Research Catalog

Title

The Americans are coming! : dreams of African American liberation in segregationist South Africa / Robert Trent Vinson.

Author

Vinson, Robert Trent

Publication

Athens : Ohio University Press, c2012.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

xv, 235 p. : ill., maps; 23 cm.

Summary

For more than half a century before World War II, black South Africans and "American Negroes" - a group that included African Americans and black West Indians - established close institutional and personal relationships that laid the necessary groundwork for the successful South African and American antiapartheid movements. Though African Americans suffered under Jim Crow racial discrimination, oppressed Africans saw African Americans as free people who had risen from slavery to success and were role models and potential liberators. Many African Americans, regarded initially by the South African government as "honorary whites" exempt from segregation, also saw their activities in South Africa as a divinely ordained mission to establish "Africa for Africans," liberated from European empires. The Jamaican-born Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association, the largest black-led movement with two million members and supporters in forty-three countries at its height in the early 1920s, was the most anticipated source of liberation. Though these liberation prophecies went unfulfilled, black South Africans continued to view African Americans as inspirational models and as critical partners in the global antiapartheid struggle. The Americans Are Coming! is a rare case study that places African history and American history in a global context and centers Africa in African Diaspora studies. -- Book cover.

Series Statement

New African histories

Uniform Title

• New African histories series
• Project Muse UPCC books

Subject

• African Americans > Relations with Africans
• Black nationalism > South Africa
• Black people > South Africa > Attitudes
• Garvey, Marcus, 1887-1940 > Influence
• Geschichte 1890-1940
• United States > Foreign public opinion, South African
• Universal Negro Improvement Association

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 151-226) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Introduction : the Americans are coming! -- Providential design : the alliance of American Negroes and black South Africans. American Negroes as racial models : from "honorary whites" to "black perils" -- The failed dream of British liberation and Christian regeneration. American apocalypse : prophetic Garveyism and the dream of American Negro liberation. The rise of Marcus Garvey and his gospel of Garveyism in Southern Africa -- Transnational martyrdom and the spread of Garveyism in South Africa -- "Charlatan or savior?" : Dr. Wellington's prophecies and program of deliverance -- A dream deferred : the end of the dream of American Negro liberation and the beginnings of the global antiapartheid movement.

ISBN

• 9780821419861 (pb : alk. paper)
• 0821419862 (pb : alk. paper)

LCCN

^^2011040795

OCLC

724662899

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library