Righteous Propagation: African Americans and the Politics of Racial Destiny after Reconstruction

Abstract

Reading Righteous Propagation one is continually taken aback by the unexamined tensions Michele Mitchell uncovers in postemancipation black reform: “civilizing” missions to Africa coexisted with anti-imperialist sentiments; eugenic solutions were a central part of racial uplift; fears of miscegenation pervaded racial discourse. Breathing new life into a familiar narrative, Mitchell's “social history of ideas” offers more breadth and depth than intellectual histories of “race leaders,” and she avoids dry descriptions of institution building by placing ideologies of sexuality and gender at the center of her analysis. Mitchell opens her book with a lively description of “Liberia fever” in the late nineteenth century. African American proponents of emigration suggested that colonization would improve fecundity, masculine prowess, and the protection of vulnerable African American women. But most did not interrogate the consequences of imperialism for Africans, instead viewing colonization as an opportunity to “fortify black manhood” (p. 56). By the early twentieth century, however, anti-imperialist discourse strengthened with the development of Pan-Africanism. Nevertheless, notes Mitchell, Pan-Africanism was premised on racialized theories of conquest, even if the conquerors were African Americans. It was, in short, the black man's burden.