African-American self-determination refers to efforts to secure
self-determination for African-Americans and related peoples in North America. It often intersects with the historic
Back-to-Africa movement
The back-to-Africa movement was based on the widespread belief among some European Americans in the 18th and 19th century United States that African Americans would want to return to the continent of Africa. In general, the political movement wa ...
and general
Black separatism
Black separatism is a separatist political movement that seeks separate economic and cultural development for those of African descent in societies, particularly in the United States. Black separatism stems from the idea of racial solidarity, an ...
, but also manifests in present and historic demands for self-determination on North American soil, ranging from autonomy to independence. The freedom to make whatever choices as a free American, and willfulness to do for self are often a key demand for advocates of African-American self-determination.
As U.S. state
Edwin P. McCabe in Oklahoma
Former Kansas State Auditor
Edwin P. McCabe joined the migration of thousands of African-Americans to the
Oklahoma Territory in 1890, and then promoted African-American migration to the territory. By 1892, from the city of
Langston, he geared his promotion toward the goal of a black-majority state that would eventually send two African-American senators to Congress in Washington, D.C., and to guarantee a black majority in every congressional district of the new state. He helped populate at least twenty-five new black-majority towns in the territory to the goal of black-majority statehood, even as white racial sentiments soured against African-Americans in the territory enough to implement segregation in the territory's laws by the time Oklahoma Territory was merged with the
Indian Territory
The Indian Territory and the Indian Territories are terms that generally described an evolving land area set aside by the United States Government for the relocation of Native Americans who held aboriginal title to their land as a sovereign ...
to become the state of
Oklahoma in 1907. In the end, neither a black majority nor McCabe's dreams of a governorship over a black-majority state were realized.
Oscar Brown Sr.
The
National Movement for the Establishment of a 49th State was established by Chicago-based businessman
Oscar Brown, Sr., who sought for the formation of a state within the union on U.S. soil which could be populated and governed by African-Americans, and which could apportion the benefits of the
New Deal more equitably to African-Americans. Eventually, the organization fizzled out before the eventual 49th state, Alaska, was admitted to the Union in 1959.
Republic of New Afrika
The
Republic of New Afrika was an organization which sought three key goals:
* Creation of an independent
African-American
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ensl ...
-majority country situated in the
southeastern United States
The Southeastern United States, also referred to as the American Southeast or simply the Southeast, is a geographical region of the United States. It is located broadly on the eastern portion of the southern United States and the southern por ...
, in the heart of black-majority population. A similar claim is made for all the black-majority counties and cities throughout the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
.
* Payment of several billion dollars in
reparations to African-American descendants of slaves by the
US government
The federal government of the United States (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) is the national government of the United States, a federal republic located primarily in North America, composed of 50 states, a city within a feder ...
for the damages inflicted on Africans and their descendants by
chattel enslavement,
Jim Crow segregation, and modern-day forms of
racism
Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another. It may also mean prejudice, discrimination, or antagonis ...
.
* A
referendum
A referendum (plural: referendums or less commonly referenda) is a direct vote by the electorate on a proposal, law, or political issue. This is in contrast to an issue being voted on by a representative. This may result in the adoption of a ...
of all African Americans to determine their desires for citizenship; movement leaders say they were not offered a choice in this matter after emancipation in 1865 following the American Civil War.
Established in 1968, the RNA attracted a number of members, including
Robert F. Williams,
Betty Shabazz
Betty Shabazz (born Betty Dean Sanders; May 28, 1934/1936 – June 23, 1997), also known as Betty X, was an American educator and civil rights advocate. She was married to Malcolm X.
Shabazz grew up in Detroit, Michigan, where her foster ...
and
Chokwe Lumumba. The organization persists to this day.
American Communist support
During the USSR
The idea for outright independence was also adopted by American communist activists. Throughout US history, several revolutionary organizations have sought to promote control of the region as a separate political nation within the United States. The black liberation activist
Cyril Briggs
Cyril Valentine Briggs (May 28, 1888 – October 18, 1966) was an African-Caribbean American writer and communist political activist. Briggs is best remembered as founder and editor of ''The Crusader,'' a seminal New York magazine of the New Ne ...
wrote a number of editorials starting in 1917 which called for a "colored autonomous state" on U.S. soil, first in the publication ''Amsterdam News'' and later in the publication ''The Crusader'' which he founded in 1918. The
Communist Party USA (CPUSA) later adopted the suggestion that African Americans in the "Black Belt" region constituted an oppressed nation, and that they should be allowed to vote on self-determination, as had populations following World War I under rules of the
League of Nations
The League of Nations (french: link=no, Société des Nations ) was the first worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. It was founded on 10 January 1920 by the Paris Peace Conference that ...
. After fierce debate in the Sixth World Congress of the
Communist International
The Communist International (Comintern), also known as the Third International, was a Soviet-controlled international organization founded in 1919 that advocated world communism. The Comintern resolved at its Second Congress to "struggle by ...
(Comintern) in 1928, the CPUSA officially adopted a plan for self-determination for an African-American nation in the region.
[Sherman, Vincent (2012). ''Nations Want Liberation: The Black Belt Nation in the 21st Century'' http://return2source.wordpress.com/2012/06/24/nations-want-liberation-the-black-belt-nation-in-the-21st-century/]
Although
Josef Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secreta ...
was the leader of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union at the time and
the architect of the Comintern's line on the
national question
''National question'' is a term used for a variety of issues related to nationalism. It is seen especially often in socialist thought and doctrine.
In socialism
* ''Social Democracy and the National Question'' by Vladimir Medem in 1904
* ''So ...
, the Black Belt national proposal drew its roots from the thinking of
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin,. was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1 ...
