Peace Movement of Ethiopia

The Peace Movement of Ethiopia was an African-American organization based in Chicago, Illinois. It was active in the 1930s and 1940s, and promoted the repatriation of African Americans to the African continent, especially Liberia. They were affiliated with the Black Dragon Society.[1][2]

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History

The organization was founded in December 1932 in Chicago, Illinois.[3][4] They met at 4653 South State Street.[3] In the 1930s and 1940s, it had more than 300,000 members.[4]

Its founder and president was Mittie Maud Gordon.[4][5][6] She was a former member of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League, and a supporter of Marcus Garvey.[4][6][7]

The organization advocated the repatriation of African-Americans to Africa.[8] As early as 1933, they petitioned President Franklin D. Roosevelt to repatriate them, arguing that the cost would be lesser than the "charity" they received in the United States to survive.[7] A year later, in 1934, they started working with Methodist preacher Earnest Sevier Cox, the author of White America, who was also a proponent of repatriation, and Senator Theodore Bilbo.[8][9] In 1938, two members of the organization, David Logan and Joseph Rockmore, went to Liberia for a month.[9] There, they met Thomas J. Faulkner of the People's Party, who had run for President (and lost) in 1927.[9] They also contacted Edwin Barclay, who served as the 18th President of Liberia from 1930 until 1944.[9] However, he responded that he did not think the United States government would pay for their journey.[9] In order to make it harder for them to emigrate, he added that they must be worth at least US$1,000 upon arriving in Liberia.[9]

The organization supported Senator Bilbo's Greater Liberia Bill of 1939.[5] The organization's President Gordon called him their "Great White Father" for his sponsor of the bill.[10] After Senator's death in 1947, with the Universal African National Movement, another pro-repatriation African-American organization based in New York City, they asked Senator Strom Thurmond, Senator John C. Stennis of Mississippi and Senator Richard Russell, Jr. of Georgia to propose pro-colonization bills.[5] They declined, retorting that some of their constituents, who were still plantation owners, needed the workforce, and the bill would contradict their belief in states's rights, as it would require federal funding for the journey.[5]

Black Dragon Society

The Peace Movement of Ethiopia was considered by the FBI to be an "unwitting front" for the Black Dragon Society. Most of the PME's funds came from the Japanese consuls general in New York and San Francisco. By 1938, The PME was supposedly being run by Satokata Takahashi.[11]

Seditious activity

In 1942, Gordon, president general of the Peace Movement of Ethiopia was jailed along with other religious leaders. The raid, which occurred in October 1942, also included members of two other pro-Japanese African-American organizations: the Brotherhood of Liberty for the Black Man of America and the Temple of Islam.[12][13] It also included members from the World Wide Friends of Africa.[13] Gordon said she had four million followers, and they were all taught that they are citizens of Liberia, and therefore are not subject to Selective Service.[14]

When the organization dissolved, many members joined the Nation of Islam, another African-American organization.[5]

References
  1. Gallichio, Marc (2000). The African American Encounter with Japan and China: Black Internationalism in Asia, 1895-1945. North Carolina Press. ISBN 080782559X.
  2. Kearney, Reginald (1998). African American Views of the Japanese: Solidarity or Sedition?. SUNY Press. ISBN 0791439119.
  3. Michael A. Gomez, Black Crescent: The Experience and Legacy of African Muslims in the Americas, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2005, p. 213.
  4. Blain, Keisha, "Confraternity Among All Dark Races: Mittie Maude Lena Gordon and the Practice of Black (Inter)nationalism in Chicago". Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender, and the Black International, Vol. 3, no. 3, forthcoming.
  5. Brenda Gayle Plummer, Rising Wind: Black Americans and U.S. Foreign Affairs, 1935-1960, Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 1996, p. 108.
  6. Adam Ewing, The Age of Garvey: How a Jamaican Activist Created a Mass Movement and Changed Global Black Politics, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2014, p. 240.
  7. Tony Martin, Race First: The Ideological and Organizational Struggles of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association, The Majority Press, 1976 , p. 349.
  8. Douglas Smith, Earnest Sevier Cox (1880–1966), Encyclopedia Virginia.
  9. Ibrahim Sundiata, Brothers and Strangers: Black Zion, Black Slavery, 1914–1940, Duke University Press, 2004.
  10. "Sen. Bilbo Idol of Suspect in Sedition Case", Baltimore Afro-American, February 6, 1943.
  11. Kashima, Tetsuden (2003). Judgment Without Trial: Japanese American Imprisonment During World War II. University of Washington Press. p. 229. ISBN 0295982993.
  12. "Indict 24 More Negro Cultists In Draft Cases", The Chicago Tribune, October 20, 1942.
  13. "U.S. At War: Takcihashi's Blacks", The Economist, October 5, 1942.
  14. "U.S. At War: Takcihashi's Blacks Monday". Time. October 5, 1942.
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