ABSTRACT
Except from the point of view of religious missionarism, it has been until recently almost impossible to cultivate generally in the mind of the American Negro an abiding and serious interest in Africa. Politically, economically, scientifically, culturally, the great concerns of this great continent have engaged the Caucasian and primarily 351the European mind. The sooner we recognize as a fact this painful paradox, that those who have naturally the greatest interests in Africa have of all peoples been least interested, the sooner will it be corrected. With notable exceptions, our interest in Africa has heretofore been sporadic, sentimental and unpractical. And,—as for every fact, there is of course a reason: the dark shadow of slavery has thrown Africa, in spite of our conscious wishes, into a sort of chilly and terrifying eclipse, against which only religious ardor could kindle an attractive and congenial glow of interest. The time has come, however, with the generation that knows slavery only as history, to cast off this spell, and see Africa at least with the interest of the rest of the world, if not indeed with a keener, more favored, regard. There are parallels, we must remember, for this: Except for the prosperous Tories, England was a bogey to the American colonists; from the thirties to the nineties, the average Irishman was half-ashamed of Erin in spite of lapses into occasional fervent sentimentalism; and even with the sturdy Jewish sense of patrimony, Zionism has had its difficulties in rekindling the concrete regard for the abandoned fatherland. Only prosperity looks backward. Adversity is afraid to look over its own shoulder. But eventually all peoples exhibit the homing instinct and turn back physically or mentally, hopefully and helpfully, to the land of their origin. And we American Negroes in this respect cannot, will not, be an exception.
