KB

Africa (both real and imagined) figured prominently in the minds of black nationalist women in the twentieth century. These women envisioned Africa — and they were often thinking specifically of Liberia — as a haven for people of African descent. Many desired to relocate to Liberia as a means of escaping racism in the United States and improving their socioeconomic conditions. In this way, they supported emigration as a practical solution to many of the challenges they were facing in this period. At the same time, they also felt a strong affinity for Africa, and it motivated their decision to lead a vibrant emigrationist movement in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s.

Their efforts had a global impact. As I detail in the book, many of the women were able to mobilize activists in Africa, Europe, the Caribbean and Latin America and other parts of the globe. Those who had the means to travel overseas collaborated with a diverse group of activists and politicians in various locales. Amy Ashwood Garvey, for example, relocated to Liberia in the 1940s and worked closely with Liberian President William V.S. Tubman. Other women activists who could not travel abroad utilized a variety of means to build a transnational network of activists who were committed to the cause of black liberation. For example, in Chicago, during the 1940s, Mittie Maude Lena Gordon organized a ten-day visit for Akweke Abyssinia Nwafor Orizu, a nationalist from Eastern Nigeria who became acting president of Nigeria in 1966.

Overall, these women’s efforts yielded mixed results — sometimes they were effective and other times they fell short — but their stories shed light on the crucial ways women shaped black nationalist and internationalist movements in the twentieth century.