The Insistent Call: Rhetorical Moments in Black Anticolonialism, 1929-1937

4. “Modern” Slaves: The Liberian Labor Crisis and the Politics of Race and Class

74 C h a p t e r 4 “Modern” Slaves The Liberian Labor Crisis and the Politics of Race and Class The violence at Aux Cayes inspired the United States to initiate a policy called “Haitianzation,” which gradually ceded political power to Haitian authorities. The same violence encouraged people of African descent in the United States to question their relationships to Africa, its diaspora, and United States democracy. As the colonial policies of the occupation became public knowledge, black Americans recognized a common experience with racial violence and expressed sympathy for Haiti’s people. In this sense, the U.S. occupation of Haiti and its accompanying racist violence increased the relevance of the African Diaspora to black ethos within the United States. That is, the way in which black people talked about their collective identity involved common political experiences that crossed state boundaries and geographic distance. Ultimately , the United States’ colonial policies during its occupation of Haiti provided a political framework for understanding a truly international black diaspora that moved beyond racial heritage. Despite an increase in political intimacy between black Americans and black “others,” much of this rhetoric remained complicit with the assumptions of colonial discourse. Haiti and its culture remained exotic, and black Americans continued to insist that, despite the affinity that existed between themselves and Haitians, each occupied a separate place and had a distinct role to play in the fight against global racial violence. Alone, the perceptual changes that were transpiring within America’s "Modern" Slaves 75 black communities were as yet insufficient to inspire a rhetoric free from the diffusionist logic of colonialism. However, as this chapter will now demonstrate, subsequent crises in the African Diaspora altered these perceptions even further and complicated the functions of both colonial discourse and the African Diaspora in black ethos. In 1930, the League of Nations dispatched a committee headed by Britain ’s Dr. Cuthbert Christy to investigate reports of forced labor in Liberia. The “Christy Report” detailed the widespread practice of “pawning” Liberian children into indentured servitude to Americo-Liberian families, incidents of domestic slavery, abuses in the recruitment of labor to the island of Fernando Po, the use of the Liberian military to “motivate” laborers to build roads through the hinterland, and profiteering by some members of Americo-Liberian government. European nations used the report to justify past imperialist endeavors and to provide an imperative for further colonial encroachment into Africa. In the United States, the report was interpreted in the light of domestic racial politics. Racists argued that these problems proved that Liberia was a failed state and that this “failure ” demonstrated the incapacity for self-government among populations of African descent.1 For individuals who claimed a more “enlightened” stance with respect to race, the Liberian situation created a hermeneutic controversy and a rhetorical crisis. Black people living in the United States were particularly conflicted about the Christy Report and hotly debated the nature of Liberian “slavery.” The core problem faced by black America was that the criticism leveled against the Americo-Liberian government seemed too similar to the derogatory appraisals of black political acumen in the African Diaspora; however, the charges of slavery and exploitation compelled empathy and, perhaps, support for indigenous Liberians. Furthermore , the symbolic importance of slavery as a moral issue, one with deep historical resonance, called for response. Arguments for solidarity with either native Liberians or the Americo-Liberian elite circulated in black communities. Prominent black American journalist George S. Schuyler commented prolifically on the situation in Liberia. Schuyler had achieved public notoriety, partially through his arguments against affiliation of African Americans with Africa and his polemic assertion that the black American was a “lamp-blacked Anglo Saxon.”2 However, in the early 1930s Schuyler visited Liberia to investigate the Liberian labor crisis, and his experiences there inspired him to write a number of articles and a novel that 76 Ch apt er 4 portrayed the “reality” of the situation in Liberia and its significance for black people in diaspora.3 Schuyler’s novel Slaves Today: A Story of Liberia was a fictional account of the plight of a Liberian laborer during the Liberian labor crisis of 1931. It was also the first novel by a black American set entirely in Africa and, according to Michael Peplow, the “first attempt at a realistic assessment of Africa by a black author.”4 The “realistic” character of the novel resulted...