Table of Contents
The influence of Marcus Garvey’s Black Nationalist movement on the mobilisation for Aboriginal self-determination in the 1920s remains little known in the dominant Australian historical interpretation. Scholars in Australia have given scant regard to the interconnections between Aboriginal people and international relations, and have focused their examination of race relations on those between black and white. In particular, their studies of external influences on movements for Aboriginal self-determination have focused on white Christian and humanitarian influences. Given the reality of globalisation and tense international relations, it is timely to explore the historical, political, cultural and economic relationships between Aboriginal people and other oppressed groups throughout the twentieth century. This chapter outlines my own journey, exploring Aboriginal and international connections and the subsequent transcultural focus of my work.
A transnational/transcultural approach to the study of Australian history marks a shift in direction. Ann Curthoys recently pointed out Australian history has unfortunately ‘become more isolated and inward looking’ due to the limitations of the traditional framework of national history. Curthoys among others has called for a move towards ‘transnational history’ looking at networks of influence and interconnection that transcend the nation.[1] A transcultural approach adds another dimension to postcolonial critique in deconstructing the Eurocentric enclosures of the past – which not only created the Third World but also defined the cultures confined within for the West.[2] Analysing international black ‘connection, flow, hybridity and syncretism’ reveals and alters our understanding and offers a new direction.[3]
We might consider the monumental work of Paul Gilroy, whose work has sought to examine transatlantic black movement and connections, and whose concept of the ‘Black Atlantic’ leads us to ‘think outside the fixed and misleading boundary lines of nation states’.[4][5] The maritime migration of people and ideas was instrumental not only in the passing of goods but also, in Elaine Baldwin’s words, of ‘the political struggles that flowed back and forth across the ocean’.[6] Gilroy’s work, Baldwin suggests, considers ‘the global spread of black people which has resulted from a series of forced and voluntary migrations’ arguing that this ‘binds together the black people of Africa, the Americas, the Caribbean and Europe in a long history of intercultural connection’.[7]
These developments in transcultural history importantly tie in with the perceptive Indigenous insight as put by Marcia Langton a decade ago, when she stressed the need of breaking out of traditional ties of white Anglo understanding:
Let’s forget about this psychotic debate we keep having with white Australia and let’s start talking to Asians and people from Eastern Europe and Africa and so on and South America and talk about something else for a change. Let’s do some films about genocide. How about us and the Timorese get together ... How about us and the Cambodians get together, you know? That’d be so much more interesting and we could bring our experiences as human beings together you know, having been victims of human tragedies.[8]
My work is all about looking outside of the national box and examining these international connections of influence. I have, for example, been exploring similarities of experience between Gandhi and the Indian National Congress and early Aboriginal activism and found similar experiences of oppression and response. [9]
A transcultural approach extends the study of Aboriginal history beyond national borders and beyond studies of the British empire, and seeks to place Aboriginal history and culture in a global perspective. Two years ago in Boston at the ‘Asians Through Time and Space’ conference I heard Professor Ron Richardson, head of African American Studies at Boston University, describe the importance of recognising that ‘all cultures are hybrid and have been influenced by their interactions with different cultures, sometimes through interactions at a distance’.[10] Richardson spoke of ‘transcultural studies’, a method that ‘views history as a global web of connections between cultures, rather than strictly focusing [in his case] on the black American experience ... [but] exploring how African-Americans have influenced and been influenced by other cultures and global trends.’[11] Such insights hold great significance in the scope and direction of my work, particularly examining African American historical influence and contact with Aboriginal people. My aim is to ensure that an Aboriginal presence in this global network of black connection and experience is not missed.
The move to a transcultural focus and understanding in my work was in the first instance more a matter of good fortune than any direct planning. In 1996 I was awarded the Aboriginal History Stanner Fellowship, and I have no hesitation in stating that this award was fundamental in everything I have achieved since. I was made a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University with the history department and spent six months travelling around New South Wales researching my grandfather Fred Maynard’s involvement with the rise of the Australian Aboriginal Progressive Association (AAPA) in 1924. I spent a lot of time in archives, and conducting oral interviews with family members and other people who were connected in some way with the beginning of the AAPA. The finished product of my research was an article published in Aboriginal History.[12]
My family had in its possession an old family photograph depicting a group of black men, including my grandfather. It was thought to be a photo of the Australian Aboriginal Progressive Association conference in Sydney, but in the course of my research an uncle in western New South Wales challenged this. He was adamant that it was in fact a much earlier organisation and that the tall black man wearing a beige suit in the back of the photo was famous African/American boxing champion Jack Johnson. I was incredulous! I studied the photograph with a magnifying glass and as I collected images of Jack Johnson from various published sources concluded that he was in fact correct. But what did it all mean? My uncle added that the meeting depicted in the photograph had something to do with grandfather setting up a black shipping line! I was staggered to say the least and quite frankly a little perplexed. As I began to uncover more information, I found that he was largely correct, although he had confused Jack Johnson with later events. As I was to discover, my grandfather developed connections to Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association, which did in fact establish a Black Star Line shipping company in the 1920s in America.
