"The Father of Black Nationalism": Another Contender

"THE FATHER OF BLACK NATIONALISM": Another Contender Floyd J. Miller Recent interest in extracting the historical roots of contemporary black nationalism has largely settled upon the decade of the 1850's and the activities of men such as Martin R. Delany and the Reverend Henry Highland Garnet—both of whom combined nationalism and emigrationism into a significant ideological response to the conditions free blacks confronted in the North. Delany especially has received attention from both historians and social commentators.1 The most prominent black nationalist and emigrationist of the antebellum period, Delany was a persistent champion of the view that blacks should avoid relying upon whites for guidance and should unite among themselves in order to control their own destinies. Moreover, in 1859 he culminated his advocacy of emigration when he travelled first to Liberia and then to Yoruba in West Africa in search of a location to establish a colony of black American and Canadian settlers. As a result, Delany has been depicted as the source of a black nationalist creed, uniting him with Bishop Henry M. Turner, the late nineteenth-century emigrationist, Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X and, finally, a multitude of present-day figures. To Harold Cruse, for example, Delany was "the real prototype of Afro-American Nationalism ," while to Theodore Draper, Delany should be considered "the father of Black Nationalism"—a dubious achievement in Draper's mind.2 1 Delany and Garnet have both received considerable attention from Howard H. Bell. See his pioneering doctoral dissertation recently published, A Survey of the Negro Convention Movement, 1830-1861 (New York, 1969) as well as his "Expressions of Negro Militancy in the North, 1840-1860," Journal of Negro History, XLV (Jan., 1960), 11-20; and "Negro Nationalism: A Factor in Emigration Projects, 1858-1861," ibid., XLVII (Jan., 1962), 42-53. See also Bell's introduction to the reprinting of the African travel reports of Delany and his colleague, Robert Campbell , Search for a Place: Black Separation and Africa, 1860 (Ann Arbor, 1969); my introduction to the book publication of Delany's only novel, Blake; or, the Huts of America (Boston, 1970) and Hollis R. Lynch, "Pan-Negro Nationalism in the New World," Boston University Papers on Africa, II (1966), 163-171. For Garnet, see Richard K. MacMaster, "Henry Highland Garnet and the African Civilization Society ," Journal of Presbyterian History, XLVIII (Summer, 1970), 95-112. 2 Cruse, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual (New York, 1967), p. 558; Draper, "The Father of American Black Nationalism," The New York Review of Books, XIV (Mar. 12, 1970), 33-41. Draper's essay can also be found in ch. 2 of his hostile critique of black nationalism, The Rediscovery of Black Nationalism (New York, 1970). For more friendly essays certifying Delany's position as an ideological forerunner of contemporary black nationalism, see S. F. Anderson, "Revolutionary Black Nationalism is Pan-African,' The Black Scholar, II (Mar., 1971), 20; and James Turner, "Black Nationalism: The Inevitable Response," ibid., II (Jan., 1971), 10-11. 310 Yet, despite Delany's real prominence and importance, he was neither the first to articulate a nationalist-emigrationist creed nor the first to develop this creed into a cohesive ideological framework. Rather the real "father of Black Nationalism" was the Reverend Lewis Woodson of Pittsburgh, Martin Delany's first teacher. From 1837 to 1841, Woodson outlined the major tenets underpinning the actions and rhetoric of Delany and his allies in the 1850's. Born in Virginia around 1805, Lewis Woodson lived in Ohio (where his first two children were born) for almost twenty years before leaving Columbus for Pittsburgh sometime in 1830 or 1831. For at least the next three decades, Woodson resided in Pittsburgh, teaching school, barbering and ministering to an African Methodist Episcopal congregation . In September, 1831, he served as secretary of the Ohio annual conference of the A.M.E. Church, then meeting in Pittsburgh. However, his most significant activities at this time were his efforts to provide educational opportunities for black children—a role he had played at Chillicothe , Ohio, when he had spearheaded the organization of an African Educational and Benevolent Society in 1827.3 At a meeting at the African Church in Pittsburgh in...