An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States

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Black Americans remembered this Indigenous triumph against the Klan as a significant movement against white supremacy in the South, though Robert F. Williams, who then was head of the Monroe, North Carolina, NAACP chapter, wrote that the resistance they led two weeks earlier did not get the same attention, “We had driven the Klan out of our country into Indian territory. The national press played up the Indian-Klan fight because they didn’t consider this a great threat—the Indians are a tiny minority and people could laugh at the incident as a sentimental joke—but no one wanted Negroes to get the impression that this was an accepted way to deal with the Klan.” 9 Williams’s comment suggests that he didn’t respect the Indigenous resistance. On the contrary, he did. He pointed out a longer history of how white society viewed Indigenous peoples as a disappearing culture. They would not garner that level of attention until nearly fifteen years later with the emergence of the American Indian Movement. Even though some were advocates of nonviolence, even supporting the NAACP, Hughes captured the core issues greatly: using the legal system for gaining more rights was important, even foundational, but forms of forceful resistance had their place in the pantheon of Black struggle. And Black Americans, for a moment, were able to look to Indigenous peoples as a sign of what justice could look like. The beginning of the 1960s was a tumultuous time for Black and Native people. Indigenous people were fighting for fishing rights in the Pacific Northwest. Native American organizations such as the National Congress of American Indians, founded in 1944, sought to protest the termination of tribal nations. 10 Throughout the 1950s, and then significantly, in 1961, the year of the landmark Chicago American Indian Conference, Native individuals wanted to use the “language of the larger world,” including that from nations on the African continent and throughout Latin America, to challenge the US colonial order. 11 Black Americans were struggling for the basic right to sit down at a lunch counter and order food. They, too, were resisting their oppressive conditions. However, they didn’t always see themselves in struggle together with Native people, with a few exceptions. For instance, as noted author James Baldwin wrote in The Fire Next Time, “And today, a hundred years later after his technical emancipation, he remains—with the possible exception of the American Indian—the most despised creature in this country.” 12 While Baldwin was not intentionally stating that Black folks
had it worse than Native folks, it is clear that he, if not knowing their present condition, did understand that anti-Indigenous sentiments were just as bad for Native people. Three additional civil rights icons who also engaged in this rhetoric were Fannie Lou Hamer, Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X. It is important to comment on how these Black civil rights icons understood the Indigenous condition, for through their example we can learn how to think and, perhaps, even talk about solidarity with other oppressed groups, especially the original people of this land. James Baldwin, Fannie Lou Hamer, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr. all analyzed and criticized the Black American condition within US democracy. They also hoped to imagine a Black future where they lived outside of white supremacy. It is important to discuss why I’m using these civil rights icons as examples. In some ways, these people represent two competing notions of Black belonging in US history, nationalism and integration. The late Black liberation theologian James Cone argued that these competing ideas were a response to enslavement and segregation. He also argued that no Black person or organization was purely nationalist or integrationist. Rather, each existed on a continuum, and desired different means on a path to Black liberation. 13 Furthermore, these Black intellectual strands were based upon what one believed the potential of the US could be. Today, when people tell Black, Latinx, or Indigenous protesters to “go back home” or to “leave the country” it is an insult. They are suggesting that we all can’t do better and live with each other in peace. Black people have desired to largely reform the US. And when they could not because of white racism, they sought other means, including separation. Baldwin, Hamer, Malcolm, and Martin exude what historian Peniel Joseph calls “radical black dignity.” 14 They challenged white supremacy and injustice and believed in the possibility of racial and economic justice for Black Americans. It seems today that Dr. King is popular among a wide array of people. From right-wing pundits, to college football coaches who want to silence the protests of Black athletes, to socialists who want to highlight Dr. King’s critiques of capitalism, he remains as popular as ever. Dr. King belongs to everyone. According to a study released in 2008, Dr. King is the most wellknown figure in US history. 15 In the preface to A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History (2018), historian Jeanne Theoharis notes that Dr. King and other civil rights figures’
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PRAISE FOR AN AFRO-INDIGENOUS HISTO
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REVISIONING HISTORY SERIES A Queer
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To Liseth, El Don, ChiChi
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CHAPTER SEVEN Black and Indigenous
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Indigenous people in our collective
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and places. In fact, the whole book
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INTRODUCTION Thousands of volumes h
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RECONNECTING DISCONNECTED HISTORIES
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solidarity between Black and white
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important to understand how the whi
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Indigenous peoples have sought ways
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need both movements, as both are he
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Some established (mostly white male
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meeting between a variety of Indige
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Atlantic Diaspora Connections (2009
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During every Black History Month in
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consciousness, and to a considerabl
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PAUL CUFFE Perhaps one of the earli
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Afro-Indigenous peoples in the Unit
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antiblackness. Finally, these exper
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America. There was so much we cover
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president-general and another counc
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the dehumanization of Native people
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On March 4, 1801, Jefferson, during
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lasting in its impact than that wit
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The Native person could not truly e
Page 58 and 59: CHAPTER THREE ENSLAVEMENT, DISPOSSE
Page 60 and 61: local autonomy—Reconstruction cha
