Colonization and Its Discontents: Emancipation, Emigration, and Antislavery in Antebellum Pennsylvania

7. “Our elevation must be the result of self-efforts, and work of our own hands”: Martin R. Delany and the Role of Self-Help and Emigration in Black Uplift

7 / “Our elevation must be the result of self-efforts, and work of our own hands”: Martin R. Delany and the Role of Self-Help and Emigration in Black Uplift Just as the racial climate of the 1850s helped convince white Pennsylvania colonizationists to focus their efforts on gaining free black settlers, it also led a number of free blacks to consider emigration on their own terms. James Forten had died in 1842, but a handful of men from his children’s generation, including Pittsburgh’s Martin R. Delany, began to advocate a black-led back-to-Africa movement much like the one proposed first by Forten and Paul Cuffee and then developed by Benjamin Coates. Like his predecessors, Delany hoped that a successful colony under black leadership would create the conditions for both self-rule and economic independence, proving black equality while combating both slavery and racism. Like Forten, he was convinced that this could be achieved only under genuine black leadership. Though historians have disagreed as to whether Delany’s emigrationist vision was the first real stirring of a true black nationalism or the product of defeat and despair, it was actually an extension of the self-help and racial uplift agenda created by the gradualists and Forten. Based on the premise of select emigration, it can best be described as a “City on a Hill”—an intended showcase of black self-sufficiency and achievement. It was part of, rather than a departure from, his lifelong efforts to gain a legitimate place for blacks in American society.1 As we have already seen, the American Colonization Society scheme was extremely complicated, ambiguous, and often contradictory. So was Delany’s. Just as historians have read a number of meanings into colonizationists’ writings, scholars have emphasized different aspects of 188 / martin r. delany and the role of self-help Delany’s plan to arrive at varying conclusions. On the one hand, some have described him as the “Father of Black Nationalism,” America’s first true pan-Africanist. On the other hand, some have pointed out that Delany shared the same Eurocentric biases of white Americans, and they argue that his interest in Africa was self-serving. This debate makes Delany one of the most controversial figures in this study.2 The problem lies in the higher expectations that can easily result based figure 9. “Martin R. Delany,” by William J. Simmons. (Courtesy of the Library Company of Philadelphia.) martin r. delany and the role of self-help / 189 on Delany’s skin color. Black intellectuals such as Delany saw themselves as uniquely qualified to lead Africa back to its past greatness based on two assumptions. First, their ancestors were Africans and they shared the physical characteristics that would allow them to fit in and relate to the people in Africa. At the same time, however, as Americans they were more “civilized” and could take their cultural refinement with them and share it with Africans. White colonizationists shared these ideas, hence much of their effort to enlist the support of black leaders such as Forten. By the same token, it has been easy for historians, consciously or not, to see black nationalists as somehow less intrusive or threatening than colonizationists because of the expectation that they could relate more to Africans. This racially essentialist argument could make it easier to admire black nationalist efforts to “uplift” Africa. Viewed through the eyes of African specialists such as Basil Davidson and Tunde Adeleke, however, the admiration can easily turn to disappointment of failed expectation . As these historians have both shown, blacks who had imbibed Western, and particularly American, culture were little more capable of seeing the complexities of African cultures and appreciating them for their own merits than were white colonizationists. Even so, while admitting their limitations, we must not fall into the trap of heightened expectations and thus heightened criticism. Delany felt a greater sense of urgency than did white colonizationists such as Mathew Carey, Elliott Cresson, or even Coates. Successful African colonization for Delany would have meant so much more than an end to slavery. It could have led, in his vision at least, to black respect and equality in the United States. Coates, and to an extent Cresson, had made a similar argument, but because Delany was black the idea was brought to the forefront of his agenda. It meant that he was fighting not only for the...