CLASSICAL BLACK NATIONALISM
Classical black nationalists advocated political sovereignty and they insisted that such a goal required the creation of a nation-state with clear geographical boundaries. There was not much support for this idea before the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Part of the Compromise of 1850, this act denied captured slaves (or those simply accused of being fugitive slaves) the right to a trial and granted marshals the power to force citizens to assist in the recapture of runaway slaves. It also prohibited testimony by those accused, and thus raised the possibility that free blacks could be captured into slavery. This was an era in which the U.S. political elite defined the meaning of citizenship in “white nationalist” terms. Justice Taney stated this perspective forcefully in the infamous 1857 Dred Scott case. Concerning the phrase “all men are created equal,” Justice Taney commented that “it [was] too clear for dispute that the enslaved African race [was] not intended to be included and formed no part of the people who framed this declaration.” The African race, Taney argued, had “no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” Until the eve of the Civil War, politicians worked to expand and secure rights for the majority of whites (males), while at the same time they increasingly restricted the rights of free blacks with prohibitions against intermarriage, rules that barred the migration of blacks to different states, and laws that denied suffrage and that even established formal segregation. Thus, by the mid-nineteenth century Martin Delaney, James T. Holly, and others began to argue that black people should leave the United States for Canada, Haiti, or other destinations.
What set apart these “nationalists” from other black historical actors of the period were their positions on emigration and nation-building, not their views of culture. As Wilson Moses explains in his Golden Age of Black Nationalism (1978) and other writings, classical black nationalists were Christians, and they believed that Western civilization was the measure of progress when it came to letters, arts, commerce, and governance. All free black Americans of this period shared these views. It was not until after World War II that black (cultural) nationalists began to try to break entirely from Western convention.
Marcus Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in 1918, and built the largest black nationalist movement in the history of the United States. The movement originated in Harlem, New York, and grew out of the social, economic, and political experience of native and foreign-born blacks of the period. Garvey’s nationalism was “classical” in the sense that his final goal was political autonomy, and he was Western in orientation. In terms of ideas and practice, however, the UNIA also reflected developments unique to its era. The 1920s was a period of heightened anticolonial, nationalistic consciousness among many oppressed peoples of the world, and thus in tone, if not in substance, the arguments advanced by supporters of Garvey’s vision was akin to arguments against colonial domination seen in, say, Ireland or India—especially in the Caribbean region, where the UNIA established a number of chapters. The 1920s might also have represented the height of white American nationalism in the United States. The Ku Klux Klan peaked in membership (at several million), by defending “pure womanhood” and opposing immigration and all forms of labor activism. This was also the period when, in 1924, the U.S. government instituted immigration quotas that favored Northern Europeans over all others. In terms of membership numbers and visibility, the UNIA’s apex was congruent with the rise of white American nationalism of its time.
In terms of its program, the UNIA was conservative socially, economically, and politically. Although Garvey initially explained the ambitions of the organization in language that clearly reflected the influence of revolutionary (Bolshevik) thought, as well as anticolonialism, very quickly after the founding of the UNIA his message (in the United States) reflected conventional, even reactionary, thinking about race and political empowerment in the United States. Echoing conventional wisdom about the enduring significance of “racial” identity, Garvey argued for racial purity. While Garvey and his followers articulated a kind of racial chauvinism, a pride in black identity, that few had previously articulated, he nevertheless was reproducing the racist ideology of that period. After all, it was the Klan who argued most forcefully for racial purity. Starting with an organic view of racial identity—which ignored diversity among black people—Garvey eschewed talk of class struggle and union organization and argued for a strategy of building black businesses, believing the race would find redemption in the economic marketplace. The most prominent of the UNIA business ventures was the unsuccessful Black Star Line. Unlike the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Garvey and the UNIA did not devote much effort toward expanding civil rights for blacks in the United States. In this respect, the organization foreshadowed the Nation of Islam, arguably the most successful black nationalist organization in the postwar period.
Garvey is known for his “back to Africa” philosophy, but his organization was working for selective emigration, not mass return. Garvey argued that full equality in the United States was illusory at best, and so he supported a “Negro Zionism.” Black people in the Western hemisphere, he argued, should support the creation of an African nation in the eastern hemisphere (his choice was Liberia); by ensuring the development of the Negro Zion, black people in the United States, the Caribbean, and Africa would elevate their status. This reasoning was similar to that of James T. Holly and others of the antebellum period.
Black nationalism must also be understood with a number of spectra in mind. Since the second decade of the twentieth century, there have been disagreements among nationalists on “social” issues like “racial purity,” and religious belief. There have also been differences in terms of economic philosophy—specifically whether black equality could be achieved under capitalism. Nationalists have differed over political tactics—for example, they have argued over whether black people could win emancipation through lobbying and electoral strategies or only through armed insurrection. During the 1920s, the UNIA vastly dwarfed another organization, the African Blood Brotherhood (ABB), which combined racial nationalism with a socialist critique of capitalism. The ABB’s founder, Cyril Briggs—a native of St. Kitts in the West Indies—argued that black people constituted a separate nation, but unlike Garvey he sought to establish political sovereignty by revolutionary means. The Fenian Irish Republican Brotherhood was the likely model for the ABB. At its peak, the organization claimed several thousand members. It was eventually absorbed by the Communist Party.
Yet there are more of these fake pro black men than black women. 
@Fonsworth @Emperor_ReinScarf @blackestofpanthers
