Racial Identity and the Civilizing Mission: Double-Consciousness at the 1895 Congress on Africa

Abstract

The Congress on Africa was held in Atlanta, Georgia, in December 1895 as part of a campaign to promote African American involvement in Methodist missions to Africa. Held in conjunction with the same exposition where Booker T. Washington delivered his famous Atlanta Compromise address, the Congress in some ways shared his accommodationist approach to racial advancement. Yet the diverse and distinguished array of African American speakers at the Congress also developed a complex rationale for connecting the peoples of the African diaspora through missions. At the same time that they affirmed the need for “civilizing” influences as an indispensable element for racial progress, they also envisioned a reinvigorated racial identity and a shared racial destiny emerging through the interactions of black missionaries and Africans. In particular, the most thoughtful participants in the Congress anticipated the forging of a black civilization that combined the unique gifts of their race with the progressive dynamics of Christian culture. These ideas parallel and likely influenced W. E. B. Du Bois's concept of double-consciousness. At a time when the missionary movement provided the most important source of awareness about Africa among African Americans, it is possible to discern in the proceedings of the Congress on Africa the glimmerings of a new pan-African consciousness that was destined to have a profound effect on African American intellectual life in the twentieth century.

Separation, Inclusion, and the Development of Black Leadership in the Methodist Episcopal Church

“…Gammon Seminary was also home to the Stewart Missionary Foundation, a major initiative of the M. E. Church that sought to involve African Americans more fully in missions to Africa. 43 In a real sense, the missionary field became a place where African Americans could take on leadership roles that were denied them at home. When Joseph Hartzell was elected Missionary Bishop for Africa at the General Conference of 1896, one of his first projects was to recruit aspiring African Americans to take over the Methodist mission in Liberia.…”