Black Nation

BLACK NATION. Perhaps no concept in the history of American radicalism has been more maligned or misunderstood than the concept of the “black nation.” The quest of the Afro-American people for some form of territorial integrity and national self-determination has had a long and winding history. Long before the American Communist Party seized the concept as an organizational tool to mobilize the Afro-American masses, they had given the concept its own historical validity. From Paul Cuffe’s emigrationist efforts in the late eighteenth century, through the nationalist and emigrationist sentiments that threatened to splinter the abolitionist movement, to the postbellum era with its “exodus” movement, Chief Sam’s “Back to Africa” endeavor, or E. Sutton Grigg’s “Imperium in Imperio,” the Afro-American people have given the concept of the “black nation” their own definition, utility, and both an organized and unorganized expression of its political intent.

It was not until the end of World War I, however, that the white Left comprehended the potential appeal of the concept to the Afro-American masses. This era was marked by a series of internal and external circumstances that would give the “black nation” concept an opportunity to be fulfilled. First, the crisis of plantation agriculture in the southern states stimulated widespread migration to the industrial cities of the Northeast and Midwest, while those who remained behind slumped further in their semifeudal status. Second, the Bolshevik Revolution and the ensuing crisis of the European nation-state unleashed the powerful force of self-determination for the oppressed nationalities of eastern Europe, the decaying Ottoman Empire, and the Far East. It was the Afro-West Indian radical Cyril Briggs who, in a 1917 editorial in the Amsterdam News, proclaimed, “SECURITY OF LIFE” FOR POLES AND SERBS—WHY NOT FOR COLORED AMERICANS. It was Brigg’s radical organ, the Crusader, that initially articulated a separate state for Afro-Americans, from its founding in 1918 until 1920, when he denounced the idea as “unsatisfactory.” It was revived by his fellow traveler Hubert Harrison in 1924 as the foundation of the International Colored Unity League, whose main objective was the establishment of a separate state in the continental United States for Afro-Americans.

Meanwhile, the newly founded Communist Party, USA, had taken up the question at the Comintern’s Second Congress, where Lenin presented his “Thesis on the National and Colonial Question.” Point 14 was devoted to a synopsis of the position of “The Negro in America.” By 1928 a subcommittee on the “Negro question” was formed to prepare a resolution for the Comintern’s Sixth World Congress. Harry Haywood, a member of the subcommittee, submitted an article in which he argued for the “national minority status” of the Afro-American people. He advocated a “national revolutionary” movement for self-determination and an autonomous republic to be established in the “black belt” of the American South. By 1930 self-determination in the black belt became the official position of the Communist Party in its attempt to organize the Afro-American masses. The concept of national self-determination in the black belt was pronounced dead by Earl Browder in 1943. Haywood continued to support the position until his ouster from the Party in 1959. He would argue that self-determination and territorial autonomy were the only mechanisms that would guarantee the security of the Afro-American people.

By no means did the concept die when the Party abandoned it. Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam had a separate state as the foundation of its redemptive program. Malcolm X supported a version of territorial autonomy, while a generation of revolutionary nationalists continued to support the goal of a separate state in the South throughout the 1960s and early 1970s—from Max Stanford’s Revolutionary Action Movement to the Republic of New Africa, the All-African People’s Party, and the Black Liberation Army. The idea of a “black nation” did not disappear but took on even newer expressions.

Bracey, John, August Meier, and Elliott Rudwick, eds. Black Nationalism in America. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970.

Bush, Roderick D. We Are Not What We Seem: Black Nationalism and Class Struggle in the America Century. New York: New York University Press, 2000.

Foner, Philip, and James Allen, eds. American Communism and Black Americans: A Documentary History, 1919–1929. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987.

Haywood, Harry. Negro Liberation. New York: International Publishers, 1948.

Vincent, Theodore, ed. Voices of a Black Nation. San Francisco: Ramparts Press, 1973.