Redrawing Borders of Belonging in a Narrow Nation: Afro-Chilean Activism in the Hinterlands of Afro-Latin America

Chapter examines the historical and contemporary roots of Afro-Chilean invisibility and the nature and trajectory of collective organising that has only recently emerged among Afro-Chileans in response. It reflects on the ways in which the desire and need for Afro-Chilean activism since the turn of the twenty-first century, in this forgotten corner of the global African diaspora, highlights the temporally and spatially enduring nature of the struggles for equality among African-descended peoples. Within this context and using specific examples, the chapter shows how the activities and demands of multiple organisations based around shared African descent have helped to redefine notions of belonging in Chile and, in turn, challenge traditional expectations of what it means to be Chilean.

Josephine Baker’s Routes and Roots: Mobility, Belonging, and Activism in the Atlantic World

Chapter uses research paradigms from mobility studies, black diaspora studies, and transnational American studies, in order to create a nuanced picture of the many facets of Josephine Baker’s career as an artist and activist. It discusses Baker’s often neglected role as an activist for the French Resistance and in the US Civil Rights Movement, as well as her self-fashioning as a mother, head of state, and humanitarian at Les Milandes: a 15th century château where Baker established her Rainbow Tribe. The chapter considers how Baker’s changing positionalities, mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion in different social contexts, and experiences of displacement and exile, partially determined her political work and how she was simultaneously constructed by these discourses. Baker is cast as a “revolutionary diva” who does not simply belong on the margins of current debates around transnational affiliations and cosmopolitanisms, cultural mobilities and immobilities, and political activism in the black diaspora.

Black Sojourners in the Métropole and in the Homeland: Challenges of Otherness in Calixthe Beyala’s Loukoum: The “Little Prince” of Belleville and Myriam Warner-Vieyra’s Juletane

Chapter explores the complexities of the postcolonial migrant experience in France via francophone literary works Loukoum: The “Little Prince” of Bellville (Calixthe Beyala) and Juletane Philip Ojo (Myriam Warner-Vieyra). In doing so, it illustrates the extent to which literary representations provide a space for criticism and mediation of migration and otherness, and a voice for disenfranchised immigrants who long for a hybrid space that they can call home. The characters’ use of language, which includes word play and transformations of standard French, is analysed, alongside other ways in which they attempt to negotiate migratory space.

Beyond the Ethnographic Other: Pan-African Activism at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

Chapter details how the proliferation of imperial progressivism in transatlantic reformer discourse was seized upon by Pan-African activists at the turn of the twentieth century, in order to challenge the harsh dichotomy of the ethnographic other, claim subjectivity for African peoples, and invoke a host of expansive rights central to valid and meaningful participation in modern society. It also briefly discusses Pan-Africanism during the interwar years, notably the participation of many activists in a burgeoning transatlantic print culture. The chapter argues that while turn-of-the-century Pan-African activism did not stop imperialism, racialized violence, paternalism, or crass racism, it did establish a recognisable transatlantic network which helped to keep alive the promise of humanist equality and laid the groundwork for later activism that continued to challenge its deferment.

Introduction: Deferred Dreams, Defiant Struggles

Offers a brief international history of black oppression, exploitation and misrepresentation. The significant gains born out of the freedom struggles of the 1950s and 1960s are noted and reflected upon in the context of the persistent injustices and discrimination experienced by African-descended peoples around the world today. Parallels are drawn between the anti-immigrant rhetoric of Enoch Powell’s 1968 “Rivers of Blood” speech and the rise of right-wing populism across Europe in the early twenty-first century. The recent police killings of African-Americans are discussed in order to highlight the continuation of the black struggle in a post-civil rights USA. A broad overview of the contents of volume is then provided. Subjects and themes outlined range from the dynamics of the struggle against racism in a transnational context, to the disruption of socially constructed discourses on blackness via artistic and religious performativity, and the lesser known struggles of the Civil Rights Movement.

Lowcountry, High Demands: The Struggle for Quality Education in Charleston, South Carolina

Chapter documents the strategies employed by local governing officials to resist the implementation of a racially desegregated public school system in Charleston Country, South Carolina in the wake of the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling. It discusses the role of student-led activism in maintaining the momentum of the desegregationist movement, as well as recounts the often traumatic experiences of black children who were among the first to attended desegregated schools in Charleston County. The chapter also considers later battles for education reform in South Carolina and, as such, highlights the ongoing struggle to realise the promises of quality education throughout the state.

“Together We Can Build a Nation of Love and Integration”: The 1965 North Shore Summer Project for Fair Housing in Chicago’s Northern Suburbs

Chapter focuses on the largely ignored 1965 North Shore Summer Project, an open housing campaign that challenged discriminatory practices in the suburbs lining the lakeshore north of Chicago. It provides an overview of the context within which the Project took shape, documenting the roles of key figures in its formation and organisation, as well as the involvement of student volunteers. The chapter also discusses the local hostility encountered by those working as part of the Project, and the factors which led to its curtailment, notably the breakdown in government relations and a lack of black involvement. Despite the brevity of the campaign and its limited direct impact on segregation, it is nonetheless suggested that the North Shore Summer Project did leave an important legacy, insofar as it was successful in drawing attention to the issue of closed housing and, in turn, brought awareness of the racist implications of a housing problem to thousands of suburban residents. The Project’s role in the personal growth of its participants is also briefly explored.

Staging the Scaffold: Criminal Conversion Narratives of the Late Eighteenth Century

Chapter considers how criminal conversion narratives staged the personae of enslaved black men in ways that legitimised white-coded religious and legal discourses. It also discusses the ways in which abolitionists used the same narratives to bolster their cause, namely by diverting attention away from the alleged crimes of the enslaved toward the cruelties that drove the perpetrators to commit their crimes in the first place. Indeed, the chapter argues that criminal conversion narratives oscillated between contradictory functions: potentially humanizing the enslaved by framing them as redeemable subjects, on the one hand, and presenting them as pieces of property that can be subjected to violent punishment, thereby condemning them to the sphere of the not-quite-human and preserving civic society as the realm of white power, on the other.

The Plays of Carlton and Barbara Molette: The Transformative Power of African-American Theater

Chapter offers a critical analysis of Barbara and Carlton Molette’s body of theatrical work. It focuses in particular on the racial and class politics present within the plays Rosalee Pritchett (1970), Noah’s Ark (1974), Legacy (2012) and the ten-minute play Tee-Shirt History (2011). The author argues that to understand the Molettes’ plays, one must appreciate the extent to which the type of theatre that they conceive is nourished by the broader cultural perspective of Afrocentricity and its values. Indeed, the chapter proposes that the Molettes’ insightful and powerful dialogue encourages us to question a belief system based in the ideology of White supremacy and its attendant stereotypes. Furthermore, as representatives and inheritors of the Black intellectual tradition and the Black Arts Movement, their plays offer harsh criticisms of the ideas and behaviours of those who deny the existence of a solid African American culture, and instead propose ways to celebrate Black heritage. In this way, the author suggests that the Molettes’ collective body of work is a clarion call for self-definition and Black agency.