Derek G. Handley on Joan L. Bryant’s *Reluctant Race Men: Black Challenges to the Practice of Race in Nineteenth-Century America*

Joan L. Bryant’s Reluctant Race Men examines the deliberations within the nineteenth-century free black community about the nationality, racial identity, and citizenship of the African Americans both enslaved and free. Bryant’s book interrogates this complex situation–not enslaved but not free–surrounding Black intellectuals as they wrestled with deciding on where they belong or where they should live in the world during the nineteenth century. Their lives, though burdened by the problematic expectations of race, resist the roles that American society has prescribed for them. This book certainly resonates during these times of conversations and controversies surrounding the concept of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. As Bryant notes in her introduction, “race has figured in affirmative action controversies as an inherent element of identities that wrongfully disadvantages or privileges people.”^[1]

The central premise of the book is simply stated: “Nineteenth-century American freedom shaped the evolution of race…Slavery does not tell the whole story.” ^[2] Bryant, Associate Professor of African American Studies at Syracuse University, wades in the tumultuous waters of Blackness, citizenship, and freedom in U.S. History. The book is organized in seven chapters with a separate introduction and conclusion. Featured are the discussions between the central black intellectuals from that time including Mary Ann Shadd, Martin Delany, and Frederick Douglass. But Bryant also calls attention to lesser-known leaders from that time including Samuel Cornish, Lewis Woodson, and Alexander Crumble.

Bryant demonstrates the tension between those who argue for emigration—leaving American for other countries— versus those who assert that America is their homeland. She points out that resistance to arguments for emigration was due in large part to the racist origins of the American Colonization Society (ACS) which was founded to help free blacks to settle in West Africa. This settlement, of course, would later be known as Liberia. Bryant notes the convoluted belief held by ACS founders were that although African Americans should not remain as slaves, they are still inferior and could never fully be considered as true Americans. According to Bryant, some African American leaders responded to this belief by asserting that the notion of race is not tied to citizenship. Also argued by many was that Africa was not the black person’s home. The book notes that Frederick Douglas argued of African Americans, “His bones, his muscles, his sinews, are all American.”^[3] Bryant points out that one interesting part of this argument was that Black institutions were asked to stop using racial designators in their name such as the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) church.

The strength of this book is the meticulous and rigorous way in which Bryant lays out her argument about the “race challenge” through a detailed analysis of the political conventions also referred to as “colored conventions,”^[4] held by African Americans in the nineteenth century. Bryant uses the minutes and notes taken from these conventions to provide insight to the deliberations held by Black leaders and intellectuals of that time. One convention of note was the 1854 convention in Cleveland on emigration at which Martin Delany gave a speech entitled “The Political Destiny of the Colored Race on the American Continent.” Bryant notes Delany’s conflict with other proponents of emigration over the notion of “Negro Nationality.”^[5] For instance, Mary Shadd argued for Canada as a potential home for African Americans because the idea of race was not relevant there, and their work would be judged “according to merit.”^[6]

Bryant concludes by saying that the “race men” of the nineteenth century laid the groundwork for “broadening the scope of contest over race.”^[7] As her example, she claims the Civil Rights and Black Power protests in the mid-twentieth century were movements of race consciousness. But I would add that this racial discourse is ongoing during the age of Black Lives Matter movement. These are perilous times and books like Reluctant Race Men helps us to think about “collective racial consciousness” in the continued struggle for first class citizenship for African Americans.

[1]. Bryant, Reluctant Race Men, 1.

[2]. Bryant, Reluctant Race Men, 3.

[3]. Bryant, Reluctant Race Men, 241.

[4]. Colored Conventions Project, https://coloredconventions.org/

[5]. Bryant, Reluctant Race Men, 114.

[6]. Bryant, Reluctant Race Men, 110.

[7]. Bryant, Reluctant Race Men, 326.