#TheBlackIlluminati Pre-1900
The 20th century is the “Golden Age of #PanAfricanism,” ignores #TheBlackIlluminati. Sure, #MarcusGarvey was dope AF, and #WEBDuBois was a prolific genius, yatta yatta yatta. Are we not to balance the rational affection for them by showing some love to giants like #BishopAllen and or #PrinceHall. To be clear, #PanAfricanism is no singular person place thing or idea so let's begin with a general notion most readily understood: #PanAfricanism; is a congealing of African inspired philosophies as a means of mental refuge, first, that was often redeemed in the form of building a utopia on or off the continent of Africa.
The works of #WilsonMoses sets the pace for this musing about the 19th century (the 1800s) #PanAfricanists in the United States. [i] #PanAfricanists of the 19th-century responded to the many vagaries of these hundred years from 1777 - 1877, stretching back to the post-Revolutionary era, antebellum, War of 1812, American Expansionism, the Compromise of 1850, postbellum, the Berlin Conference of 1884-5 and the 1890s. #PanAfricanism of the 19th-century became the basis for 20th-century pomp, projection, and Pan Africanism.
The permutations of #PanAfricanism in the 19th and 20th-century reflected the accelerated pace of Black activism in this period of 150 years. 19th-century thinkers, scholars, and activists sought to create a movement that would accord Black Folks dignity and a vehicle for struggle. Many of the Black thinkers, scholars, and activists drew significantly on Western Philosophy to bring about the reforms they sought. #WilsonMoses is the foremost scholar in drawing attention to the extent that #BlackNationalism was predicated largely on Western thought during the 19th-century. Much like #BlackNationalism in the 19th-century both #PanAfricanism and #BlackNationalism drew on European ideas for reform and transformation.
#PlotTwist: #TheBlackIlluminati understood what we call Western Philosophy was sourced from Black people in antiquity. Be clear, your ancestors were better than you and knew more than you in the 1700s. ~in short: Black people knew where White people got their knowledge from, Africa. While we may credit ideas to Plato and Socrates, #TheBlackIlluminati knew where Plato and Socrates got their source material, Africa. For example, #TheBlackIlluminati didn't see Christianity as a "White Man's Religion" because they knew the oldest Christian church was in Ethiopia. To be clear, all knowledge begins in Africa.
#WilsonMoses acknowledged journalist and Jewish activist #TheodoreDraper’s work as the first to credit 19th-century Black activist, soldier, and scholar, #MartinDelany as “the Father of #BlackNationalism.”[ii] Draper contended that in the post-Reconstruction era, Delany’s organizing of the Liberia Exodus Joint Stock Steamship Company amounted to evidence of a #BlackNationalistMovement.[iii] While Moses agreed with this thesis largely, he found the kind of #BlackNationalism represented by Delany as being rooted in the 1850s before the #AmericanCivilWar. Moses argued that “it was a point [1850] at which many black Americans despaired of ever finding a place within American society and culture and turned to various emigration schemes.”[iv] In looking at the psychological and physical damage done to Africans, Moses focused on the ideological call for redemption. He argued that the slave trade destroyed ethnic loyalties and eroded traditional African cultures within a generation or two in the United States and caused people of African descent to seek other ways to identify themselves and form communities.[v]
Moses’ argument sprang from an examination of the activities of Black Leaders after the Compromise of 1850 the Fugitive Slave Act. It is during the #CompromiseOf1850 that Black leaders began to turn to back-to-Africa movements for refuge and solidarity.[vi] Essentially, The #FugitiveSlaveAct shifted the Mason-Dixon Line from the 36th parallel to Canada. Ruthless marauding slave catchers, with the full authority of law, went to the North and disrupted Black safe havens. An example of how contentious the #FugitiveSlaveAct came in the mid-1850s. Northern Whites, who may not have completely agreed with Black equality or abolition, understood this law as a violation of sovereignty. It allowed for the incursion of Southerners to raid the North looking for “fugitive slaves.” The tension rose to the level of vicious riots like in the case of #AnthonyBurns who migrated north out of the institution of slavery from Virginia. In 1854 when the verdict was that he had to return to the institution of slavery, Boston was put under Marshall Law because of the clashes that took place.[vii] The new Black insecurity illuminated the transoceanic safe haven in #Liberia that had declared its independence from the United States three years earlier than the #CompromiseOf1850. #Liberia was a beacon of hope for many Blacks.
*This essay draws heavily from Moses’s works as shorthand historiography to extract more from the 19th-century #PanAfricanMovement in this limited space.
In Moses’ groundbreaking work, he was able to identify #PanAfricanism as far back as the 18th century. Moses referred to a “proto-Pan-Africanism” which was a general reference for the period between 1787 and 1817 where people of African descent were actively engaging ideas of a proud African past and civilization.[viii] This African chauvinism was in response to the atrocities of the institution of slavery. The Pan Africanists idea was that raising a new African civilization would counter the degradation of the African image that occurred because of the institution of slavery. To expand the notion of an 18th-century #PanAfricanism, the historical lens needs to be widened to fully capture the evolution. Activists, 20th-century scholar and #PanAfricanist #GeorgePadmore crowned #WEBDuBois “the father of #PanAfricanism” and many scholars followed because of Du Bois’ work organizing different congresses, his scholarship as well as his overall activism.[ix] More recent scholarship has redirected the attention to a 19th-century political leader, scholar, and Liberian #EdwardBlyden as “the father of #PanAfricanism.”[x] Rarely, is there a concentration on the 18th-century and early 19th-century when describing #PanAfricanism.
Nevertheless, #PanAfricanism has a clear root in the era immediately following the #AmericanRevolution. During this period (the late 1700s), #PanAfricanists developed a distinct ideology understood today as #PanAfricanism of the 20th-century. In the same way that Wilson Moses can extrapolate #BlackNationalism from the Black response to the #CompromiseOf1850 and the #FugitiveSlaveAct, one can make a connection between #PanAfricanism and the 1848 election of the First American Black President. The election of #JosephJenkinsRoberts, who began his life under the institution of slavery in the United States, ignited an already vibrant #PanAfricanMovement when he was elected the first president of the newly independent #Liberia. Complicate notions of periodization and widely held paradigmatic models for understanding #TheBlackIlluminati, #PanAfricanism, and the #BlackdomColonizationContinuum.
by Dr. Timothy E. Nelson ©
[i] Wilson Jeremiah Moses, The Golden Age of Black Nationalism, 1850-1925 (Hamden, Conn: Archon Books, 1978).
[ii] Moses, 278.
[iii] Theodore Draper, The Rediscovery of Black Nationalism. (New York: Viking Press, 1970).
[iv] Ibid
[v] Moses, 16.
[vi] Moses, 8.
[vii] Gordon S. Barker, The Imperfect Revolution: Anthony Burns and the Landscape of Race in Antebellum America (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2011).
[viii] Moses, 25.
[ix] M. Sammy Miller, “Pan-Africanism v. Communism” Crisis. New York: Crisis Pub. Co., Jan 1974.
[x] Jacqueline Bobo, Cynthia Hudley, and Claudine Michel. The Black Studies Reader. (New York: Routledge, 2004), 460.
Original article appeared on LinkedIn Aug 7th, 2019