Page 62 and 63: unpleasant, but we must try and com
Page 64 and 65: Choctaw owned 14 percent and the Cr
Page 66 and 67: surpassed those predecessors by per
Page 68 and 69: eaders to reconsider the role of In
Page 70 and 71: a time they moved back to Wisconsin
Page 72 and 73: white people were interested in rem
Page 74 and 75: of their resistance to white encroa
Page 76 and 77: liberation and women’s rights. Ty
Page 78 and 79: covered numerous topics in the spee
Page 80 and 81: commit the same sin that the nation
Page 82 and 83: had to change. They could no longer
Page 84 and 85: Still, Native people continued to s
Page 86 and 87: government’s boarding schools and
Page 88 and 89: civilization and its so-called virt
Page 90 and 91: function of the National Associatio
Page 92 and 93: treatment with white men, . . . [th
Page 94 and 95: In the post-Garvey era, after the U
Page 96 and 97: learned about the prolific and viol
Page 98 and 99: Eastman likely participated in the
Page 100 and 101: Du Bois’s paper offered a broad s
Page 102 and 103: and men to assert their right to ci
Page 104 and 105: CHAPTER FIVE BLACK AMERICANS AND NA
Page 106 and 107: gap we have today, are rooted in ea
Page 110 and 111: legacies have been tainted. People
Page 112 and 113: Here, King describes the root of ra
Page 114 and 115: working as a collective to achieve
Page 116 and 117: egistered in Mississippi. She helpe
Page 118 and 119: surprising if she did. The Choctaw
Page 120 and 121: understand history, how they practi
Page 122 and 123: indeed fought in every war since th
Page 124 and 125: US, given that the US was not Black
Page 126 and 127: Malcolm understood well the connect
Page 128 and 129: me think in terms of American’s i
Page 130 and 131: In the following scene in the docum
Page 132 and 133: the land, isn’t four hundred year
Page 134 and 135: For the majority of white Americans
Page 136 and 137: this growing unity is the best assu
Page 138 and 139: with hardly any people of color wil
Page 140 and 141: did their best to understand how th
Page 142 and 143: “It was not until Malcolm X came
Page 144 and 145: lived there. What about their claim
Page 146 and 147: and operates under a racist and imm
Page 148 and 149: oth deeply invested in Black civil
Page 150 and 151: challenge the assumed authority of
Page 152 and 153: Committee. BWLC, with Frances Beal
Page 154 and 155: international monopoly finance capi
Page 156 and 157: Conference on Indigenous Peoples an
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awarded until 2011, and discontinue
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CHAPTER SEVEN BLACK AND INDIGENOUS
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practices and incorporate them into
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e performing minstrelsy without eve
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influenced by racist oppression, th
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Beyond the specifics of this incide
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acism and sexism, as well as across
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there is hardly any chance in hell
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For example, in July 2007, in Detro
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No one wants to be a r*dsk*n. It is
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even absurdly funny. The use of the
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was trying to make. Jones responded
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Desus sarcastically adds, “How ca
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CHAPTER EIGHT THE MATTER OF BLACK A
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Indigenous and Latinx police, “sh
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protester and getting hit with them
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Native people’s use of tropes, sl
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CONCLUSION THE POSSIBILITIES FOR AF
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“they are the problem” and tell
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oppression and white supremacy. . .
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movements.” 14 We can learn from
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est to acknowledge the importance o
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Ta-Nehisi Coates’s fantastic arti
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possible. Our imaginations, coupled
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to people of African descent. I don
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2. You know how Indigenous Nations
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they treated? We should instead cen
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Indigenousness are not so different
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maintain African enslavement. For n
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opposed to her likely believe that
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS YOU DON‘T WRITE a
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Emory University. Thank you to the
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5. Patrick Wolfe, Traces of History
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the initiative strikes which open t
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13. Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the
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28. Robert Dale Parker, ed., The So
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8. Andrew Woolford, This Benevolent
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6. Malinda Maynor Lowery, The Lumbe
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CHAPTER 6. BLACK POWER AND RED POWE
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47. William H. McClendon, “The Bl
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15. Abaki Beck, “Rendered Invisib
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1. Billy-Ray Belcourt and Lindsay N
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Name: The Harmful Consequences of P
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INDEX Please note that page numbers
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Beck, Abaki, 143, 144 The Beginning
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Chicago Defender (publication), 76,
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Dyson, Michael Eric, 140, 149 Eagle
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Hamilton, Charles, 110 Hampton, Fre
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Kaplan, Amy, 205n54 Katznelson, Ira
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Metacomet (chief), 60 Metropolitan
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N.W.A. (band), 161 N-word, as term,
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Red Cloud (Oglala Lakota leader), 6
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“The Souls of White Folk” (Du B
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Wheatley, Phillis, xxii, 8-10, 14,
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North and South American activists
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Dennis Banks and unknown woman at a
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Audience at a rally in support of D
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American Indian Movement member and
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An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States

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