Unafrican Americans

Passionate and well written, Adeleke's stunning reexamination of three 19th-century African Americans is bound to be controversial. But the truth must be told, and the Nigerian-born director of Africana studies at Loyola University is up to the task. It's hard to believe that this is Adeleke's first book: with fresh lucid prose and wry wit, he brings to light the historic ironies and philosophical hypocrisies that continue to shape African and African American lives. Martin Delany, Alexander Crummell and Henry McNeal Turner were three who lost faith with the struggle for freedom and franchise in this country and shifted toward what became a reactionary escapist plan to migrate. Africa was the goal, a place dictated by birthright for black Americans to rule and civilize. When wealthy blacks refused to finance the schemes, European and American governments and robber barons were courted. Delany, considered the father of black nationalism, accumulated data in Africa that facilitated British colonization. Crummell, enamored with European culture, used religious rhetoric to excuse slavery here and to revile African culture. Turner, a former reconstruction legislator, appealed to the U.S. government for $40 billion in reparations to finance the mass relocation. Adeleke builds a solid case to support his charge that the so-called pan-Africanism of these men was actually a very destructive narrow nationalism. Their contempt for African people and their indigenous cultures led to support of imperialist intervention at a time when nation-states were forming. Opportunistically, the men abandoned the call when political tides turned for blacks in the U.S., but the colonial wheel has already been set in motion. (June)