The Decade of Return Initiative in Guinea Bissau celebrates the one hundred year anniversary of the repatriation invitation made by the Ethiopian government to the the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) 1922 Convention. At the Convention, Persian Consul General H. Topakyan read a message from Ethiopian Regent Plenipotentiary Ras Tafari that said:
“I invite [African Descendants] back to the homeland, particularly those qualified to help solve our big problems and to develop our vast resources. Teachers, artisans, mechanics, writers, musicians, professional men and women - all who are able to lend a hand in the constructive work which our country so deeply feels and greatly needs.”
The 1922 UNIA Convention deputized a mission of skilled workers to go to Ethiopia which ultimately failed for lack of funds.
Two years prior, in 1919, Regent Plenipotentiary Ras Tafari sent four ambassadors to the United States. The Royal Ethiopian Mission included Dedjamatch Nadao, Empress Zauditu’s nephew and Commander of the Imperial Army, Ato Belanghetta Herouy Wolde Sellasie, Mayor of Addis Ababa, Ato Kantiba Gabrou, Mayor of Gondar, and Ato Sinkas, Secretary of the Commander of the Imperial Army. Their purpose was to renew a Treaty of Friendship with the United States signed by Emperor Menelik in 1904. In honor of their visit, the Ethiopian Flag was ceremoniously hoisted over the White House.
All of this was the result of African Descendants’ efforts that began in 1897. Benito Sylvain, the Haitian born and former secretary of the Haitian legation in London, visited Ethiopia and became an aide-de-camp in the Imperial household of Emperor Menelik. Against this backdrop emerged the African Association that was launched in England on September 24, 1897.
Five years later, in 1903 Benito Sylvain returned to Ethiopia where he introduced William Ellis to Emperor Menelik II. Mr. Ellis told the Emperor, "Europe for Europeans and Africa for Africans.”
Another five years after Emperor Menelik signed the Treaty of Friendship, Robert Daniel Alexander moved from Chicago to Ethiopia in 1909. He is the first descendant of people trafficked from Africa and enslaved in the Americas to repatriate to Ethiopia. Mr. Alexander provided Emperor Menelik with copies of the black-owned Chicago Defender newspaper. This is how the Ethiopian government learned about the realities of black people living in America and it is the origin of the Rastafari movement.
Not long afterwards, Marcus Garvey organized the first branch of the UNIA in 1917 and repeated William Ellis' call for "Africa for Africans, both those at home and those abroad." That same year, Ras Tafari officially became the regent of the Ethiopian Empire and Heir to the throne. This is the backdrop to Ras Tafari’s Abyssinian Mission to the United States in 1919.
During the Ethiopian Mission, the bloodiest race riot in Chicago’s history erupted on July 27, 1919. Eugene Williams, a young black boy, drowned at the 29th Street Beach after a rock thrown by George Stauber, a young white boy, knocked Williams from a raft. The Ethiopian Prince Nadao, who stated he had seen the Chicago Defender newspaper in Ethiopia, told one of their reporters “[Ethiopians] dislike brutality, burning at the stake, lynching of any nature, and other outrages handed upon [the African American] people …. Fight on, don’t stop!”
Before the Ethiopian Mission ended, an invitation to return (“Repatriate”) to Ethiopia was made to Rabbi Arnold Ford. That the offer of repatriation was given to him was extremely significant because Rabbi Ford was leader of the Hebrew Israelites (“Black Jews”) of Harlem. In this capacity, he would be able to resettle the existing remnant of Israel that was captured in the slave trade. In addition, Rabbi Ford was the musical director of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). Given that the UNIA was the largest, greatest organization of the scattered Ethiopians/Africans, it makes perfect sense to make the offer to the UNIA. Finally, as musical director, Rabbi Ford could use the traditional, spiritual medium of song (psalms, hymns), to communicate the Ethiopian message to the mass of black people scattered in north, south and central America, including the Caribbean. This Rabbi Ford did. It is, therefore, no coincidence that Rabbi Ford gave the UNIA “The Universal Ethiopian Anthem”, later to be used by the Ethiopian World Federation, Incorporated (EWF). The Rastafari Family Worldwide still sings the anthem at its gatherings.
