Part I | Part II| Notes

©2000 Modupe Labode.  Any archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text in any medium requires the consent of the author.

Modupe Labode received her D. Phil. in history from Oxford University. She is an Assistant Professor at Iowa State University, where she teaches courses in African history, the African diaspora, and women's history. During the 2000-2001 academic year, she has a fellowship with the Black Women in Church and Society program at the Interdenominational Theological Center, Atlanta University Center.

©2000 Modupe Labode.  Any archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text in any medium requires the consent of the author.

©2000 Modupe Labode.  Any archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text in any medium requires the consent of the author.

©2000 Modupe Labode.  Any archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text in any medium requires the consent of the author.

©2000 Modupe Labode.  Any archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text in any medium requires the consent of the author.

©2000 Modupe Labode.  Any archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text in any medium requires the consent of the author.

Many of the details which missionaries wrote about focussed on the Ovimbundu and can loosely be described as ethnology or ethnography. For example, in the circulars readers learned about the particulars of Ovimbundu grammar as the missionaries struggled to learn the language.²⁹

Some information about the Ovimbundu simply repeated commonplaces of missionary discourse, such as when Bertha Coles wrote that the "man is the sun of the African Universe while woman is the moon, without man, woman has no place in the scheme of things."³⁰ In a different vein, Reverend McDowell wrote that the "Umbundu Way of Life" was full of spirituality, but "without a Saviour their very fine ideal and excellent culture have been as a ship without a rudder."³¹ Missionaries used these details to delineate the similarities and differences between the Ovimbundu and African American missionaries. As Joan Jacobs Brumberg has demonstrated, ethnographic descriptions have long served this function in mission writing.³² By reporting ethnographic details, the missionaries made the Ovimbundu less cartoonish and strange and accorded some value to the Ovimbundu culture. These descriptions also carried with them western assumptions and biases, and a contention that, to the extent that the Ovimbundu became Christian, their world would have to be changed.

Competing Diasporas

The Galangue missionaries reminded their supporters that mission work was the best way for African Americans to demonstrate their commitment to Africa. These missionaries competed with other black Americans who offered alternative ways of understanding and enacting the diaspora. These alternatives, which the missionaries perceived as a threat to their work, included the Communist movement and the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). These radical groups shared with the missionaries a commitment to the diaspora and African peoples, but missionaries resisted the political base of this commitment and anything that hinted of mass emigration from the United States to Africa.³³

Most missionaries saw international communism as atheistic, inimical to their interests, and a potential danger to the colonial order of Angola. According to McDowell, the Portuguese used the threat of "Bolshevism" as a pretext to suppress Africans.³⁴ The UNIA received more attention than communism in the missionaries' writing and appeared to be the greater threat both in Angola and the United States. Colonial authorities regarded Marcus Garvey and his movement as a real threat and suspected that African American missionaries, because of their race, were potential allies of Garvey. Black missionaries found their ability to work threatened by the suspicion that they were fifth columnists for the UNIA. While in Portugal, Samuel and Bertha Coles were rumored to be agents of the UNIA, set upon fomenting revolution in Angola. It was only with the intervention of ABCFM officials, who vouched for the Coles, that they were able to continue their language training.³⁵

Missionaries warned their supporters from the UNIA's siren song and its vision of how Africans and African Americans should interact. The mission movement and the UNIA competed for supporters as they both appealed to black Americans who wanted a connection with Africa.

The missionaries' critique of the UNIA went beyond simple competition. McDowell trenchantly criticized Marcus Garvey and the UNIA's plans for settlement in Africa as imperialistic in all but name.

Should Marcus Garvey and his crowd . . . come into possession of this part of Africa, it would be a sad day for natives. A black exploiter is as despicable as a white exploiter. Our way is the only way to give them an education that is Christian and a bearing so they can live and thrive with their neighbor whether he be white or black.³⁶

Missionaries and Race Prejudice

In their writings, missionaries documented the shifting nature of their relationships with whites once they left the United States. An important aspect of imagining the diaspora, for many black Americans, was the belief that outside the United States, they would be able to live free of their homeland's constricting segregation and prejudice. Missionaries reported incidents that confirmed and complicated these expectations. During the voyage out, the McDowells experienced encounters unimaginable in the South. On their way to Lisbon, the McDowell's ship called at the Azores and they found themselves in the company of a cotton broker from North Carolina, who joined their party onshore. McDowell remarked laconically, "He was a jolly good fellow with me in Azores. I do not know how he would have been in Wilmington, N.C."³⁷ In this case, the racial norms of the United States were apparently suspended in favor of national identity.

The missionaries described how they fit into the Portuguese system of race, class, and color. To their delight, they found that the Portuguese did not enforce a color bar and accorded them a respect unimaginable in the United States. The missionaries' education and profession gave them a high status. In describing this unusual situation, the missionaries often claimed that the Portuguese were free of race prejudice.

