The Diasporic Midwest: Author Meets the Readers

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Description for Program

This “author meets the readers” roundtable discusses the 2024 book The Second Battle for Africa: Garveyism, the US Heartland, and Global Black Freedom (Duke University Press) by Dr. Erik S. McDuffie. This book establishes the importance of the U.S. Midwest to the African Diaspora and global Black freedom dreams through much of the twentieth century. McDuffie explores Garveyism and its changing facets from the 1920s onward, including the role of Black midwesterners during the emergence of fascism in the 1930s, the postwar US Black Freedom Movement and African decolonization, the rise of the Nation of Islam and Malcolm X in the 1950s and 1960s, and the continuing legacy of Garvey in today’s Black Midwest. Throughout, McDuffie evaluates the possibilities, limitations, and gendered contours of Black nationalism, radicalism, and internationalism in the UNIA and Garvey-inspired movements. The readers on the panel bring expertise such as African history, gender, the Black Midwest, and Caribbean immigrant community-making into the fold to flesh out the intricacies of Black history, international, radicalism, and Global Africa that stretch beyond the eastern shoreboard in the United States.

Sub Unit

• ASWAD

Chair

• Bryce Henson

Presenter

• Erik McDuffie

Discussants

• Jean Allman

• Courtney Pierre Joseph, Lake Forest College

• Ashley Howard