In Search of Ethiopia: Messianic Pan-Africanism and the Problem of the Promised Land, 1919–1931

Abstract

Whether native-born or immigrants from the United States, Caribbean Basin, or Africa, Black people have made Canada an integral – although still largely overlooked – site in the Black Atlantic and African Diaspora. This article examines interwar Pan-Africanism, a movement that enjoyed a popular following in Canada. Pan-Africanists considered knowledge of history and love of self as foundational to resisting anti-blackness and inspiring Black liberation. In North America, they fortified themselves with the memory of their ancestors and awareness of an ancient African past as requisites for racial redemption and community building. African-American and Caribbean immigrants embraced Ethiopianism – a messianic Pan-Africanism of sorts – which they mythologized on Canadian soil. Not only was this Black racial renaissance new in Canadian society, but also its quasi spiritualism and revanchism reveals the zeal and militance of interwar Black agency. Pan-Africanists in North America sowed the seeds of twentieth-century Black liberation in the interwar period, which helped germinate postwar Caribbean and African decolonization, and civil and human rights struggles in the United States and Canada.