During the missionaries' stay in Angola, they learned the nuances of this system of race, class, and color. For example, black women did not receive the respect that their male counterparts did. McDowell, writing to a colleague, insisted that any African American woman missionary should travel with a male escort in Portugal and Angola, unlike white American women. Black women would be subject to prejudice and harassment from the Portuguese.

Whereas a mulatto or even a coal black man is accepted on equal terms, a mulatto woman or a black woman has no rights to be respected. They are not prejudiced against them, it is just immorality full grown. ³⁸

Further, African Americans received better treatment from the Portuguese than Angolans did. Angolans who were not assimilados had few rights. McDowell claimed that to the Portuguese colonizer, "a poor ignorant native is to him an object of scorn and is treated as tho' he were lower than a dog."³⁹ The contrast in the treatment of African Americans and Africans pained the missionaries, because they saw themselves as basically equal to the Angolans. These discrepancies, based on culture, class, and gender, highlighted the qualified nature of the Portuguese "lack of prejudice."

The Family

African American missionaries were convinced that they had a deep, abiding connection with the Ovimbundu among whom they worked. The missionaries constructed this connection along two axes: an essential bond of race and a comparable history.

The first axis was the claim that African Americans and the Ovimbundu were family, in both the metaphoric and literal sense. The claim of family membership required an understanding of race that was based on a common essence or "blood." Thus, the missionaries celebrated the physical similarities they saw between the Ovimbundu and themselves. Physical similarities were only the first marker of a homecoming. Shortly after arriving in Angola, McDowell wrote to an ABCFM official:

As to our new home, we never felt more at home in our lives. Unlike most missionaries, we came among people, the sort of which we were born and reared among. Of course these similarities cannot be pushed too far, but as to color, physique, and general facial expression we are always seeing somebody precisely like somebody we know at home. ⁴⁰

Despite linguistic and cultural differences, the missionaries described the Ovimbundu as being just like them. McDowell further claimed that the Ovimbundu were more comfortable with the black missionaries than the white ones.⁴¹ The African American missionaries intended to use this connection to the advantage of the Ovimbundu. The missionaries maintained that this racial alliance made African Americans more effective missionaries than their white counterparts, thereby creating a special niche for black missionaries.⁴²

These bonds were completed when the Ovimbundu recognized the African American missionaries as family. The McDowells held an open house over Christmas and they informed their readers that this was an opportunity for a family reunion of sorts.

[W]e showed them photographs of many of you - their brethren in 'Oputu' (America). They find many precisely like folks that they know, and when they do it causes a joyous shout from the whole crowd. It is great to hear their exclamations at seeing some of the dignitaries in America. They look at the faces of some of our professors and others and cry out, "Hayo ocimbundu ocili' - literally, 'There you, a true native!'⁴³

Despite the celebratory ways in which the black missionaries noted the Ovimbundu's recognition of African Americans as "natives," the missionaries were forced to recognize that the Ovimbundu did not understand the connection between themselves in the same way. Rather, the Ovimbundu saw the cultural division between themselves and missionaries as important. In a letter to a colleague, Reverend McDowell indicated the tensions between the Ovimbunudu and the missionaries.

The natives have two general terms: 'Ovimbundu and Ovindele'. Ovimbundu means natives of the country in their native state. When an Ovimbundu becomes educated and wears European clothes and shoes, he is called an 'okacindele'. . .All foreigners, whether white or black are called ovindele and there is little distinction on the basis of color. Their psychology is very interesting. We missionaries encourage them to call us 'alongisi' which means teacher.⁴⁴

Because of their differences in culture, the Ovimbundu, in their own terms, did not necessarily see the missionaries as members of the their family. The use of the family metaphor, then, was not fully reciprocated.⁴⁵

The second axis on which the relationship between missionaries and Ovimbundu was constructed was an interpretation of history. Because of their comparable experiences of oppression due to color and culture, African American missionaries assumed that they had a common cause with and insight into the Ovimbundu. In 1923 Reverend McDowell wrote:

What [the African] needs is direction and leadership, and not charity. The natives have a proverb to the effect that 'a native knows a native and is thus harder on him.' I am afraid that is really true and that it takes colored folks to be hard on colored folks. The fellows had a great way of putting it during my school days. They said that many of the good devoted white missionaries from the North would advise, sympathize, and weep over us, and the hard colored teachers would tell us about 'our raisin,' and 'where we came from.' I presume we need both.⁴⁶

Reverend McDowell also compared the ways in which the Portuguese treated African workers to the labor regime to which African Americans were subjected in the South. Africans were often forced to work, and as in the US, employers plied the Africans with "whiskey, women, and opportunity to gamble."⁴⁷

These historical analogies and family metaphors helped the missionaries forge a connection with the Ovimbundu. Despite the joyful sense of recognition, these connections carried within them tensions. This was a connection that originated from, and was framed by, the African American missionaries. In the discourse there was no sense of frames of reference originating from the Ovimbundu. The mission discourse, which presumed that the Ovimbundu reciprocated the missionaries' perspective, required the suppression of Ovimbundu's alternative ways of understanding the relationship between missionaries and the Ovimbundu. The Ovimbundu's silence and passivity in framing the discourse indicates how profoundly western this discourse was.

