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The “Open Sore of America”: Race and the American Congo Reform Movement, 1885–1908
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 April 2024
Abstract
From the beginning of King Leopold II's endeavours to secure the Congo Free State (CFS) as his personal domain, through to the legitimization of his rule at the Berlin Conference in 1884–85, the United States has played an important role in the tragic history of the CFS. This article seeks to explore the complex relationship between humanitarianism and race in the story of the American connection with the CFS and subsequent Congo reform movement. It will unpack the role of key individuals involved and their relationship with American humanitarians in the reform movement, arguing that while pursuing reform in the CFS, American humanitarians established close relationships and collaborated with notable racists who shared their beliefs on race and colonialism. By examining these alliances, it becomes evident that their efforts for reform were entangled with individuals who contradicted the supposed humanitarian goals. This article will also examine the reception of this activism in the African American press, showing that the response to the reform campaign was ambivalent at best, with questions raised as to why key African American activists involved in the movement focussed their efforts abroad in the era of Jim Crow in the US.
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press in association with British Association for American Studies
References
1 Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, and the US. The US reserved the right to decline to accept the conclusions of the conference.
2 The story of the US–CFS relationship has received some coverage within the historiography. Paul McStallworth's unpublished PhD thesis was the first to examine this relationship from the establishment of Leopold's colony until the outbreak of the First World War. Yet it has rarely been developed within the historiography. More recently, Jeanette Eileen Jones contends that Americans were behind Leopold's CFS project from the outset and that the prospect of one of their own (Henry Morton Stanley) opening up the Congo to trade and commerce brought Africa into the realm of US governmental diplomacy and would be beneficial to both. See Jones, Jeanette Eileen, In Search of Brightest Africa: Reimagining the Dark Continent in American Culture, 1884–1936 (Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 2010)Google Scholar; Paul McStallworth, “The United States and the Congo Question, 1884–1914,” unpublished PhD dissertation, Ohio State University, 1954.
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4 During this period, there were many American activities targeted at moral reform. These activities involved a wide range of groups that included missionaries, the American Red Cross, the temperance movement, and the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions, all alongside other associations formed to tackle issues on alcohol, prostitution, and the opium trade. The most comprehensive work on this period is Ian Tyrrell's book on the theme of American “moral empire.” For more see Tyrrell, Ian, Reforming the World: The Creation of America's Moral Empire (Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2013)Google Scholar.
5 For the purposes of this article, Cullinane's definition of what constitutes imperialism and anti-imperialism will be used when discussing who is an imperialist or an anti-imperialist. Cullinane stated that imperialism is “a vision for empire, and imperialists are those who entertain such a vision. Anti-imperialism is the rejection of an imperial vision.” Cullinane, Michael P., Liberty and American Anti-imperialism, 1898–1909 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Therefore, for example, Morgan and Robert Ezra Park, secretary of the ACRA, would be considered imperialists because of their views on empire, whereas Dr. David Starr Jordan, member of the Executive Committee of the ACRA and member of the Anti-Imperialist League in the US, was an anti-imperialist. It is also important to note that the picture is complicated further by the fact that some imperialists varied in degrees of racism in forming their views, and many anti-imperialists differed on definitions of empire; almost all of the latter were opposed to territorial expansion but some – including several ACRA members – were proponents of the spread of “civilization,” often referred to as “humanity” in this context by those involved in the Congo campaign.
6 Jones. For more on the activism of anti-imperialists in the US Congo reform movement during this period see Cullinane, Michael P., “Transatlantic Dimensions of the American Anti-imperialist Movement, 1899–1909,” Journal of Transatlantic Studies, 8, 4 (2010), 301–14, 308–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cullinane, Liberty.
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18 Ibid.
19 “Stanley on the Race Problem,” New York Age, 13 Dec. 1890, 2.
20 John Tyler Morgan, “The Future of the Negro,” North American Review, 139, 332 (July 1884), 78–99, 83.
21 “The African Race Problem,” Huntsville Gazette, 8 March 1890, 2.
