The present writer has recently completed a London University doctoral dissertation on The West African Response to the Italo-Ethiopian Crisis, 1934-1942 (1972). As far as I can discover the only other work on this subject is the two rather sketchy articles by Robert G. Weisbord entitled, 'British West Indian Reaction to the Italian-Ethiopian War:An Episode in Pan-Africanism ', Caribbean Studies (Vol. X, No. 1, April 1970), pp. 34-41; 'Black American and the Italian-Ethiopian Crisis: An Episode in Pan-Negroism', The Historian (Vol. XXXIV, No. 2, February 1972), pp. 230-41. The present article is more or less a re-appraisal of the reaction of the Afro-Americans to the crisis and it touches on the most significant aspects generally ignored by Weisbord.
2.
Joel A. Rogers, the lecturer, columnist, traveller, and chronicler of Negro achievements, in the Pittsburgh Courier (New York, 20 July 1935). The Courier was perhaps the most influential Negro weekly in the thirties.
3.
See for example, Acts of the Apostles, Chap. 8, v. 27: ' behold, a man of Ethiopia'; see, also, E. Ullendorff, Etbiopia and the Bible (London, Oxford University Press, 1968), passim.
4.
George Shepperson, 'Ethiopianism: Past and Present', in G.C. Baeta ed., Christianity In Tropical Africa (London, Oxford University Press, 1968), p. 249.
5.
See, for example, the inaugural sermon by Mojola Agbebi, the pastor of the United African Church at Lagos, delivered on 8 May 1892, and published in Sierra Leone Weekly News (Freetown, 12 November 1892).
6.
For details of the Ras Tafari movement see M. Garfield Smith, The Ras Tafari Movement in Kingston, Jamaica ( Kingston, 1960). See also Ken Post, 'The Bible as ideology: Ethiopianism in Jamaica, 1930-1938', in C. Allen & R.W. Johnson eds., African Perspectives (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1970), pp. 185-207. The Ethiopian World Federation was started in the United States by Dr. Malaku Bayen, the Emperor's representative, as a propaganda organ for Ethiopia.
7.
Czeslaw Jesman, The Ethiopian Paradox (London, Oxford University Press, 1968), foreword to the book.
8.
Daniel Thwaite, The Seething African Pot: A Study of Black Nationalism, 1882-1935 (London, 1936), p. 207.
9.
Rene Maunier , The Sociology of Colonies: An Introduction to the Study of Race Contact, Vol. 1, ed. and trans. E.C. Lorimer (London , 1945), p. 417. Professor Maunier argues that the development of a universal sense 'is stronger and more striking in black racial movements than others', for the African Negro seemed to possess a certain rudimentary sense of race-solidarity. Ibid., p. 410.
10.
Hollis R. Lynch, Edward Wilmot Blyden, Pan-Negro Patriot, 1832-1912 (London, Galaxy Books, 1967), pp. 1-3.
11.
This has been studied by scholars like Hollis Lynch, 'Pan-Negro Nationalism in the New World, before 1862', Boston University Papers on Africa, Vol. 11, African History , ed., J. Butler (Boston University Press, 1966); E.S. Redkey, 'Bishop Turner's African Dream', Journal of American History (vol. LIV, No. 2, Sept., 1967 ), pp. 271-90; George Shepperson, 'Notes on Negro American Influences on the emergence of African Nationalism' , Journal of African History (Vol. 1, No. 2, 1960), pp. 299-312.
12.
Chicago Commission on Race Relations, The Negro In Chicago - A Study of Race Relations And a Race Riot ( Chicago, 1922), pp. 59-60.
13.
Rio Ottley, New World A-Coming (New York, 1943), p. 109.
14.
The New York Times of 14 July 1935 editorialized that not since the days of Marcus Garvey, whose dream of a black pan-African empire was shattered by imprisonment, and deportation, 'have racialists won so large a following in the streets of Harlem'.
15.
See Ina C. Brown , The Story of the American Negro ( New York, 1936), p. 120.
16.
Ibid., p. 124.
17.
New York Times (14 July, 1935).
18.
A detailed discussion of similar organisations in West Africa of prayers and relief funds for Ethiopia is provided in my Ph.D. thesis, pp. 265-307.
19.
Public Record Office, F.O. 371/19125, Gerald Campbell, British Consul-General in New York, to R. Lindsay, British Ambassador in Washington D.C., 8 August 1935.
20.
21.
The Pittsburgh Courier (New York, 7 December 1935).
22.
New York Times (2 August 1935).
23.
Brice Harris Jr., The United States and the Italo-Ethiopian Crisis (California, Stanford University Press, 1964), p. 42.
24.
25.