At the time I could not expand the research any further, as I spent the next two years of my life just getting on and off planes and recording oral interviews in many Aboriginal community locations around the continent, in my role as a researcher with Aboriginal and Islander Health with the faculty of Medical Sciences at the University of Newcastle.[13] It was not until late 1998 that I was once more able to venture back to the archives, and particularly newspaper sources, to look for links or connections between my grandfather and Jack Johnson. I was rewarded immensely for the hours upon hours I spent going through newspapers of 1907 and 1908, eventually finding a reference to a farewell to Jack Johnson held in Sydney in 1907.[14] This was the event depicted in the photograph – a large gathering of black men, including not only my grandfather Fred Maynard, and Jack Johnson, but also Peter Felix, a West Indian boxer who fought Johnson during his visit. So, that initial interview with an old uncle about the APAA was responsible for leading me to a host of sources linking the early Aboriginal political movement and Black American influence and inspiration. In the end it led even further, to the uncovering of conclusive links between the AAPA in Australia and Garvey’s massive international organisation in the United States.
The 1960s and 1970s witnessed prominent interaction, influence and connections between Aboriginal Australia and the African American experience in the United States. The ‘Freedom Ride’ of 1965 led by Charles Perkins acknowledged the influence of the Martin Luther King civil rights movement in the United States.[15] There were numerous other examples of international black connections with, and influences on, Aboriginal political activism in this period. In 1972 Paul Coe stated ‘Black Power in Australia is a policy of self-assertion, self identity’.
It is our policy, at least as far as we in the city are concerned ... to endeavour to encourage Black Culture, the relearning, the reinstating of black culture wherever it is possible ... The Afro-American culture, as far as the majority of blacks in Sydney are concerned, is the answer to a lot of black problems because this is the international culture of the black people.[16]
In a similar vein Scott Robinson argued that the ‘Black American experience was the most profound exogenous influence on Aboriginal political activism in the 1960s’.[17]
No less a voice than the incomparable Malcolm X perceptively commented on the obscured and oppressed position of Aboriginal Australians in 1965: ‘The [A]boriginal Australian isn’t even permitted to get into a position where he can make his voice heard in any way, shape or form. But I don’t think that situation will last much longer.’[18]
What Malcolm X did not know was that an Aboriginal political voice had been active, constant and outspoken against prejudice and oppression for decades and that there had been a substantial and sustained international black influence in that process. As Malcolm X himself wrote:
Just as racism has become an international thing, the fight against it is also becoming international. Those who were the victims of it and were kept apart from each other are beginning to compare notes. They are beginning to find that it doesn’t stem from their country alone. It is international. We intend to fight it internationally.[19]
Malcolm X was proposing in fact not something new but more of a tradition of united opposition by oppressed groups around the world, the history of which had been forgotten. Marcus Garvey, the leader of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, formed first in Jamaica, then (in 1916) in the United States, becoming what is recognised today as the biggest black political movement ever assembled in the United States, had expressed similar sentiments over forty years earlier:
Everywhere the black man is beginning to do his own thinking, to demand more participation in his own government, more economic justice, and better living conditions. The Universal Negro Improvement Association during the past five years has blazed the trail for him, and he is following the trail. We do not think he will turn back. He has nothing to lose and everything to gain by pushing forward, whatever the obstacles he may encounter.[20]
The UNIA founded by Garvey spread rapidly around the world in the late 1910s, and hundreds of branches of the organisation were formed. As George Frederickson writes: Garvey and his platform ‘struck a response chord in the hearts and minds of black people from an astonishing variety of social and cultural backgrounds throughout the world.’[21] A Federal Bureau of Investigation report on Garvey and his activities in 1919 reveals the unease over his far-reaching message. ‘Garvey’s office on 135th Str. is sort of a clearing house for all international radical agitators, including Mexicans, South Americans, Spaniards, in fact black and yellow from all parts of the globe who radiate around Garvey.’[22] Garvey was able to achieve a worldwide network of information by sending out agents to spread his message. Important for my story is the fact that many of these agents were seamen.[23] Legendary Vietnamese freedom fighter Ho Chi Minh was just one who was influenced by Garvey and his doctrine.[24] As a young man Ho had been a seaman ‘and he once spent a few months in New York. Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) movement interested him greatly and he regularly attended UNIA meetings.’[25]
At the height of its power in the mid 1920s the UNIA had successfully established chapters in 41 countries, including a branch in Australia. As in many other places, the word had been spread to Australia by seamen, who encountered wharf labourers in Sydney, some of whom were Aboriginal young men later to become political leaders. In fact the connection between Aboriginal dockworkers and other cultures on Australian wharves had been ongoing for quite sometime.[26] As Tony Martin has written:
The Sydney, Australia UNIA branch was undoubtedly the furthest from Harlem. It illustrated how, in those days before even the widespread use of radio, Garvey and the UNIA were nevertheless able to draw communities from practically all over the world together into a single organization with a single aim. [27]
In August 1920, the UNIA held the first of a number of highly successful international conventions and over 25 000 members gathered at Madison Square Garden in New York to hear Garvey speak. Members from UNIA branches across the globe ‘attended from places as far apart as Australia, Africa and North America’.[28] This small note offers a tantalising scenario – who were the noted Australian delegates present at that convention? One is left to ponder the impact this experience would have had on these people on returning to Australia. Could they have been future members or office bearers of the AAPA? We do know that some members of the Sydney branch of the UNIA would later hold high-ranking positions in the AAPA.[29]
This new knowledge of international connections between Aboriginal activists and Marcus Garvey’s UNIA challenges established historical belief that Aboriginal activism originated in the 1930s as a result of the interaction of Aboriginal activists with white men and women imbued with strong British Christian, humanist and Marxist traditions. That there could have been international black interaction with and influence on Aboriginal political thought prior to World War II has been unthinkable in recent analyses that do not venture outside the confines of national history.