A10 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 20 , 2022
black history monthBlack History MonthThe Washington Post has compiled a selection of content that helps to tell
the stories of how Black people have shaped the country’s government,
economy and culture. We also are keeping watch for President Biden’s
nomination of the first Black woman to the Supreme Court. For more Black
history, visit wapo.st/black-history-month-2022.BY JOSHUA BENTONOne hundred years ago Sun-
day, the Mississippi state Senate
voted to evict the state’s Black
residents — the majority of its
total population — not just out of
Mississippi, but out of the coun-
try.
The Senate voted 25 to 9 to ask
the federal government to trade
some of the World War I debts
owed by European countries for a
piece of colonial Africa — any part
would do — where the govern-
ment would then ship Mississip-
pi’s Black residents, creating “a
final home for the American ne-
gro.”
The act is a reminder of just
how long after the end of slavery
some White Southerners were
pushing not just to strip African
Americans of their political rights
but also to remove them from the
land of their birth.
What opposition there was to
the proposal in the all-White Mis-
sissippi legislature came not from
people who believed in racial
equality but from plantation
owners who feared losing their
cheap, brutalized labor force. And
remarkably, the proposal had a
few Black supporters: Black sepa-
ratists who preferred a move to
Africa over the violence and
abuse that African Americans
faced in Jim Crow Mississippi.
Senate Concurrent Resolution
No. 21 was written by Sen. Torrey
George McCallum, a former may-
or of Laurel in Jones County. The
county has achieved some meas-
ure of Hollywood fame as the
“Free State of Jones,” a pocket of
Unionist sentiment during the
Civil War, but the McCallums
were deeply engaged in the insti-
tution of slavery. Torrey’s grand-
father Archibald enslaved 51 peo-
ple on his plantation in 1860 and
had a net worth of $80,000, about
$2.5 million today.
McCallum’s proposal came in
the aftermath of World War I. The
relatively late entry of the United
States into the war and the devas-
tation of the conflict left many of
its European allies deep in debt to
Washington. In all, European
countries owed $10.35 billion, the
equivalent of $174 billion today.
Although short on cash, those
countries had plenty of colonial
territory — particularly in Africa,
where the major European pow-
ers had scrambled to divvy up the
continent’s land and resources.
McCallum saw the makings of a
deal.
His resolution argued in flow-
ery language that “the spirit of
race consciousness” had grown
with a postwar increase in nation-
alistic feelings worldwide and
that it was “our most earnest
desire to reach a just, fair, amica-
ble, and final settlement” to what
some White people then called
“the Negro question.”
It concluded with a request
that President Warren G. Harding
“acquire by treaty, negotiation or
otherwise from our late war allies
sufficient territory on the conti-
nent of Africa to make a suitable,
proper and final home for the
American Negro, where under
the tutelage of the American gov-
ernment he can develop for him-
self a great republic, to become in
time a free and sovereign state
and take its place at the councilboard of the nations of the world.”
McCallum made clear that “the
spirit of race consciousness” he
cared about belonged to White
people. The goal, he wrote, was
“that our country may becomeone in blood as it is in spirit, and
that the dream of our forefathers
may be realized in the final colo-
nization of the American Negro
on his native soil.” The resolution
does not specifically state wheth-er the proposed mass migration
would be voluntary. But its use of
language like a “final settlement,”
“the final colonization,” and the
United States becoming “one in
blood” makes clear the aim was
total removal.
Not consulted in this process:
Mississippi’s Black residents, who
in the 1920 Census made up 52
percent of the state’s population.
During Reconstruction, Missis-
sippi’s Black majority had sent
three African Americans to Con-
gress and more than 60 to the
state legislature. That had all end-
ed, though, first with rampant
White violence in the 1870s and
1880s, then with the passage of a
new state constitution in 1890
that effectively disenfranchised
Black people.
In some ways, it felt like the
post-Reconstruction era was re-
turning: Another spike in anti-
Black violence had followed
World War I, especially during
the Red Summer of 1919, and the
Ku Klux Klan was suddenly re-
born.Black newspapers nationwide
mocked McCallum’s proposal,
just as African Americans had
generally resisted the previous
century’s attempts at coloniza-
tion. “Only one thing seems to
have been overlooked by the Hon.
Senator, and that is, how even the
Mississippi colored people will be
induced or enabled by the Missis-
sippi Legislature to go to Africa,”
wrote the Broad Ax, a Black Chi-
cago newspaper. After genera-
tions of rape of enslaved women
by White men, it wrote, “the
intervening shades are so numer-
ous and various, it may be a
question to determine who is a
colored person. Of course, such
things don’t bother McCallum.”
“We see that representatives in
Mississippi would colonize the
American Negro in Africa,” wrote
the Southern Indicator of Colum-
bia, S.C. “Poor fools.”
The one exception was Negro
World, the national newspaper
published by Marcus Garvey’s
Universal Negro Improvement
Association, which embraced Mc-
Callum’s proposal. Garvey be-
lieved that members of the Afri-
can diaspora would never be
treated fairly in a White-con-
trolled country and that the solu-
tion was a new African homeland.
“Hurrah for Senator McCallum,”
its headline blared. “Work of Uni-
versal Negro Improvement Assn.
Bearing Fruit.”
Garvey gave a speech at Liberty
Hall in New York endorsing Mc-
Callum’s plan: “The Negro should
not delude himself ... by the belief
that the future will mean happi-
ness and contentment for him in
this country, since it is the un-
doubted spirit and intention of
the white man that this shall in
truth be white man’s country.”
Garvey was becoming known
for seeking strange bedfellows in
his quest for Black autonomy
abroad. A few months later, he
went to the offices of the resur-
gent Ku Klux Klan in Atlanta for a
cordial meeting with Imperial
Wizard Edward Young Clarke,
sparking outrage from Black
leaders and newspapers. (Garvey
was under indictment on charges
of mail fraud at the time, so he
also may have been motivated to
curry favor with White officials.)
Mississippi’s largest newspa-
per, the Clarion Ledger — once
called “the most racist newspaper
in the nation” — happily ran the
full text of a telegram Garvey sent
McCallum offering his “congratu-
lations” for “the splendid move”
he had made.
But Garvey seemed aware of
who he was teaming up with.
McCallum, he said in a speech, “is
the same Southern senator who
would object and stand behind
the objection, with his whole life
and with the last drop of his
blood, for a Negro in the United100 years ago, a vote to remove Mississippi’s Black residents
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
African American men transferring cargo from a horse-drawn wagon to the Belle of the Bends steamboat on the Mississippi River in
Memphis in 1906; the Belle of Calhoun is docked behind it.LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
African American men and a boy posed with a horse-drawn wagon loaded with bales of cotton in front
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