IntroductionWe want to set the world on fire, we want freedom and justice and a chance to build for ourselves. And if we must set the world on fire . we will, like other men, die for the realization of our dreams. --Josephine Moody, "We Want to Set the World on Fire," New Negro World , January 1942 Set the World on Fire tells the story of how a cadre of black nationalist women--Mittie Maude Lena Gordon, Ethel Waddell, Celia Jane Allen, Ethel Collins, Amy Jacques Garvey, Amy Ashwood Garvey, Maymie Turpeau De Mena, and several others--vigorously fought to challenge global white supremacy during the twentieth century. In various locales in the United States, including Chicago, Harlem, and the Mississippi Delta, and in other parts of the globe, including Britain and Jamaica, these women emerged as leaders in national and transnational black political movements, seeking to advance black nationalist and internationalist politics. At a moment when people of African descent were being denied full citizenship and human rights, the women profiled in this book utilized various strategies and tactics, such as letter-writing campaigns, grassroots organizing, and lobbying, to agitate for the rights and dignity of people of African descent. Drawing on an array of previously untapped sources, including archival materials, government records, and unpublished songs and poetry, this book uncovers the previously hidden voices of black nationalist women activists and intellectuals whose ideas and activities differed significantly from their counterparts in well-known organizations such as the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the National Urban League (NUL). While the activists and intellectuals in these prominent organizations were equally committed to ending racism and discrimination and eradicating the global color line, they rejected many of the ideas and strategies black nationalist women endorsed and often exhibited elitist views that caused a rift among activists.

Feeling alienated from many of the ideas and political approaches of activists in mainstream civil rights organizations like the NAACP and the NUL and rejecting the Marxist platform of leftist organizations like the Communist Party, the black nationalist women chronicled in this book created spaces of their own in which to experiment with various strategies and ideologies. Set the World on Fire centers on women leaders who were actively involved in several black political organizations of the period. Many of the women chronicled in this book were active members of Marcus Garvey''s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), the dominant black nationalist organization in the United States and worldwide in the immediate post-World War I era. When the UNIA began to crumble under the weight of factionalism and conflict in the aftermath of Garvey''s 1927 deportation, some attempted to keep the UNIA afloat and worked under the auspices of the fragmented organization to keep black nationalist ideas alive and vibrant in political discourse. Others chose to pursue new avenues. In 1932, former UNIA member Mittie Maude Lena Gordon, an activist originally from Louisiana, established the Peace Movement of Ethiopia (PME) at the back of her restaurant in Chicago. In the presence of her husband, William, and twelve other black men and women, Gordon drafted the organization''s mission statement, endorsing black emigration to West Africa, black political self-determination, and the "confraternity among all dark races." Within only a matter of months, the PME grew from a small group of black working-class activists in Chicago to become the largest and most influential black nationalist political movement in the United States, attracting an estimated 300,000 supporters in more than a dozen cities across the country.

While the PME and the UNIA represented the two largest black political organizations in which black nationalist women were active, they were by no means the only ones. During the twentieth century, the women profiled in this book were involved in several black political groups, including the Harlem-based Universal Ethiopian Students Association (UESA) and the Peace Movement of Ethiopia, Inc., an offshoot of Gordon''s PME. Regardless of their organizational affiliation, however, all of these women were key proponents of black nationalism--the political view that people of African descent constitute a separate group or nationality on the basis of their distinct culture, shared history, and experiences. As black nationalists, the women profiled in this book advocated Pan-African unity, African redemption from European colonization, racial separatism, black pride, political self-determination, and economic self-sufficiency. With few material resources during a period of much economic and political turmoil, these women asserted their political power in various locales across the United States and in other parts of the African diaspora. This book highlights black nationalist women''s political organizing in the U.S.

North, Midwest, and Jim Crow South and examines their transnational work and collaborations with activists in North America, Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean. If, as one historian has argued, the period from 1850 to 1925 was the "golden age of black nationalism," its decline did not occur after Marcus Garvey''s deportation. Rather, the collapse of Garvey''s UNIA provided opportunities for women activists to engage in nationalist politics in new, idiosyncratic, and innovative ways. While historians generally portray the period between the Garvey movement of the 1920s and Black Power of the 1960s and 1970s as an era of declining black nationalist activism, this book reframes the Great Depression, World War II, and early Cold War as significant eras of black nationalist ferment. During this period, women became central leaders in various black nationalist movements in the United States and other parts of the globe, agitating for racial unity, black political self-determination, and economic self-sufficiency. This is not to suggest that women''s engagement in black nationalist politics prior to 1927 was insignificant or that they did not play key roles in earlier black nationalist movements. The post-Garvey moment, however, opened up unique opportunities for women in the movement to refine and redefine black nationalist politics on their own terms. With the effective collapse of the UNIA during the mid-1920s, a vanguard of nationalist women leaders emerged on the local, national, and international scenes, practicing a pragmatic form of nationalist politics that allowed for greater flexibility, adaptability, and experimentation.

The women chronicled in this book employed multiple protest strategies and tactics. They combined numerous religious and political ideologies such as Garveyism, Ethiopianism, Pan-Africanism, and Islam. And they forged unlikely political alliances--with Japanese activists, for instance--in their struggles against racism, sexism, colonialism, and imperialism. As pragmatic activists, black nationalist women were willing to embrace "whatever seemed likely to help blacks live better lives in their half-free environment." Given the shifting political and social terrain on which black nationalist women were fighting to combat racism and discrimination, their methods were diverse and ever-changing. For this reason, the strategies and tactics that appeared likely to help black people at one moment could be easily abandoned the next. *** The emergence of this "golden age" of black nationalist women''s political activism coincided with the onset of the Great Depression, one of the most catastrophic periods of U.S.

and world history. In the United States, the Depression was especially difficult for black Americans, exacerbating already poor socioeconomic conditions that existed long before 1929. Although FDR''s New Deal programs promised to improve economic conditions for all, black Americans received a "raw deal," facing rampant discrimination, disenfranchisement, and unrelenting racial violence. The challenges black people faced on the national front were deeply intertwined with the struggles people of African descent experienced in other parts of the globe. As the United States, Britain, and other world powers inched closer to war in the late 1930s, black men and women were engaged in a war of their own. Although the leaders of these world powers claimed to endorse the democratic principles of "freedom and justice for all," people of African descent were fighting for human rights and demanding equal recognition and participation in global civil society. Across the African and Asian continents and throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, the impact of white imperial control could be felt. Despite the rhetoric of self-determination, global democracy, and freedom, British colonial rule persisted well into the twentieth century while the United States continued to exercise territorial, economic, and political control over people of color.

In parts of Africa and Asia, Britain controlled a vast empire, encompassing diverse territories such as Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and India. Throughout the Anglophone Caribbean, the lives of people of color were circumscribed by a racial hierarchy in which British imperialists controlled the domestic economies. Similarly, the United States was in the business of "empire making"--culturally, politically, economically, and even territorially. The significant U.S. presence in Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua, and elsewhere helped to "internationalize U.S. culture," providing an opening for U.

S. policy makers to formally institute a system of imperial domination and exploitation. These two world powers played crucial roles in maintaining the glob.