Helen Hiett , 'Public Opinion and the Italo-Ethiopian Dispute ', Geneva Special Studies (Vol. VII, No. 1, Feb. 1936), p. 18.
26.
27.
Christian Century (Vol. 52, 20 November 1935).
28.
The New York Age (20 July 1935); also New York Times (13 July 1935):
29.
30.
New York Times (15 July 1935).
31.
The Pittsburgh Courier (20 July 1935).
32.
Ibid (10 August 1936).
33.
Pittsburgh Courier (12 Octpber 1935).
34.
New York Times (19 May 1936).
35.
Pittsburgh Courier (12 October 1935).
36.
New York Times (14 December 1935). For details about Julian's life see his autobiography, Black Eagle, Colonel Hubert Julian (as told to John Bulloch) ( London, Jarrolds, 1965).
37.
Pittsburgh Courier (19 October 1935 and 4 and 15 January 1936).
38.
Ibid. (7 December 1935).
39.
Ibid. (23 February 1935).
40.
Amsterdam News (12 October 1935).
41.
Pittsburgh Courier (12 October and 2 November 1935).
42.
Harold Preece , 'War and the Negro', Crisis (November 1935).
43.
Afro-American (19 October 1935).
44.
William Nolan, Communists versus the Negro (Chicago, Henry Regnery Co., 1951), p. 135; see also Wilson Record, The Negro and the Communist Party (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1951), p. 137.
45.
G. Padmore, 'Ethiopia and World Politics', Crisis, Vol. XLII, No. 5, May 1935 , p. 138. Similar charges also came from the West Indian historian, C.L.R. James, in his little known study, World Revolutions, 1917-1936 (London, Secker and Warburg, 1937), pp. 386-88.
46.
Record, op. cit, p. 138.
47.
48.
Details about the United Aid For Ethiopia are available in Public Record Office, F.O. 371/20154, G. Campbell to Sir Ronald Lindsay, 1 June 1936.
49.
Ibid., United Aid For Ethiopia to Campbell , 27 May 1936.
50.
Ibid., Campbell to Lindsay, 1 June 1936.
51.
52.
Ibid., United Aid For Ethiopia to Anthony Eden, 5 June 1936.
53.
The Nigerian internal and external secret intelligence reports for the year ending 31 December 1936, for example, make references to this belief among Nigerians. Public Record Office, Nigeria C.O.583/220/30159.
54.
Reaction of the blacks in South Africa is detailed in Public Record Office, F.O.371/20155, Colonel E.I.D. Gordon of the Cape Province, to Lord Halifax, who copied to Eden, 15 January 1936.
55.
Condemnation of the Christian church during the crisis can be found in such West African newspapers as the African Morning Post (Accra, 7 and 15 May 1936); Vox Populi (Accra, 3 July 1937); Sierra Leone Daily Guardian (Freetown, 27 September 1935); African Church Chronicle (Lagos, October-December 1935). Creech Jones Papers (ACJ.18/3) at the Rhodes House Library, Oxford, contain correspondence on the trials of such West African radical nationalists as I.T.A. Wallace Johnson of Sierra Leone, who violently attacked the Christian church and the 'white' imperialists during the period of the Italo-Ethiopian conflict.
56.
Pittsburgh Courier (9 November 1935).
57.
See for instance, Public Record Office, C.O.96/723/31255, complaint of the Italian Consul in Lagos (Nigeria) to Sir Arnold Hodson, governor of the Gold Coast, 24 July 1936; also Nigerian Daily Telegraph (Lagos, 10 July 1935).
58.
New York Times (4 October 1935).
59.
Ibid., 19 May 1936.
60.
Public Record Office, F.O. 371/19125, G. Campbell to R. Lindsay, 8 August 1935. In Trinidad, a group of demonstrators tore down the Portuguese national flags in the colony, thinking that they were Italian flags. Public Record Office, F.O. 371/20154, A.C. Hollis, governor of Trinidad, to J.H. Thomas, British Secretary of State for the Colonies, 6 January 1936.
61.
New Times and Ethiopia News (6 March 1937 ).
62.
Ibid., 7 April 1937.
63.
Public Record Office, C.O. 554/114/33539, the United African Front to Malcolm MacDonald, Secretary of State for the Colonies, 2 May 1938. The letter was signed jointly by George Phillips, Thelma Dixon, F.M. Walkes, A.B. Rama, Stanley Davis. and S. Washington. The impact of the Ethiopian crisis on the pan-African movement in Britain is the subject of my forthcoming article in Transactions of the Historical Society of Gbana.
64.
Ibid., evident from minutes by M. MacDonald, 10 June 1938 .
65.
Cited in Colim Legum , Pan-Africanism: A Short Political Guide (London, Pall Mall, 1965 ), p. 16.
