Uma raça entre nações : projetos políticos de Alexander Crummell (1853 - 1897)

Abstract

The aim of this work is to analyze how Alexander Crummell (1819 – 1898) mobilized concepts and words to legitimize two political projects between 1853 and 1897, specifically the colonization of Liberia and the reconstruction and integration of Black people in the USA post-Civil War. Throughout this period, Crummell's vocabulary was exposed in books, articles, and sermons, which we use to explore terms such as “race”, “nation”, “civilization”, “future”, “past”, aiming to demonstrate the ways in which the author and pastor sought to interpret the Black experience in modernity. In this sense, we will show how Crummell used a similar lexicon in advocating for both projects, but with implications and distinct contents according to the interests, institutions, and agents involved. Furthermore, our intention is to demonstrate the tension, inconsistencies, and ambiguities of his words in Liberian and American texts, highlighting the contradictions that pervaded the lexical construction of his ideas and projects. Therefore, by engaging with a historiography that emphasized each specific moment of his trajectory – either Liberia or the USA – we methodologically aim to unite these territories in our narrative and demonstrate that Crummell was torn between these two continents and nations, yet his writings and speeches harbored a common destiny and future for a “people” and a “race”.