Between Homeland and Motherland: Africa, U.S. Foreign Policy, and Black Leadership in America
Alvin B. Jr. Tillery
Abstract
This book considers the history of political engagement with Africa on the part of African Americans, beginning with the birth of Paul Cuffe's back-to-Africa movement in the Federal Period to the Congressional Black Caucus' struggle to reach consensus on the African Growth and Opportunity Act of 2000. In contrast to the prevailing view that pan-Africanism has been the dominant ideology guiding black leaders in formulating foreign policy positions toward Africa, the book highlights the importance of domestic politics and factors within the African American community. Employing an innovative mul ... More
This book considers the history of political engagement with Africa on the part of African Americans, beginning with the birth of Paul Cuffe's back-to-Africa movement in the Federal Period to the Congressional Black Caucus' struggle to reach consensus on the African Growth and Opportunity Act of 2000. In contrast to the prevailing view that pan-Africanism has been the dominant ideology guiding black leaders in formulating foreign policy positions toward Africa, the book highlights the importance of domestic politics and factors within the African American community. Employing an innovative multi-method approach that combines archival research, statistical modeling, and interviews, the book argues that among African American elites, factors internal to the community played a large role in shaping their approach to African issues, and that shaping U.S. policy toward Africa was often secondary to winning political battles in the domestic arena. At the same time, Africa and its interests were important to America's black elite, and the book's analysis reveals that many black leaders have strong attachments to the “motherland.” Spanning two centuries of African American engagement with Africa, the book shows how black leaders continuously balanced national, transnational, and community impulses, whether distancing themselves from Marcus Garvey's back-to-Africa movement, supporting the anticolonialism movements of the 1950s, or opposing South African apartheid in the 1980s.
Keywords:
Africa,
African Americans,
back-to-Africa movement,
Congressional Black Caucus,
pan-Africanism,
black leaders,
African American community,
anticolonialism,
apartheid
Bibliographic Information
Print publication date: 2011 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780801448973 |
Published to Cornell Scholarship Online: August 2016 |
DOI:10.7591/cornell/9780801448973.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Alvin B. Jr. Tillery, author
Assistant Professor of Political Science, Rutgers University-New Brunswick, The State University of New Jersey
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