White Devils and Black Separatists

Black nationalism is a multicentury story of a search for Black space within or beyond America. This chapter highlights the fulsomeness of the Black nationalist vocabulary by examining influential nationalist books and speeches ranging from proto-nationalists in the antebellum period to Black power advocates in 1960s and 1970. It focuses on how Black separatists specifically and nationalists generally consecrated physical space. The full nationalist rhetorical spectrum includes advocates who urged the creation of separate Black styles of dress, modes of speech, organizations, rifle clubs, schools, stores, churches, neighborhoods, cities, states, nation-states, and polities generally, all “alternatives to the oppressive social institutions” that “dominated” Black life in America. The nations imagined served as both strategic goals and comforting dreams for the vast number of individuals and organizations who concluded that America was always and forever a racist nation and, therefore, that new possibilities for Black people required a new beginning.