Department or Program

History

Abstract

Despite the seemingly evident nature of the connection between Black Americans and Africans, their relationship developed from radically different contexts. Centuries of virulent, systemic racism soldered the Black diaspora living in the Americas into a structural link to a continent they knew little about. Through a complex interplay between marginalization and membership to Western society, the Black Diaspora asserted their agency in growing transnational intellectual networks. My thesis explores the disconnections between African and the Black diaspora, two groups whose kinship is rarely questioned. I build upon the rich scholarship on transnational relationships and Black American diasporic studies. Using a comparative approach to my research, I analytically assemble secondary and primary sources uncovering trends underpinning this relationship. Doing so, traces the construction of this transnational African connection to the emergence of assertive class black intellectuals in the Americas in the second half of the nineteenth century. The Western intellectual tradition to which they belong instructs the ways they constructed, perceived and engaged with their claimed ancestral continent. The emergence of the biblically inspired Ethiopianist movement sets the basis for a transatlantic alliance between Black Americans and Africans carrying with it Euro-American legacies. This fed later iterations of transnational engagement reacting to shifting cultural and political landscapes. I explore the dialogues underpinning Black diasporic engagement with African and their effects on African American status in the Western ideological and cultural spheres.

Level of Access

Open Access

First Advisor

Otim, Patrick

Date of Graduation

5-2024

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Number of Pages

92

Download

Open Access

Available to all.

Share

COinS