User:Deisenbe/sandbox/Ethiopian
The Ethiopian Manifesto, Issued in Defence of the Black Man’s Rights in the Scale of Universal Freedom, was a pamphlet issued in New York by Robert Alexander Young early in 1829, only months before David Walker's much more influential Appeal. Little is known about the author, who was an obscure Black New Yorker who likely served as a popular preacher among the working class.[1]
In it the author outlined his radical vision for the formation of a global African community, envisioning the coming of a Black messiah. It contains one of the earliest extent calls for the reassembling of the African "race", of their need to become a people, a nation in themselves. He makes no distinction between African people throughout the world; for him, they are all African, regardless of their place of birth. Pan-negroism (or Pan-Africanism) was a first principle of his brand of nationalism.[2]
"Ethiopia" is not a reference to the modern country so named, but to the entirety of African people, wherever they may be located. He speaks of a messiah, from Grenada, of an unusual appearance. Born of an Afro-Carriacouan mother, this messiah, though Black, would be light-skinned with long hair and webbed and bearded middle toes. If some person was in mind as a model for this messiah, he has not been identified. This messiah was to lead the self-redemption of all African peoples ("Ethiopians").[3]
Young links the messiah's arrival to the fulfillment of Psalm 68:31: "Princes shall come out of Egypt; Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God" (King James version). Speaking as a medium, as indicated by his uses of the Majestic plural and an ananym, Young declares:
[W]e tell you of a surety, the decree hath already passed the judgment seat of an undeviating God, wherein he hath said, "surely hath the cries of the black, a most persecuted people, ascended to my throne and craved my mercy; now, behold! I will stretch forth mine hand and gather them to the palm, that they become unto me a people, and I unto them their God."
No major nineteenth-century Black thinkers refer to the Manifesto, so its influence, if any, remains to be determined.[4]
References
- ^ Rael, Patrick (Spring 2000). "Black Theodicy:African Americans and Nationalism in the Antebellum North". The North Star. A Journal of African American Religious History. 3 (2).
- ^ Stuckey, Sterling (1972). The Ideological Origins of Black Nationalism. Boston: Beacon Press. p. 8. ISBN 0807054283.
- ^ Andersen, Nicholas (2010), Rerouting Robert Alexander Young's Ethiopian Manifesto, archived from the original on January 8, 2024
- ^ Hinks, Peter P. (1997). To Awaken My Afflicted Brethren: David Walker and the Problem of Antebellum Slave Resistance. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press. p. 180.
Further reading
- Muchie, Maamo, The Relevance of the Philosophy of Ethiopianism to Present Day Ethiopia, archived from the original on October 10, 2017
- Asukile, Thabiti (2000 (Winter 1999)), "The All-Embracing Black Nationalist Theories of David Walker's Appeal", The Black Scholar, 29 (4): 16–24
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