22 Lysle E. Meyler Jr., “Henry S. Sanford and the Congo,” PhD dissertation, Ohio State University, 1967, 27.
23 Morgan to Sanford, 19 July 1890, Sanford Papers, Box 26, Folder 5; Sanford, Henry S., “American Interests in Africa,” Forum, 9 (1890), 409–29Google Scholar, 428, as cited in Meyler, 28 n. 49. Morgan was also instrumental in the founding of William Sheppard's American Presbyterian Congo Mission, which was co-pioneered by Samuel Lapsley, the son of Morgan's law partner. For more on Sheppard and Lapsley's involvement in the Congo see Kennedy, Black Livingstone, chapter 2; Losambe, Lokangaka, Postcolonial Agency in African and Diasporic Literature and Film: A Study in Globalectics (New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2022), chapter 2Google Scholar.
24 “To Colonize the Congo,” St. Paul Daily Globe, 11 Dec. 1899, 1. McStallworth incorrectly cites this as appearing on page 10 of the New York Tribune, 10 December 1899. McStallworth, “The United States and the Congo Question,” 194.
25 William H. Heard to Senator Morgan, 17 April 1900, cited in McStallworth, 193.
26 Barnes, Kenneth C., Journey of Hope: The Back-to-Africa Movement in Arkansas in the Late 1800s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 2Google Scholar. It was during this period that the issue was discussed in the House of Representatives, where bills were introduced to appeal for federal funding to pay for African Americans to be transported to Africa to resettle. For more on the resurgence of Back-to-Africa schemes during this period see ibid., chapter 3; Redkey, Black Exodus.
27 O'Baylen, Joseph, “Senator John Tyler Morgan, E. D. Morel, and the Congo Reform Association,” Alabama Review, 15 (1962), 117–32, 120Google Scholar.
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29 McStallworth, 164.
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31 “Action in the United States,” Aborigines’ Friend, July 1904, 156–7.
32 Ibid.
33 H. Mortimer Durand to Lord Lansdowne, 21 April 1904, The National Archives of the United Kingdom (hereafter TNA), FO 881/8414.
34 Park to Morel, 31 Aug. 1904, Morel Papers, London School of Economics (hereafter MP), F4/15:44.
35 Morgan to Morel, 29 June 1904, MP, F4/15:106.
36 Morgan to Morel, 29 June 1904, MP, F4/14:103.
37 Morgan to William H. Heard, 2 April 1903, as cited in McStallworth, 193.
38 The Cobden Club was founded in Britain after the death of Richard Cobden, the British MP, for believers in the doctrine of free trade, and whose largest foreign membership was in the United States.
39 Marc Palen, The “Conspiracy” of Free Trade: The Anglo-American Struggle over Empire and Economic Globalisation, 1846–1896 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), xxviii–xxxiii.
40 “Humanity and the Open Door,” Congo News Letter, April 1906, 7.
41 Palen, 112–13.
42 Park to Morel, 15 Jan. 1905, as quoted in E. D. Morel, Wm. Roger Louis, and Jean Stengers (eds.), E. D. Morel's History of the Congo Reform Movement (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), 184.
43 Morgan to Morel, 29 June 1904, MP, F4/15:100. By “power,” Morgan referred to what he described as the “racial rights of citizenship” and how “in two thirds of the 45 States, they are clothed with the power of the ballot.”
44 Park to Morel, 11 Aug. 1904, MP, F4/15:61.
45 Hans P. Vought, The Bully Pulpit and the Melting Pot: American Presidents and the Immigrant, 1897–1933 (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2004), 16.
46 Booker T. Washington to Thomas S. Barbour, 21 May 1904, in Louis R. Harlan and Raymond W. Smock, eds., The Booker T. Washington Papers, Volume VII, 1903–1904 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977), 510.
47 Booker T. Washington, “Cruelty in the Congo Country,” Outlook, 78 (8 Oct. 1904), 375–7.
48 Louis R. Harlan, “Booker T. Washington and the White Man's Burden,” American Historical Review, 71, 2 (Jan. 1966), 441–67, 450.
