In Defense of Ethiopia: A Comparative Assessment of Caribbean and African American Anti-Fascist Protests, 1935-1941

In Defense ofEthiopia: A Comparative Assessment ofCaribbean and African American Anti-Fascist Protests, 1935-1941 * Fikru Gebrekidan Michigan State University This article examines the impact of the Italo-Ethiopian war on blacks of the West Indies and the United States. Few world events had ever aroused African American and Caribbean interest in Africa as did the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in October 1935. The prominent historian, John Hope Franklin, has written that, instantly following the fascist attack on Ethiopia, "even the most provincial among Negro Americans became international minded."1 As the only remaining independent African state, blacks had come to regard Ethiopia as a symbol of hope and freedom from racial and colonial oppression by whites. Thus, they saw the fall of Ethiopia as "the final victory of whites over blacks," the worst setback in their collective struggle for freedom and equality.2 So far three published works have dealt with the Italo-Ethiopian hostility and its consequences on Africans globally.3 S. K. B. Asante's work challenges the conventional interpretation of World War II as the milestone in the coming of age of African nationalism. Instead, Asante interprets the Italo-Ethiopian war as "one of the main influences in the awakening of racial and political consciousness in West Africa."4 William R. Scott and Joseph E. Harris are two black American scholars with a long-standing interest in Ethiopia. In his 1972 dissertation at Princeton University, Scott studied the African-American reaction to the Italian invasion of Ethiopia. He has since remained the leading authority on that subject, although his dissertation did not get published *Presented at the Twelfth International Conference of Ethiopian Studies, East Lansing, Michigan, 1994©Northeast African Studies (ISSN 0740-9133) Vol. 2, No. 1 (New Series) 1995, pp. 145-173 145 146 Fikru Gebrekidan until two decades later. As studies of the various black personalities and organizations involved in the anti-fascist movement during the war, both Scott's and Harris's works relate very well to the rich history of black struggle for social justice and freedom. Compared to West Africa or black America, the Caribbean response to Italy's invasion of Ethiopia has received much less attention. Only two articles have thus far considered the British West Indian response to the Italo-Ethiopian war.5 Weisbord's nine-page article is a highlight of the islands' pro-Ethiopian sentiments as expressed in contemporary local newspapers. Post's contribution is an ideologically charged interpretation of the Jamaican reaction to the war, which he argues was a manifestation of the working class protest against European imperialist expansion. By combining the above sources as well as other secondary materials and contemporary newspaper reports, this essay makes a comparative assessment of the Italo-Ethiopian war and its aftermath for Caribbean and American blacks. The first section focuses on popular responses to the war: the black masses and their anti-fascist sentiments. The second section examines how the war served to sharpen race consciousness among the Caribbean and the Afro-American intelligentsia and how that in turn shaped the course of pan-African nationalism. Popular Responses The century-long African American trickle to west Africa had come to a halt by the 1890s. This was partly due to the declining financial fortunes of the American Colonization Society, the agency that had been responsible for resettling most of the black immigrants in Liberia. Partly it was also due to the widespread knowledge that many of the Liberian repatriates were in fact falling sick and dying of malaria and other tropical diseases upon arrival.6 As Liberia's image declined abroad, by contrast Ethiopia captured the imagination of a growing number of American and Caribbean blacks. Having defeated in 1896 the 14,000-strong Italian colonial expedition at the battle of Adwa, Ethiopia emerged as the living embodiment of Africa's past greatness. Once used mainly as a generic name for black Africa, the name Ethiopia now became synonymous with Abyssinia, In Defense ofEthiopia 147 the name with which outsiders referred to the Northeast African kingdom . Besides proving Africa's military prowess, the Adwan victory invoked the racially redeeming verses of Psalm 68, which foresaw princes coming out...