Broken Promises of Home: Prince Challoughlczilczise, Carrie Wright, and the Gender Politics of Black Nationalist Movements

• In Event: Black Internationalism and Diasporic Politics

Abstract

At the end of World War I, a man calling himself Prince Challoughlczilczise and claiming to be from Ethiopia appeared in Oklahoma. Although he echoed many of the ideas of Marcus Garvey and made overtures to Garveyites, he attempted to build a black nationalist movement distinct from Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). To that end, he established the Reformed Coptic Church of East Africa and the International Ethiopian Rescue and Relief Conference (IERC).

One of his most devoted apostles was Carrie Wright, a black domestic who, like thousands of other African Americans, migrated to Oklahoma from the Deep South. Seeing herself as part of a broader African Diaspora, Wright made a literal investment in the prince. She provided hundreds of dollars to his organizations and helped bring other working-class black Oklahomans to his movement. In return, she expected that Challoughlczilczise would fulfill his promises to marry her and take her to Africa. When the prince broke those promises, Wright helped bring about his demise.

Drawing on previously overlooked sources including correspondence in the Du Bois Papers, articles from black newspapers, and U.S. government records, my paper analyzes the relationship between Challoughlczilczise and Wright. I argue that it illustrates two interconnected points: first, the proliferation of Afro-diasporic imaginings and mobilizations beyond Marcus Garvey and the UNIA during the interwar years; second, the central role that black women played in black nationalist movements despite the chauvinism of their male counterparts. Taken together, then, the story of Challoughlczilczise and Wright advances the scholarship on black women’s internationalism and the gender politics of black nationalist movements.

Author

• Brandon R. Byrd, Vanderbilt University