49 Raushenbush, Winifred, Robert E. Park: Biography of a Sociologist (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1979), 2Google Scholar.
50 Morgan to Morel, 29 June 1904, MP, F4/15:101.
51 Park to Morel, 17 Aug. 1904, MP, F4/15:90–91.
52 Morel to Rev. A. McLean, 15 April 1904, MP, F10/9:833.
53 Morgan to Morel, 29 June 1904, MP, F4/15:102–3.
54 Morgan to Morel, 29 June 1904, MP, F4/15:104.
55 Park to Morel, 13 Dec. 1904, MP, F4/15:295.
56 “Association Expresses Gratitude to Senators for Congo Resolution,” Congo News Letter, April 1907, 10.
57 “Senate Investigation of American Congo Concession,” Congo News Letter, April 1907, 19.
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59 John Daniels to Morgan, 3 Jan. 1907, as cited in McStallworth, “The United States and the Congo Question,” 234.
60 As Lösing states, Sheppard was reluctant to join in the campaign against Leopold, stating, “Being a colored man, I would not be understood criticizing a white government before white people.” See Lösing, A “Crisis of Whiteness”, 114–15; Kennedy, Black Livingstone, 161.
61 To date, scholarship has tended to focus on a narrative of a “white saviour,” crediting individual activists and missionaries, and the British Foreign Office, for improvement in the Congo, as well as examining business interests and the role of propaganda discourses between Leopold and reformers. The African American perspective has largely been ignored. For more recent developments on African American perspectives see Dworkin, Ira, Congo Love Song: African American Culture and the Crisis of the Colonial State (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hill, Kimberly D., A Higher Mission: The Careers of Alonzo and Althea Brown Edmiston in Central Africa (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2021)Google Scholar; van Hove, Johnny, Congoism: Congo Discourses in the United States from 1800 to the Present (Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2017)Google Scholar.
62 James R. Grossman, “A Chance to Make Good,” in Robin D. G. Kelley and Earl Lewis, eds., To Make Our World Anew (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 67–30, 81.
63 Armistead S. Pride, “Register and History of the Negro Newspaper in the United States, 1827–1950,” PhD dissertation, Northwestern University, 1950, 5.
64 “National Colored Press Convention,” Washington Bee, 30 July 1887, 3.
65 Washburn, Patrick S., The African American Newspaper: Voice of Freedom (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2006), 48–50Google Scholar.
66 This assessment has been made following a thorough examination of articles discussing the CFS in several prominent African American newspapers during this period. The newspapers selected represent a wide range of geographical coverage, with the period from the Berlin Conference until the dissolution of the ACRA (1885–1908) chosen to provide focus, which, despite being a small selection, can provide a useful window into how the African American press specifically, and the African American community more broadly, viewed both the Congo issue and the ACRA activism within the US.
67 “The New Independent African State,” Huntsville Gazette (Alabama), 18 July 1885, 2.
68 “The Land of Our Fathers,” New York Freeman, 23 Jan. 1886, 2.
69 Ibid.
70 “To Go to Africa,” Cleveland Gazette, 8 March 1890, 1.
71 Grossman, 67.
72 Clay, “David vs Goliath,” 4.
73 “Larph,” Cleveland Gazette, 22 Aug. 1891, 4. “Larph” was the pseudonym of journalist Ralph W. Tyler, who was the private secretary to the proprietor of the Columbus Evening Dispatch, one of the most influential and prosperous daily papers of Ohio. His columns appeared in numerous black newspapers, including the Southern Argus of Baxter Springs, Kansas; the Historic Times of Lawrence, Kansas; and the State Capital of Springfield, Illinois.
74 “Worse Than a Brute,” Cleveland Gazette, 10 Nov. 1894, 2.
75 Dworkin, Congo Love Song, 80–81.
76 Ibid., 47–48.
77 Clay, Dean, “‘A Clash of Titans’: Big Business and the Congo Reform Movement,” History: Journal of the Historical Association, 107, 374 (2022), 97–120CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 107; Lynch, Hollis R., Edward Wilmot Blyden: Pan-Negro Patriot, 1832–1912 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), 209Google Scholar.