On September 29th, 1923 Ethiopia joined the League of Nations. By the summer of 1924, Marcus Garvey and the UNIA seemed to have concretized the program for Ethiopian Repatriation. On March 16, 1924, Marcus Garvey delivered a speech at Madison Square Garden entitled, “In Honor of the Return to America of the Delegation Sent to Europe and Africa by the Universal Negro Improvement Association to Negotiate for the Repatriation of Negroes to a Homeland of Their Own in Africa”. Garvey said,
“The coming together, all over this country, of fully six million people of Negro blood, to work for the creation of a nation of their own in their motherland, Africa, is no joke. . . . Our desire is for a place in the world . . . to lay down our burden and rest our weary backs and feet by the banks of the Niger, and sing our songs and chant our hymns to the God of Ethiopia . . . . As children of captivity we look forward to a new day and a new, yet ever old, land of our fathers, the land of refuge, the land of the Prophets, the land of the Saints, and the land of God’s crowning glory. We shall gather together our children, our treasures and our loved ones, and, as the children of Israel, by the command of God, face the promise land . . . . Good and dear America that has succored us for three hundred years knows our story . . . . The thoughtful and industrious of our race want to go back to Africa, because we realize it will be our only hope of permanent existence. We cannot all go in a day or in a year, ten or twenty years. It will take time under the rule of modern economics, to entirely or largely depopulate a country of a people, who have been its residents for centuries, but we feel that with proper help for fifty years, the problem can be solved. We do not want all the Negroes in Africa. Some are no good here, and naturally will be no good there . . . . The no-good Negro will naturally die in fifty years. The Negro who is wrangling about and fighting for social equality will naturally pass away in fifty years, and yield his place to the progressive Negro who wants a society and country of his own. . . . What are you going to expect, that white men are going to build up America and elsewhere and hand it over to us?”
On August 1, 1924, on behalf of the Fourth Annual Convention of the Negro Peoples of the World, Garvey wrote to Ethiopian Empress Zauditu,
“Greetings from the 400,000,000 Negroes of the world through our convention now sitting in New York. We hope for you and your country a reign of progress and happiness. Our desire is to help you maintain the glory of Ethiopia. Your expression of goodwill toward us two years ago through your consul-general is highly cherished and we are looking forward to the day when large numbers of us will become citizens of Ethiopia.”
Finally, on September 2, 1924, Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association submitted the Petition of Four Million Negroes of the United States of America to His Excellency the President of the United States Praying for a Friendly and Sympathetic Consideration of the Plan of Founding a Nation in Africa for the Negro People, and to Encourage Them in Assisting to Develop Already Independent Negro Nations as a Means of Helping to Solve the Conflicting Problems of Race.
Thirty years later, in 1954, Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie made his first visit to the United States just days after the Brown vs. Board of Education decision heralded the end of the Jim Crow era. For 18 months before and for six weeks during HIM’s visit to the United States, HIM Haile Selassie began a Repatriation recruitment program for Black people in New York, Pennsylvania, Washington, Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, and Illinois. HIM Haile Selassie I had granted land in Shashemane Ethiopia, had made a constitutional provision for the Repatriates immediate citizenship, and promised free transportation, a house rent-free, competitive salaries, and paid three-months vacations with round-trip tickets to America and back to Ethiopia. Black Americans interested in the Repatriation offer were instructed to fill out an application (Repatriation Census) available from the Ethiopian Embassy. The Emperor was looking for men of the highest integrity to rebuild Ethiopia. As a result, Black America was faced with the choosing between Integration and Repatriation. Black America chose integration.
It is the legacy of Repatriation, that began with the Ethiopian Government's official repatriation offer to the Universal Negro Improvement Association 1922 Convention one hundred years ago, that the Decade of Return Initiative recognizes, celebrates and continues through its work TOWARDS A RIGHT TO RETURN & CITIZENSHIP POLICY FOR DESCENDENTS OF PEOPLE TAKEN FROM TERRITORIES IN AFRICA DURING THE TRANSATLANTIC TRAFFICKING AND ENSLAVEMENT OF AFRICAN PEOPLE.
Please join us in celebrating this November by joining our