Black Baptists and Pan-Africanism in Britain, 1890-1913

ABSTRACT This essay examines the ideas, motivations and activities of a handful of black Baptists who played a role in the pan-African movement which straddled the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-centuries, notably Thomas L. Johnson, Theophilus Scholes, Emmanuel Mulgrave, and William Forde. Several revisionist views are suggested. First, that although black professionals initiated and directed pan-African activities, they relied heavily on the moral, practical and financial help provided by white men and women. Second, that this inter-racial endeavour relied on Christian networks of Quakers and other dissenters, including various strands of the Brotherhood Movement in Britain, to oppose lynching in the United States, and in demanding a recognition of black civil rights at home and in the colonies. And third, that black Christians played a significant role in the formation of the African Association in 1897, its child the Pan-African Conference held in London in June 1900, the subsequent short-lived Pan-African Association from 1900–1902, and the few weak attempts to revive and foster pan-African cooperation in Britain until 1913.