Black empire: the masculine global imaginary of Caribbean intellectuals in the United States, 1914-1962

Abstract

The Crusader stating the following: '' A Race without a program is like a ship at sea without a rudder.It is absolutely at the mercy of the elements.It is bu√eted hither and thither and in a storm is bound to flounder.It is in such a plight as this that the Negro race has drifted for the past fifty years and more.''∞ This statement, sponsored by Caribbean radical Cyril V. Briggs, the editor of the Crusader, on behalf of his militant revolutionary organization the African Blood Brotherhood (abb), proceeded to lay out a program to ''supply a rudder for the Negro Ship of State.''As Robert Hill has further described, this ''Program of the abb'' called upon fellow organizational leaders, such as Marcus Garvey of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (unia), to create ''a federation of all existent Negro organizations, molding all Negro factions into one mighty and irresistible factor.''≤ This call for a world ''Negro federation'' emblematizes one of the central concerns of this book-namely, how certain black leaders and intellectuals of Caribbean descent chose to imagine African Americans as part of a global political community during the early years of the twentieth century.

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