Anywhere But Here: Black Intellectuals in the Atlantic World and Beyond

279 Pages·2014·2.99 MB·English

by  Kendahl Radcliffe

Anywhere But Here
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Anywhere
Black Intellectuals in the Atlantic World and Beyond
But Here
Edited by
Kendahl Radcliffe, Jennifer Scott, and Anja Werner
University Press of Mississippi / Jackson
www.upress.state.ms.us
The University Press of Mississippi is a member
of the Association of American University Presses.
Copyright © 2015 by University Press of Mississippi
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
First printing 2015
∞
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
Contents
vii Acknowledgments
3 Introduction: The Black Atlantic Revisited: Methodological Considerations
Kendahl Radcliffe, Jennifer Scott, and Anja Werner
I. Reordering Worldviews: Rebellious Thinkers, Poets, Writers,

and Political Architects
27 Writing Against the Grain: Anténor Firmin and the Refutation of Nineteenth-
Century European Race Science
Douglas W. Leonard
47 Activist in Exile: José da Natividade Saldanha, Free Man of Color in the
Tropical Atlantic
Amy Caldwell de Farias
65 Developmentalism, Tanzania, and the Arusha Declaration: Perspectives of
an Observing Participant
Ikaweba Bunting
II. Crafting Connections: Strategic and Ideological Alliances
99 Garvey in Oz: The International Black Influence on Australian Aboriginal
Political Activism
John Maynard
117 Africa for Africans and Asia for Asians: Japanese Pan-Asianism and Its Impact
in the Post–World War I Era
Keiko Araki
vi Contents
139 Convenient Partnerships?: African American Civil Rights Leaders and the
East German Dictatorship
Anja Werner
III. Cultural Mastery in Foreign Spaces: Evolving Visions of Home
and Identity
167 Abdias Nascimento: Afro-Brazilian Painting Connections Across the Diaspora
Kimberly Cleveland
187 “Of Remarkable Omens in My Favour”: Olaudah Equiano, Two Identities,
and the Cultivation of a Literary Economic Exchange
Edward L. Robinson Jr.
209 Ruptures and Disrupters: The Photographic Landscapes of Ingrid Pollard
and Zarina Bhimji as Revisionist History of Great Britain
Kimberli Gant
229 From Port-au-Prince to Kinshasa: A Haitian Journey from the Americas to Africa
Danielle Legros Georges
255 Notes on Contributors
259 Index
Acknowledgments
The editors would like to thank the University Press of Mississippi, and
particularly Craig Gill and Katie Keene, for their support and good spirits
throughout the preparation and publication of this book. In addition, they
would like to thank the following:
Loving thanks go to my parents, Kenneth and Shirley Radcliffe, who instilled
in me a deep understanding of the phrase “sense of history, sense of self.”
To my sister Lisa Radcliffe—a great source of support as I edited this very
manuscript while visiting her during the summer of 2013, the hottest I’ve
ever experienced in New York City. To the University of California, Los
Angeles, African American and Women Studies Departments, and Califor-
nia State University, Fullerton, Ethnic Studies Program, all of whom provided
the opportunity over the years to design both graduate and undergraduate
courses that explored many of the themes addressed in this book. Individ-
ual shout-outs go to my colleagues Alexandro Gradilla, chair of the African
American Studies Department, California State University, Fullerton; Scot
Brown, Department of History, University of California, Los Angeles; and all
of my colleagues at El Camino College Compton Center, Social and Behav-
ioral Sciences for their friendship and collegial support. A special thanks
to my late friend Clyde Woods, University of California, Santa Barbara; my
mentor Marc Primus of Atlanta, Georgia; and my son, Elijah Radcliffe Davis.
Elijah—I dedicate this book to you.
Kendahl Radcliffe
I am deeply grateful to all of the people who have been crucial in my devel-
opment as an intellectual. In particular, I want to thank my mentors from
the University of California, Los Angeles in the Afro-American Studies and
History Departments, namely Brenda Stevenson, Ruth Gilmore, and the late
Clyde Woods, who first nurtured my graduate-level academic interests in
black intellectualism. I am also appreciative of my colleagues and students
at the New School for Public Engagement, New York, who allowed me, for
over thirteen years, to develop historically inclusive courses within a thriving
vii
viii Acknowledgments
intellectual community. In my museum and public history work, I must
acknowledge the historian friends and colleagues who have been wonder-
ful advocates and partners in reclaiming “lost histories”: Joan Geismar, Leslie
Harris, Willard Jenkins, William Loren Katz, Chris Moore, Carla Peterson,
Gunja Sengupta, Judith Wellman, and Deborah Willis. This includes the next
generation of history intellectuals I had the pleasure of working with through
Weeksville Heritage Center: Megan Goins-Diouf, Kaitlyn Greenidge, LaShaya
Howie, Joyce LeeAnn Joseph, Alexsandra Mitchell, Kristina Nazimova, and
Ardra Whitney. Last, I am forever indebted to my family in New Orleans and
California, especially my parents, who taught me more than anyone else the
importance of becoming a global citizen and student of the Diaspora.
Jennifer Scott
I am particularly thankful to Joel Dark and his students at Tennessee State
University (TSU) in Nashville. Our conversations, especially in connection
with 2008 and 2014 study tours to Germany, got me started thinking more
intensely about black perspectives and histories in global contexts. It was
furthermore particularly rewarding for me to make friends among TSU art
students and professors and to meet them again during black art exhibits in
Berlin years later. I am also deeply grateful to the Vanderbilt University Black
Cultural Center, above all its director, Frank E. Dobson Jr., for including me
during many mind-broadening events. My friends Sabine Schlunk, John R.
Jones, and Archana Narasanna were my colorful “Nashville family” far away
from home while this book project began taking shape. Their friendship con-
tinues to inspire me. Last but not least, this project could not have been fin-
ished without the love and support of my husband, fellow-historian Oliver
Werner. He provided not just constructive professional feedback but, together
with our daughter, Frieda, delightful distraction from serious study.
Anja Werner
Anywhere But Here