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79 Van Hove, 209.
80 “Must the Negro Go?”, Washington Bee, 7 Feb. 1903, 1.
81 “Echoes of the National Baptist Convention,” Broad Ax, 4 Nov. 1905, 2. As Fabian Hilfrich has noted, the Broad Ax was an anomaly within the African American community in that it was a Democratic newspaper, when most African Americans at the time were supporters of the Republican Party. For more on the Chicago Broad Ax, and race and imperialism, see Fabian Hilfrich, “Race and Imperialism: An Essay from the Chicago Broad Ax,” in Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht and Frank Schumacher, eds., Culture and International History (New York: Berghahn Books, 2003), 250–57.
82 “Why Do They?”, Washington Bee, 29 Sept. 1906, 4.
83 “Dr. Booker T. Washington Has Once Again Captured the National Capital,” Freeman, 3 March 1906, 3.
84 “Cruelties,” Cleveland Gazette, 10 March 1906, 1; Jacobs, Sylvia, The African Nexus: Black American perspectives on the European partitioning of Africa, 1880–1920 (Westport, CT: Greenport Press, 1981), 90–91Google Scholar.
85 Cleveland Gazette, 8 Sept. 1906, 2; 15 Sept. 1906, 3.
86 “Pardonable Pride,” Voice of the Negro, 4, 1 (Jan.–Feb. 1907), 20.
87 “More about the Congo,” Voice of the Negro, 4, 1 (Jan.–Feb. 1907), 14; Lösing, A “Crisis of Whiteness”, 113.
88 “Mind Your Own Business,” Cleveland Gazette, 15 Dec. 1906, 2.
89 “Congo Appeal to the President,” Freeman, 24 March 1906, 4.
90 “The Congo Infamy,” Voice of the Negro, 3, 12 (Dec. 1906), 541.
91 Jacobs, 90.
92 Lösing, 114–15.
93 “Hostility to Europeans,” New York Age, 13 Dec. 1906, 2; “Revolt among Congo Natives,” New York Age, 19 Sept. 1907, 4; Jacobs, 95.
94 Jacobs, 102.
95 William Appleman Williams's writings mark a watershed in popular thinking about anti-imperialism. He called the anti-imperialists of the 1890s “anti-imperial imperialists” to distinguish those who disliked territorial acquisition but had no qualms about economic dependency and dominance – a categorization that helps us to understand the gradations in anti-imperialist thought in the ACRA. For more on these gradations during this period see Cullinane, Liberty and American Anti-imperialism; Williams, William Appleman, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (Cleveland, OH: The World Publishing Company, 1959), chapter 1Google Scholar.
96 Lösing, 122.
97 Thomas Adams Upchurch, “Senator John Tyler Morgan and the Genesis of Jim Crow Ideology, 1889–1891,” Alabama Review, 57, 2 (April 2004), 110–31, 125.
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99 Park to Morel, 31 Aug. 1904, MP, F4/15:44; “Congo Reform Association: General Committee,” MP, F4/15:22.
100 Morgan to Morel, 29 June 1904, MP, F4/15:106.
101 Whilst Twain did acknowledge Sheppard in his satirical pamphlet King Leopold's Soliloquy, Williams's contribution was completely ignored by British Congo activists, who are often at the centre of the “heroic narrative” of the Congo reform movement.
102 Robert Park, “Trying to Reform the Congo State,” Chicago Tribune, 2 Aug. 1904, 4.
103 Washington's views on Africa and Africans are more nuanced than this article can address. For more on these views see Harlan, Louis R. and Smock, Raymond, Booker T. Washington in Perspective: Essays of Louis R. Harlan (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2006), chapter 4Google Scholar; Skinner, Elliot P., African Americans and U.S. Policy toward Africa, 1850–1924: In Defense of Black Nationality (Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1992), chapter 6Google Scholar; Zimmerman, Andrew, Alabama in Africa: Booker T. Washington, the German Empire, and the Globalization of the New South (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), chapter 4Google Scholar.
104 Clay, “David vs Goliath,” 2–5.