From David Walker to John Chilembwe: Global Black Collectivity as Resisting Race and Affirming Culture

Abstract

ABSTRACT Western notions of race have never been for us. Yet culture has historically functioned as an “insider” discourse, representing our ways of living, knowing, and communing with one another. How, then, might Black folks remain mindful in our treatments of race and culture, ever cognizant of how we wield these constructs to our collective global advantage? In this essay, I reflect on how three Africana historical figures have engaged this question: (1) David Walker, whose sense of literacy in Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World centered free and enslaved Black audiences as cultural “insiders,” (2) C.L.R. James, whose evolving sense of collective Black identity prompted him to write texts such as The Black Jacobins, a Black-centered interpretation of the Haitian Revolution, and (3) Reverend John Chilembwe, whose Africana global alliances and literacy-based leadership ignited the Nyasaland Uprising against colonial oppression in Malawi. I argue that these three figures resisted race by affirming global Black collectivity as a cultural homeplace, thus informing how we may theorize and practice Black rhetorical studies today.