Becoming African Americans

It was in the tumultuous period between the two world wars that black Americans first began to embrace a modern African American identity. Throwing off the legacy of slavery and segregation, black intellectuals, activists, and organizations sought a prouder past in ancient Egypt and forged links to contemporary Africa.

Tracing the complex cultural and political currents that fed into the romance of Africa for 'New Negroes,' Corbould reveals that the movement to 'invent' a useful Africa both united and divided African Americans. Writing with uncommon panache, Corbould has written one of the most engaging and important books on the Harlem Renaissance in years. -- W. Fitzhugh Brundage, author of The Southern Past: A Clash of Race and Memory Clare Corbould performs a miracle of synthesis, drawing together the major contours of scholarship for the past half-century, and presenting an elegant new theory of the rise of Harlem's cultural and intellectual history. -- Wilson J. Moses, author of Creative Conflict in African American Thought This is a rich and strikingly original portrait of a vibrant black public culture in the early twentieth century, and its far-reaching cultural and political engagements with Africa and questions of black identity. Tracing the search for a usable past and the development of black history, Corbould debunks claims that black identification with Africa was defensive or idiosyncratic. -- Penny Von Eschen, author of Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War In this fascinating and highly readable work of cultural history, Clare Corbould shows how a specifically African American identity profoundly affected by notions of Africa and shaped by the public culture of New York emerged between the world wars. Becoming African Americans will be of interest to anyone concerned with the relationship between internationalism and black consciousness in the United States. -- George Hutchinson, Indiana University, Bloomington

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