,” in The American Negro Academy, 1215 Google Scholar.

67. Du Bois, W. E. B., “The Conservation of Races,” in Writings (New York: Library of America, 1986), 820–22Google Scholar.

68. “The Stewart Missionary Foundation for Africa,” Foundation 14 (May–June 1924): 16–17; Tremayne Copplestone, J., History of Methodist Missions, vol. 4 : Twentieth-Century Perspectives (New York: Board of Global Ministries, United Methodist Church, 1973), 519–47.Google Scholar

69. Turner, “The American Negro,” 195.

70. See Ayandele, E. A., The Missionary Impact on Modern Nigeria, 1842–1914: A Political and Social Analysis (New York: Humanities Press, 1966)Google Scholar.