Belonging
- The H3O/Art of Life Blog
- 20 hours ago
- 5 min read
By Asantewaa Oppong Wadie. Ed.D.
Presented by Omni-U Virtual University
Dr. Joyce E. King (2015) uses the term “psychic malaise” to describe the apathy and vague dissatisfaction that Black people experience when they realize that they do not truly belong in the mainstream culture, and that they are further not welcome or cared for in the general society. To address such mental distress, King offers the powerful, potent, and evocative re-telling and re-framing of Black History. The re-telling and reframing not only includes history that has been recorded in books but also our oral tradition, our intuition, and a generous helping of the Black Arts. As an example of how educators can shift the mental burden of Blackness, King reflects on the hurtful image of “Aunt Jemima”, an image that was used to taunt Black people and devalue Black womanhood. However, upon closer examination of Black oral tradition, King shares that the name Jemima most likely emerged from the name Yemaya, the commanding mother deity from the Yoruba people of Nigeria!
‘Jemima women’ were so named because everyone, even their captors, could see that there was something unique about their bearing and skill set. They were superior mothers. King reframes that narrative of the ‘Jemima women’ by explaining that when the priestesses of Yemaya learned that their people were being taken away on slave ships, many of them volunteered themselves into the enslavement process just so that they could protect and safeguard Black people. Telling the story this way evokes deep memory within us. We suddenly feel cared for and loved. Most of us have been profoundly touched by at least one ‘Jemima woman’ or Yemaya priestess who, even without formal training, made sure we understood that we belonged to her, and that part of the purpose of her life was to make sure that we were cared for.
Black people, as the longest-lived human type, have many places in their historical timeline that are worth visiting and re-visiting because they are so rich with love, belonging and care. One such place in our history, is the story of genuine love between the country of Ethiopia and the African Diasporans, with a particular attention to African Americans. Keeping in mind that Ethiopia was not one of the primary homelands from which captured Africans were taken during the European-African “slave” era, I, as a researcher, have been compelled to ask how and why Ethiopia demonstrated such belonging and care for African people in the Americas.
The historical records contain an important and undercelebrated love letter from the Ethiopian royal family to African diasporans. Although it is not a formal letter, (it can be better classified as a memo or notes from the Ethiopian royal family) it is nevertheless infused with a tenderness and thoughtfulness that can penetrate the thickest veil of psychic malaise.
To set the letter in context, we must go back to the inter-war years. In the summer of 1919, during the Great Migration, and two years after the end of World War I, America experienced one of its worst outbreaks of racial violence. The violence began in the city of Chicago. White Chicagoans became outraged when they perceived a Black youth to have violated the rules of a segregated beach. The youth was on a raft and allegedly drifted across the invisible line that divided the waters of Lake Michigan into a white section and a black section. White young men threw stones at the black rafter causing him to go under water and drown. When the Black communities’ calls for police to arrest the stone-throwing young men went unheeded, many in the Black community (several of them veterans of WWI) armed themselves. However, they were severely outmatched. Gangs of Irish and Italian young men ran into the Black community burning homes and shooting residents.
The racial violence that started in Chicago would soon spread across the nation. The summer of 1919 was dubbed the “Red Summer” because of all the racialized bloodshed. At the height of the violence, a delegation of five Ethiopian princes arrives in the United States, on a mission to renew a treaty between the United States and Ethiopia. Chicago’s premier Black newspaper, The Chicago Defender, dispatched a journalist to interview the Ethiopians. The journalist asked, Do the Ethiopians consider themselves black? What do they think about lynchings? And, what do they feel about the current racial violence in the United States? The Ethiopian Princes made it clear they are a black people, and in what may be one of the strongest pan-African statements of solidarity made in the 20th century, the princes tell the press that they despise lynchings and they encouraged the African Americans to “fight on, don’t stop.”
Doubtlessly, the Ethiopian Princes went home to inform the Ethiopian royal family of the woeful condition that African Americans were facing.
By 1922, when the King and Queen of Ethiopia (Empress Zawditu and King Tafari – later known as Emperor Haile Selassie I) are approached and asked if they have a message for Black people of America, to be read at the annual national meeting of the United Negro Improvement Association, the King of Ethiopia eagerly dictates the following:
“Kindly convey our greetings, congratulations and best wishes to the assembly when it convenes. Assure them of the cordiality with which I invite them back to the homeland, particularly those qualified to help solve our big problems, and to develop our vast resources, teachers, artisans, mechanics, writers, musicians, professional men and women, all who are able to lend a hand in the constructive work which our country so deeply feels and greatly needs. Here we have abundant room and great opportunity and here destiny is working to enthrone a race which has suffered slavery, and poverty, and persecution and martyrdom, but whose expanding soul and growing genius is now the hope of many millions of mankind.”
Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, New York and Los Angeles were rough landing spots for African American families migrating north or west. White residents of those areas rushed to legally protect large swaths of those cities with restrictive covenants. They did not want African Americans as their neighbors. It was the intolerance of whites for Black families that began the slum- lording and ghettoization of the redlined areas where Black families were forced to live. From that vantage point, Ethiopia’s invitation to come home, must have sounded like a message from an ethereal being. The UNIA records indicate that the audience erupted into applause several times during the reading of the letter. African Americans were suddenly “seen” and the value of their labor and intellectual property recognized by the Ethiopian royal family. King Tafari acknowledged their suffering from the slavery era to the era of lynchings and vigilante violence. He further decl!
ared their royalty by stating that the entire race needed to be (re) enthroned and Ethiopia was working towards that end. He ends his statement on a very prophetic and futuristic note highlighting the beauty and genius of African people as the hope of the world.
It is my contention that when King Tafari’s letter is properly explained to African Americans today there always will be an instant feeling of belonging and kinship. It should be framed and placed in all our homes and classrooms. At the very least, it can serve as a potent antidote for psychic malaise.
Dr. Authens Asantewaa Oppong Wadie
DePaul University, Chicago
Recommended Viewing:
“Summer in Chicago: Winter in America” Featuring Celebrated Documentarian, Barbara Allen: