Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-wzw2p Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-04T13:44:52.141Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Black on Red: Late-Nineteenth and Early-Twentieth-Century New World Black Interpretative Uses of Native American Political Experience

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2019

Jane Anna Gordon  and
Keisha Lindsay
Jane Anna Gordon*
Affiliation:
University of Connecticut, Storrs
Keisha Lindsay*
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Madison
*
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: J. A. Gordon, Department of Political Science, University of Connecticut, 365 Fairfield Way, Unit 1024, Storrs, Connecticut 06269. Email: jane.gordon@uconn.edu; and K. Lindsay, Political Science and Gender Studies, University of Wisconsin, 3311 Sterling Hall, 475 N. Charter St., Madison, WI, 53706. E-mail: knlindsay@wisc.edu
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: J. A. Gordon, Department of Political Science, University of Connecticut, 365 Fairfield Way, Unit 1024, Storrs, Connecticut 06269. Email: jane.gordon@uconn.edu; and K. Lindsay, Political Science and Gender Studies, University of Wisconsin, 3311 Sterling Hall, 475 N. Charter St., Madison, WI, 53706. E-mail: knlindsay@wisc.edu
Get access

Abstract

In an effort to address the dearth of literature regarding how African American political theorists have historically interpreted the meaning of Native political experience to make sense of their own, we chart what four influential New World Black writers, from the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, say about Native Americans. While there is some diversity among the particular interpretive foci of these historical works, each generally invokes Native Americans as having a shared experience of oppression with Blacks that warrants resistance; being crushed by circumstances in which African-descended people have survived and thrived; exemplifying oppression that has no redemptive power; providing evidence of the ongoing possibility of Black extinction; and as racially inferior to Blacks and thus in need of Black ladies’ supposedly civilizing qualities. This paper uses these historical Africana perspectives on Indigenous and Black relations to explore the political implications of forging individual and shared identities at the intersection of race and gender.

Keywords

black political thoughtindigenous peoplespolitical experiencegenderblack femininity
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , September 2019 , pp. 324 - 351
Copyright
Copyright © The Race, Ethnicity, and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

