The Dominican Protestants: Nationalism and the African Diaspora in Goodin vs. Astwood (1890)

• In Event: Imagining the Spaces and Faces of the Nation: History, Migration, and Diaspora in/beyond Hispaniola

Abstract

This paper examines claims that descendants of the 1824-1826 African American immigrants in Santo Domingo made to Dominican nationality in the 1890 lawsuit Goodin vs. Astwood. On the surface, the lawsuit was about a disputed church property donated by the Dominican government to Protestants living in the Dominican Republic’s capital. Yet, in the process of defending their rights against the U.S. Consul, Henry C.C. Astwood, and the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church that he represented, the African American descendants under-emphasized their racial and ethnic ties to African Americans in the United States. Instead they claimed to be “Dominican Protestants,” members of a non-Catholic religion, “whose history was tied in great part to the history of the country.” This paper explores the ways that these African American descendants imagined the Dominican nation and their place within the African diaspora as black Protestants in a Catholic country. It additionally demonstrates that claims to a non-Catholic, Protestant national identity were made not just in light of racial politics on the island, but also in response to African American imperialist attitudes towards missionary work in the Dominican Republic and American imperialism in the Dominican Republic more broadly. The framing of national identity in the lawsuit thus evidences a broader, more inclusive understanding of Dominican nationality or dominicanidad as a form of protest against U.S. economic intervention on the island.

Author

• Christina C Davidson, Duke University