An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States

Some whites did not want only to exploit Black people but also to
remove them. For example, Mississippi senator Theodore Bilbo attempted
to advance a Greater Liberia Bill, also referred to as the “Back to Africa
bill,” which was designed to use federal funds to assist African Americans’
relocation to Liberia. Some Black nationalists supported it. As historian
Keisha Blain notes, “For Black nationalists . . . the Greater Liberia Bill
represented a viable step toward improving the social conditions of black
men and women in a world deeply divided by the color line.” 5 Black folks
forced to come to the United States have always had to deal with whites
challenging their claim to citizenship. Still, while some Black folks,
especially Black nationalist women, sought to return to the homeland of
their ancestors, others wanted to continue in their quest to belong in the US.
Even during their respective nadirs, Black and Indigenous peoples
created spaces to struggle against the issues facing them, by forging
organizations, such as the Society of American Indians and the Universal
Negro Improvement Association, that would respond to their unique
conditions. As limited as their visions might be for us today, it was an effort
to foster racial pride and nationalism and certainly one worth trying. This
chapter also analyzes the intersecting, transnational history of W. E. B. Du
Bois and medical doctor Charles Eastman, who attended the Universal
Races Congress in 1911. These two are important for several reasons. They
were among the most prominent Black and Indigenous voices in the early
twentieth century, and their reputation among white sympathizers for their
respective causes was almost unmatched. At the time, they believed that by
participating in the URC, they could redeem the soul of America. Black and
Indigenous people like Du Bois and Eastman began to expand their idea of
internationalism when coming into contact with other colonized peoples. 6
THE SOCIETY OF AMERICAN INDIANS
The Society of American Indians (SAI) was a Progressive Era group of
Native peoples interested in the development of their race. They wanted to
be treated not as people of the past, but as equal human beings capable of
being modern. They were Pan-Indianists. Though the term is now out of
date in most circles, it refers to people who “spoke out at celebrations and
nationalist commemorations. They criticized the actions of the Indian
Office and its authoritarian bureaucrats. The proposed alternatives to the