BlackPast, B. (2007, January 28) (1869) Frederick Douglass Describes The “Composite Nation.” Available at: https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/1869-frederick-douglass-describes-composite-n.Google Scholar
Bruyneel, Kevin. 2017. “Finding the Settler in White Settler-ness: Settler Memory, the U.S. Race Paradigm, and the Fear of an Indigenous Futurity,” unpublished paper presented at the Western Political Science Association, Vancouver, Canada, April.Google Scholar
Cantiello, Jessica. 2011. “Frances E. W. Harper's Educational Reservations: The Indian Question in Iola Leroy.” African American Review 45 (4): 575–92.Google Scholar
Cooper, Anna. 1892. A Voice from the South. Xenia, Ohio: The Aldine Printing House. Reprint of the original publication. New York: Dover Publications, 2016.Google Scholar
Coulthard, Glen Sean. 2014. Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition. St. Paul: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Cugoano, Quobna Ottobah. 1999/1787. Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species. New York: Penguin Classics.Google Scholar
Crummell, Alexander. 1862. The Future of Africa: Addresses, Sermons, Etc., Etc., Delivered in the Republic of Liberia. 2nd ed. New York: Charles Scribner.Google Scholar
Crummell, Alexander. 1992. “The Destined Superiority of the Negro.” In Destiny and Race: Selected Writings, 1840–1898, eds. Moses, Wilson Jeremiah. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.Google Scholar
Delaney, Martin. 2005. The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States. The Project Gutenberg EBook, Produced by Suzanne Shell, Martin Pettit and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. Available at: http://www.archive.org/stream/theconditionelev17154gut/17154.txt.Google Scholar
Deloria, Vine Jr. 1969. Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.Google Scholar
Deloria, Vine Jr. 2003. God is Red: A Native View of Religion, 30th anniversary edition with new forewords by Leslie Marmon Silko and George E. Tinker. Golden, Colorado: Fulcrum Publishing.Google Scholar
Dessalines, Jean-Jacques. 2003. “Liberty or Death, Proclamation.” In Caribbean Political Thought: The Colonial State to Caribbean Internationalisms, eds. Kamugisha, Aaron. Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle.Google Scholar
Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne. 2014. An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Garvey, Amy Jacques (ed.). 2009. The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey, edited by, The Journal of Pan African Studies eBook. Available at: http://www.black-matters.com/books/Marcus-Garvey-Phil-and-Opinions.pdf.Google Scholar
Gordon, Lewis Ricardo. 2008. An Introduction to Africana Philosophy. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Harper, Frances. 1893a. “Enlightened Motherhood.” In Brighter Coming Day: A Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Reader, ed. Foster, Frances Smith. New York: Feminist, 1990.Google Scholar
Harper, Frances. 1893b. Iola Leroy: Shadows Uplifted. Philadelphia, PA, Garrigues Bros. Reprint of 2nd ed. New York: Dover Publications, 2010.Google Scholar
Katz, William Loren. 1986. Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage. New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers.Google Scholar
Krauthamer, Barbara. 2013. Black Slaves, Indian Masters: Slavery, Emancipation, and Citizenship in the Native American South. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Lindsay, Keisha. 2013. “God, Gays, and Progressive Politics: Reconceptualizing Intersectionality as a Normatively Malleable Analytical Framework.” Perspectives on Politics 11 (2): 447–60.Google Scholar
Locke, John. 1689. “Second Treatise of Government.” In Classics of American Political and Constitutional Thought: Origins …, Volume 1 – Origins Through Civil War. . Reprint of original publication, eds. Hammond, Scott J., Hardwick, Kevin R., Lubert, Howard Leslie. NY: Hackett Publishing Company, 2007.Google Scholar
Madlingozi, Tshepo. 2018. “Mayibuye iAfrica? Disjunctive Inclusions and Black Strivings for Constitution and Belonging in ‘South Africa.” Ph.D. diss. Birkbeck, School of Law, University of London.Google Scholar
Manuel, George and Posluns, Michael. 1974. The Fourth World: An Indian Reality. Don Mills, Ontario: Collier-Macmillan Canada.Google Scholar
Maracle, Lee. 1975/1990. Bobbi Lee: Indian Rebel, foreword by Jeannette Armstrong. Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Women's Press [originally published 1975].Google Scholar
Page, Amanda. 2011. “The Prisms of Passing: Reading beyond the Racial Binary in Twentieth- Century U.S. Passing Narratives.” Ph.D. diss. University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.Google Scholar
Táíwò, Olúfẹ̣mi. 2018. “Excluded Moderns and Race/Racism in Euro-American Philosophy: James Africanus Beale Horton.” The C.L.R. James Journal 24 (1–2, Fall): 177–203.Google Scholar
Takaki, Ronald T. 1979. Iron Cages: Race and Culture in Nineteenth-Century America. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Tanner, Benjamin T. 1876. “The Sioux's Revenge.” In Lift Every Voice: African American Oratory, 1787–1900, eds. Foner, Philip S., and Branham, Robert James. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, pp. 577–78.Google Scholar
Temin, David Myer. 2017. “Custer's Sins: Vine Deloria Jr. and the Settler-Colonial Politics of Civic Inclusion.” Political Theory 46 (3): 357–79.Google Scholar
Ture, Kwame and Hamilton, Charles. 1967. Black Power: The Politics of Liberation. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Wells, Ida B. 2014. “A Red Record.” In The Light of Truth: Writings of an Anti-Lynching Crusader, ed., with an introduction by Bay, Mia. New York: Penguin Classics.Google Scholar
Wilderson, Frank B. III 2010. Red, White & Black: Cinema and the Structure of U.S. Antagonisms. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Wolfe, Patrick. 2016. Traces of History: Elementary Structures of Race. London, England: Verso.Google Scholar
Zackodnik, Teresa. 2011. Press, Platform, Pulpit: Black Feminist Publics in the Era of Reform. Nashville: University of Tennessee Press.Google Scholar