Historic Harlem On My Mind..Part 3 - John Edward Bruce, Black Nationalist
Besides having three first names, John Edward Bruce was a
Harlem resident who was a major figure in the Marcus Garvey’s movement. Born
into slavery in 1856, Bruce, until his death in 1924, was a prolific writer for
over one hundred newspapers, author of poetry, plays, short stories and a
novel. Before joining forces with Marcus Garvey and his race first ideology,
Bruce was a tireless advocate for racial inclusion. In this role, he criticized
the Republican party (of which he supported) to take an aggressive stand
against lynching, political disfranchisement and Jim Crow segregation. In this
effort, Bruce joined various organizations including the Afro-American League,
the Afro-American Council, the American Negro Academy and the Niagara Movement.
Bruce realized that an oppressed people in a racist society had limited means
to seek equality. It is for this reason that while he at times argued for
militant retaliation against white oppressors, he preferred to fight racism intellectually.
Bruce believed that African people had knowledge of greatness that had been
denied them via racist textbooks. He devoted his life to exposing to a doubting
world the achievements of African people in medicine, wars, inventions,
philosophy and other areas. He took pride when King Tut’s tomb was revealed by
archeologists because it validated the genius of Africans and it boldly
informed the world that Egyptians were Africans and not sun tanned Europeans.
Bruce was active in the lyceum movement to teach African studies in libraries
and meeting halls to offset the Eurocentric teaching of public school
education. It was in this vein to teach true history that Bruce and Arthur
Schomburg organized in Yonkers in 1911 the Negro Society For Historical Research
which collected pamphlets, provided lectures, and disseminated knowledge of the
African diaspora. Although this effort was quickly supplanted in 1915 by the
better organized and financed Association for the Study of Negro Life and History
which was established by Dr. Carter G.
Woodson, a Harvard Ph.D, Bruce supported his competitor and eagerly recommended
Woodson’s Journal of Negro History to his followers. Although he initially did
not embrace Marcus Garvey when he arrived in New York in 1916, Bruce decided on
a cold October 1919 night after hearing the Jamaican speak that Garvey offered
the best solution to America’s race problem. Once, he considered America the
home of African people, Bruce now agreed with Garvey that the black person’s
destiny resided in emigration to the motherland. “THINK BLACK” he urged readers
of the Negro World “for every white man in this country is thinking white.”
Throughout
the decades, Bruce had corresponded with pan-Africanists in Nigeria, the Gold
Coast (Ghana), Liberia and Sierre Leone. In this capacity, he was instrumental
in introducing Garvey to influential players on the continent. Bruce’ s
writings in the Negro World and the Negro Daily Times help also to spread the
ideas of Garveyism throughout the United States, the Caribbean, Africa and
Central America. A grateful Garvey knighted Bruce as Duke of Uganda in the
Universal Negro Improvement Association’s royalty. Bruce diligently sought to
aid the Garvey movement’s effort at establishing trade relations between the UNIA
and Liberia by entertaining in his Harlem homes ( 260 West 136th
Street, 65 West 134th Street and 2170 Madison Avenue) African dignitaries.
Bruce’s funeral in 1924 attracted thousands in two services and he was widely
eulogized throughout the diaspora. His close friend Arthur Schomburg
pin-pointed Bruce’s significant role as a race first model: Bruce, he noted,
was one of those “who think and act and sleep NEGRO.” This is a fitting
description of a man who vigorously advocated that the history of African
people needed to be disseminated in the classroom. Bruce greatest legacy is
that universities and colleges not only in the United States but in many
nations including Italy, France, Germany and Japan have curriculums devoted to
the literature, culture and history of Africans wherever they have resided.
William Seraile, Ph.D
Source: William Seraile, Bruce Grit: The Black Nationalist
Writings of John Edward Bruce
Labels: bruce grit: the black nationalist writings of john edward bruce, john edward bruce, william seraile
1 Comments:
Thank you for this information. Peace.
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