An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States

CHAPTER FIVE
BLACK AMERICANS AND NATIVE
AMERICANS IN THE CIVIL RIGHTS
IMAGINATION
AMONG THE MOST frustrating things I encounter are certain people’s reactions
to my work. The reactions have seemed to be stuck between two different
responses. One is Indigenous antiblackness—expressed as, “See, Black
people can be racist, too!” They also assert that Black Americans are
settlers. (“Let’s not forget that there was this thing called slavery!”) The
second response, by Black folks, is to simplify the history of Black and
Indigenous relations. They easily fall into the old line of, “See, those
Indians are racist too! They owned slaves!” I think some Native people
have used my work to suggest that Black people are no better than white
settlers. And some Black people have called me out for minimizing the
history of Native-enslaved Africans. As a Black and Indigenous person, I
suppose I’m just Mr. In-Between, a brotha without a home.
This particular comparative discourse has existed for a while. For
example, on December 10, 1949, Charles Eagle Plume, a Blackfeet Indian,
was quoted in the Chicago Defender comparing the plight of Native people
to Black Americans. “The Southern Negro is better off than the average
American Indian,” he remarked. Eagle Plume, an army veteran and
graduate of the University of Colorado, stated, “The Georgia Negro eats
better than the American Indian.” Finally, he remarked, “Negroes can own
property, but a majority of Indians cannot unless they are under the
jurisdiction of the government.” 1 Eagle Plume’s statement, in a Black
newspaper, demonstrates perhaps a general Native American point of view
regarding African Americans. On the one hand, they acknowledged the