Black Separatism

THE ULTIMATE MANIFESTATION of black nationalism is black separatism. Black nationalism taken to its most extreme, or its logical conclusion, produces the ideology of racial separation chosen deliberately by African Americans. This ideology is, like black nationalism, a counterconservative approach to race relations in the sense that it is basically a reaction to racial discrimination perpetrated by whites.

Black separatism has most often been associated with pan-Africanism, but not necessarily. Separatism can take the form of internal separation or psychological “withdrawal” from the mainstream of American society and culture for the purpose of racial pride and the opportunity for self-determination. It can also take the more physical form of blacks' choosing geographic separation from whites inside the United States.

Black separatism has a long history, beginning in the colonial era when slaves and free blacks sought to establish as much control over their own destinies as possible under their difficult circumstances. The idea of returning to their African homeland was always a hope and dream of first-generation slaves. With passing time, however, the thought of such a return grew increasingly dim, and pan-Africanism thus reemerged in later generations as a plan not merely for individual aspirants but for the black population as a whole. Mitigating against such a plan of physical separatism, however, was the fact that, for any mass emigration to Africa to occur, black emigrants would have to depend upon the charity and logistical help of whites and, from about 1820 to 1890, the white-run American Colonization Society.

Although many black nationalists, such as Martin Delany, Bishop Henry Turner, Alexander Crummell, and Marcus Garvey, continued in the late 1800s and early 1900s to cling to the increasingly unlikely panAfricanist dream of physical separation, eventually the idea of psychological separation and black self-determination emerged to replace it. Black-owned newspapers written especially for black readers arose, as did blackowned banks, life insurance companies, fraternal organizations, and various business enterprises. Madam C.J. Walker, for instance, made a fortune catering haircare products exclusively to blacks. Such separatists, however, had to compete with accommodationists like Booker T. Washington and integrationists like Frederick Douglass and eventually the NAACP, for the allegiance of the black community in general, and thus were relegated to a secondary status, same as always.

By the time the civil rights movement ensued, there only one major black separatist organization was making any impact on the masses: the Nation of Islam (NOI). Founded in Detroit in 1930 as the “Lost-Found Nation of Islam in the Wilderness of North America,” the NOI preached that blacks had always constituted a nation within a nation—a nation held captive by white devils (white Americans and Europeans) until Allah's plan of redeeming his chosen (black) people should be revealed. Then Allah would raise his people up and destroy the white oppressors. This religious mysticism, seemingly metaphysical in nature, was coupled with a quite physical plan for achieving separate nationhood within the confines of North America. The NOI demanded that the U.S. government surrender up to eight southern states for the establishment of Allah's “Black [Page 552]Kingdom” on earth. Although the demand was immediately dismissed as quixotic because it would require the relocation not only of millions of blacks into the south but many more millions of whites out of the south, it started a movement for reparations in one form or another that has persisted to this day. Likewise, despite the fact that American political leaders have consistently rejected the NOI's demand for land for the past 40 years, the NOI holds fast to the plan even to this day.

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