An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States

In the post-Garvey era, after the US deported him back to Jamaica in
1927, Black women continued the work of Black nationalism. Black and
Native people continued the work of internationalizing their particular
plights. It is important to remember that, although I hear hoteps refer to
Garvey’s work, the man never set foot on the African continent.
Furthermore, he proclaimed himself to be the provincial president of Africa.
Bruh, Africa is a place with thousands of languages and different tribes,
histories, and customs. He also described Africans as backward. And let’s
not forget that Garvey tried to collaborate with the Ku Klux Klan at one
point. I don’t mean to slander him, but we can’t uncritically accept his
efforts at African colonization. Although he helped instill racial pride, and
he and the UNIA deserve props for that, if Black folks are ever going to
obtain freedom, we can’t do so by replicating the colonization efforts of the
colonizers.
THE UNIVERSAL RACES CONGRESS
As I mentioned in the introduction, we should not restrict Afro-Indigenous
histories to the relationship between the Five Tribes and African-descendant
people. Black American and Indigenous histories have intersected outside
the United States. Amid the growing concern of social progress within the
United States, Black and Indigenous actors also sought to transform the US
through appeals to the international community. W. E. B. Du Bois and
Charles Eastman serve as a prominent example of this, making their
international appeal at the Universal Races Congress (URC), held in
London, England, in July 1911.
Du Bois and Eastman illustrate the nature of transnational blackness and
indigeneity. Du Bois, a Pan-Africanist, transcended the US nation-state
color line. As the late historian Manning Marable notes, “Du Bois’s color
line included not just the racially segregated Jim Crow South” but also
“colonial domination in Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and the
Caribbean among indigenous populations.” 30 Nevertheless, Du Bois did
demonstrate some form of US colonial domination, especially since he
became an associate member of the Society of American Indians, perhaps
the only Black American to do so. Although associate members had no
authority in the SAI, Du Bois, ever the calculating advocate for social
justice, was an important accomplice.