The name Afro-American comes into usage in 1878. It is the chosen name of the generation of women and men who resolve to endure and defy what Rayford Logan identifies as the “nadir of the Negro’s status”1 in the United States. During this period, the light of Emancipation is eclipsed for a time as former Abolitionists and avowed white supremacists concur on the likely extinction of the nation’s population of African descended people. This is also a time when Afro-Americans are disturbed continually with threats of disfranchisement” in addition to forced “expatriation”2 as colonists to the west coast of the African continent with which they have only a generic ethnic and geographic relation. Therefore, Afro-American names those determined ones who are possessed of “a mind to stay”3 in the land of their birth in order to continue building a future by struggling to realize social, political, and economic democracy, while reevaluating political loyalties, cultivating an Afro-American literature worthy of the “the respect of the world”4, and even reclaiming the time it takes to attend to less weighty matters5.
1 In 1893, The Christian Recorder records E.J. Waring’s claim that he “coined, or invented, or constructed the word in 1878, in the month of May, at Columbus, Ohio, when I was principal of the Colored Public Schools of that city.” Collection: African American Newspapers Publication: THE CHRISTIAN RECORDER Date: January 12, 1893 Title: THE NEW RACE NAME; AFRO –AMERICAN. Location: Philadelphia, PA.
2 Collection: Anatomy of Protest in America Series (AP) Publication: Anatomy of Protest in America Series: Newspapers, 1729-1922 from THE CHRISTIAN RECORDER Date: April 24, 1890 Title: AFRICA AND THE AFRO –AMERICANS Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
3 This phrase is taken from the book of the same name by Sydney Nathans recounting the epic struggle from Emancipation to the present day of several generations of an Afro-American family to maintain ownership of Cameron Place—the very plot of Alabama land where their forbearers survived life as slaves after being forced to migrate from North Carolina in the waning days of chattel slavery.
4 Collection: African American Newspapers Publication: The Christian Recorder Date: December 21, 1899 Title: ALLEN ASSOCIATION. Continued from 1st Page. Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
5 Collection: African American Newspapers Publication: THE CHRISTIAN RECORDER Date: December 12, 1889 Title: AFRO –AMERICANS dolls, Afro –American holiday books-they will Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.