Page 30 - BCALA Summer 2018

30 | BCALA NEWS | Volume 45, Issue 3 that it was the duty of the “New
Negro” in the US, the Caribbean,
and Europe to uplift their brothers and sisters on the other side of the Atlantic. While pride in one’s heritage and the celebration of ancient
African civilizations were certainly key features of Black Nationalist thought, many activists continued
to buy into colonial narratives about the supposed backwardness of the “Dark Continent.” As I was reading these sections, I found myself thinking what Africans themselves thought of these Black Nationalist efforts. African connections feature throughout this study, as we learn about how Hayford spread Garveyism in Sierra Leone, how PME delegations traveled to Liberia, and what role
NOTES:
African activists played in shaping Ashwood’s Black Nationalism in London and in Africa. However, I was still left wondering about the extent to which African anticolonial leaders were able to engage with the global outlook of Black Nationalist women? Did they challenge or correct their civilizationist language, for example? While this is beyond the scope of what is already an incredibly broad and impressive study, these questions perhaps remind us of the continued need to bring more African voices and perspectives into histories of Black internationalism.
Ultimately, “Set the World on Fire” represents a landmark intervention in the thriving field of
Black international history. Indeed, more broadly, I would argue that it essential reading to anyone wanting to better understand the history of race, empire, and imperialism in
the twentieth century. Perhaps most important though, Blain provides
us with a timely reminder of the militancy and tenacity of the women who were at the heart of Black Nationalist politics. While they would not live to see the realization of their political visions, these women created the ideological and practical tools
for future generations of activists to take up the global struggle against white supremacy.
[1]. Josephine Moody, “We Want to Set the World on Fire,” New Negro World, January 1942.
[2]. Barbara Bair, “True Women, Real Men: Gender Ideology and Social Roles in the Garvey Movement,” in “Gendered Domains: Rethinking Public and Private in Women’s History: Essays from the Seventh Berkshire Conference on the History of Women”, ed. Dorothy O. Helly and Susan Reverby (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univer- sity Press, 1992); Ula Yvette Taylor, “The Veiled Garvey: The Life and Times of Amy Jacques Garvey” (Cha- pel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2002); and Asia Leeds, “Toward the ‘Higher Type of Wom- anhood’: The Gendered Contours of Garveyism and the Making of Redemptive Geographies in Costa Rica, 1922-1941,” “Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender, and the Black International 2”, no. 1 (2013): 1-27.
[3]. For recent landmark studies in this field, see Carole Boyce Davies, “Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones” (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008); Ashley D. Farmer, “Remaking Black Power: How Black Women Transformed an Era” (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2017); Dayo F. Gore, “Radicalism at the Crossroads: African American Women Activists in the Cold War”, repr. ed. (New York: New York University Press, 2012); Cheryl Higashida, “Black Internationalist Feminism: Women Writers of the Black Left”, 1945- 1995 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013); Erik S. McDuffie, “Sojourning for Freedom: Black Women, Ameri-
can Communism, and the Making of Black Left Feminism” (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011); Imaobong D. Umoren, “Race Women Internationalists: Activist-Intellectuals and Global Freedom Struggles” (Oakland: University of California Press, 2018); Tracy Denean Sharpley-Whiting, “Bricktop’s Paris: African American Women in Paris between the Two World Wars” (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2015); and Bianca C. Williams, “The Pursuit of Happiness: Black Wom- en, Diasporic Dreams, and the Politics of Emotional Transnationalism” (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018).