, who identified what he described as an African-American nation in the southern US.
American activist
Harry Haywood
Harry Haywood (February 4, 1898 – January 4, 1985) was an American political activist who was a leading figure in both the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). His goal was to connec ...
is generally recognized as the principal theoretician of the CPUSA's Black Belt line.
Given the CPUSA's proposal on the national question, it enjoyed large-scale party growth in the US South. But the party was also involved in organizing agricultural workers and supporting African-American civil rights, which most Black US Americans considered more important. In Alabama, for instance, the Party organized the
Sharecroppers' Union (SCU) in 1931, which grew to "a membership of nearly 2,000 organized in 73 locals, 80 women's auxiliaries, and 30 youth groups." The SCU was openly organized by Alabama communists, and while it drew substantial support from the African-American community, it was subject to a harsh crackdown by state and non-state actors. Nevertheless, it helped lead a strike of agricultural workers for higher wages.
" e SCU claimed some substantial victories. On most of the plantations affected, the union won at least seventy-five cents per one hundred pounds, and in areas not affected by the strike, landlords reportedly increased wages from thirty-five cents per hundred pounds to fifty cents or more in order to avert the spread of the strike."
During the same period, the CPUSA also alienated much of the African-American working class by excoriating other self-determination organizations such as the Movement for a 49th State and the back-to-Africa-oriented
Peace Movement of Ethiopia for not toeing the party line on self-determination.
In 1935, the CPUSA abandoned its line on national self-determination for the Black Belt. It wanted to attract coalition support from middle-class African-American groups in the Northeast as a part of the Party's "Hands Off
Ethiopia
Ethiopia, , om, Itiyoophiyaa, so, Itoobiya, ti, ኢትዮጵያ, Ítiyop'iya, aa, Itiyoppiya officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the ...
" campaign. It launched this effort after Italian forces under
Mussolini invaded Ethiopia in the same year. The CPUSA criticized the invasion as part of the colonial enterprise.
Haywood and similar members tried to promote the Black Belt national question in the 1950s, without success. Communists did not officially support this concept again until the
New Communist Movement
The New Communist movement (NCM) was a diverse left-wing political movement principally within the United States, during the 1970s and 1980s. The NCM were a movement of the New Left that represented a diverse grouping of Marxist–Leninists and M ...
of the 1970s and 1980s. After being expelled by the CPUSA, Haywood joined the
October League (OL), which eventually became the
Communist Party (Marxist–Leninist) in the United States. Both the OL and the CP (ML) adopted the old CPUSA line calling for self-determination for residents of the Black Belt. Other New Communist Movement groups, like the
Communist League and the
Revolutionary Workers Headquarters
Revolutionary Workers Headquarters (RWH) was a U.S. Marxist-Leninist organization that formed out of a split from the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) in 1977. After Mao Zedong, leader of the Communist Party of China, died in 1976, the majori ...
, also took up the Black Belt line.
In the 21st century
In the 21st century, several communist organizations have continued to uphold the Black Belt national question. Chief among them is the
Freedom Road Socialist Organization
The Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) is a Marxist–Leninist organization in the United States. It formed in 1985 amid the collapse of the Maoist-oriented New Communist movement that emerged in the 1970s.
The FRSO's component groups ...
(FRSO), which continues to organize around the line. The FRSO publishes several pamphlets and statements on the African-American national question in the Black Belt. They uphold the right of national self-determination by the region.
[Freedom Road Socialist Organization (March 2012). ''FRSO Program: Immediate Demands for U.S. Colonies, Indigenous Peoples, and Oppressed Nationalities'' http://www.frso.org/about/5congress/oppnat-demands.htm]
The
Malcolm X Grassroots Movement is another revolutionary organization upholding the right of self-determination for residents of the Black Belt.
See also
*
Legal status of Hawaii
The legal status of Hawaii is an evolving legal matter as it pertains to United States law. The US Federal law was amended in 1993 with the Apology Resolution which "acknowledges that the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii occurred with the act ...
**
Hawaiian sovereignty movement
**
United States federal recognition of Native Hawaiians
Native Hawaiians are the aboriginal people of the Hawaiian Islands. Since the involvement of the United States in the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii, federal statutes have been enacted to address conditions of Native Hawaiians, with some fe ...
*
Aboriginal self-government in Canada
*
Ethnic separatism
*
Ethnic nationalism
Ethnic nationalism, also known as ethnonationalism, is a form of nationalism wherein the nation and nationality are defined in terms of ethnicity, with emphasis on an ethnocentric (and in some cases an ethnocratic) approach to various politi ...
*
Indigenous rights
Indigenous rights are those rights that exist in recognition of the specific condition of the Indigenous peoples. This includes not only the most basic human rights of physical survival and integrity, but also the rights over their land (includ ...
*
Self-determination
**
Self-determination of Australian Aborigines
Indigenous Australian self-determination, also known as Aboriginal Australian self-determination, is the power relating to self-governance by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australia. It is the right of Aboriginal and Torres S ...
**
Native American self-determination
Native American self-determination refers to the social movements, legislation and beliefs by which the Native American tribes in the United States exercise self-governance and decision making on issues that affect their own people.
Conceptua ...
***
Tribal sovereignty
Tribal sovereignty in the United States is the concept of the inherent authority of indigenous tribes to govern themselves within the borders of the United States.
Originally, the U.S. federal government recognized American Indian trib ...
*
National question
''National question'' is a term used for a variety of issues related to nationalism. It is seen especially often in socialist thought and doctrine.
In socialism
* ''Social Democracy and the National Question'' by Vladimir Medem in 1904
* ''So ...
s
*
Racial oppression
References
{{African American topics
African and Black nationalism in the United States
Independence movements