The Fate of African Americans Rests with the Ottomans: The Armenian Crisis, Lynching, and the “American Question,” 1880–1920

Abstract

Between 1880 and 1920, African Americans and Armenians became people on the run, the targets of racial persecution by state-sanctioned merchants of terror. Black intellectual-activists saw in the massacre of Armenians powerful parallels with the escalation of lynching and other forms of domestic terrorism in the United States. This article examines how African Americans galvanized to the defense of embattled Armenians, warning that the “Armenian crisis” served as a clarion call that should dissuade White Americans from embracing lynching with greater zeal. Black intellectuals accused that so long as Americans lynched their own citizens with impunity, the United States stood no chance of being a moral beacon in foreign affairs. More, they insisted that Americans’ commitment to lynching placed the United States on the same trajectory as despotic states likes Germany, Imperial Russia, and Ottoman Turkey. Thus, in marshaling to save Armenians, African Americans rallied to save themselves.