Missionaries and Colonialism

The Galangue missionaries presented a complex perspective on colonialism to their supporters. Although black missionaries tended to be against colonialism, they did not see colonial rule ending any time soon and therefore adopted a pragmatic attitude of working within the system. They protested against Portuguese abuse of Africans, yet they also wanted to maintain cordial relations with the colonial authorities. Occasionally the missionaries found that their position as African Americans in colonized Angola put them in conflict with their asserted alliance with the Ovimbundu.

The missionaries found some aspects of Portuguese colonialism, in particular the policy of assimilation, attractive. Assimilation, in theory, offered Africans the promise of citizenship provided they accepted Portuguese culture.⁴⁸ By contrast, many African Americans in the United States were unable to exercise fully their rights of citizenship. Colonial Angola, by this measure, compared favorably with the United States from the perspective of African Americans.⁴⁹ Although the missionaries valued Ovimbundu culture, the requirements of assimilation also complemented the mission's goals.

Reverend McDowell argued that Portuguese colonialism compared favorably with other colonial regimes and promoted this perspective in the United States. He wrote to Robert Abbot, the publisher of the Chicago Defender, suggesting that a deputation of black Americans be sent to Angola to study and publicize the situation of Africans.

Personally, I take absolutely no stock in the anticipation of any considerable portion of Africa passing wholly into the hands of colored people, Americans, native Africans, or what not: and I am Negro to the core. However, there is a great opportunity for Negroes to become constituent parts of Latin civilizations, as I am afraid they may not become a constituent part of Anglo-Saxon civilization.⁵⁰

The issue of slavery and forced labor brought into relief the contradictions of the missionaries' place in colonial Angola and in the diaspora. The missionaries decided not to allow "domestic" slaves to use the mission as a refuge from their masters. Samuel Coles explained to mission supporters Galangue's policy.

First these people [slaves] are not coming here for the WORD as some of them say, and secondly that we have the cart before the horse. The thing that must be done to help the poor slaves is to change the heart of the slaveholder. . . Domestic slavery is the worst thing that there is in all Africa. It takes all the life and self respect out of its victims. Therefore we are trying to change the hearts of the slave holders because we know that when we rescue a slave we have only rescued his body and not his soul.⁵¹

Although the missionaries used history to draw connections between themselves and the Ovimbundu, the situation of slavery in Angola illustrated the limits of these connections. In their own history, African Americans saw the experience of liberation from slavery in religious and political terms. However, in Angola the missionaries did not free slaves from their political status and instead focussed on liberating the Ovimbundu from the slavery of "heathenism" through Christianity.

Galangue's End

Changes among black Congregationalists in the United States and in Galangue combined to end the experiment of an all-African American mission station. During the 1930s, black Congregationalists found it nearly impossible to sustain the necessary levels of financial support for the station due to the Great Depression and the dispersal of church members as they migrated to the North. Organizational changes within the church further fragmented black Congregational identity. The Congregational Church merged with the Christian Church in 1931. Blacks in the Christian Church had no tradition of supporting missions and diluted the support base of Galangue. In 1936 the AMA transferred the management of the black Congregational churches to the Congregational Board of Home Missions. This new sponsoring body had scant interest in foreign missions and shared none of the historic links between the AMA, black Congregationalists, and missions.⁵²

In the 1930s, several unrelated factors left the Galangue mission shorthanded. When the ABCFM retrenched its finances due to the depression, Samuel and Bertha Coles were "loaned" to a mission in Liberia, the Booker T. Washington Agriculture and Industrial Institute, in 1935 and 1936. Several years later, when the Coles were on their regularly scheduled furlough in the United States, the progress of World War II prevented their return to Angola until the war's end. Bessie McDowell's serious illnesses led the McDowells to take a leave of absence in 1937. Henry McDowell became the principal of an AMA school in North Carolina. Bessie McDowell died there in 1942. The McMillans worked steadily in Galangue through the war. In 1940, when they were the only missionaries on the station, Lauretta Dibble transferred from a neighboring ABCFM station to help them. She became the first non-black missionary stationed at Galangue. In 1947 the McMillans resigned and returned to Omaha, where Dr. McMillan re-established his medical practice. The Coles remained at Galangue until 1950. The Coles' departure represented the end of black Congregationalist involvement with Galangue. Reverend McDowell returned to Angola with his second wife in 1947, but worked at a different station.⁵³

The writings of the Galangue missionaries originated from Angola but were shot through with the preoccupations of African Americans in the United States and abroad. In these writings the missionaries continually worked out their encounters with not a monolithic, mythic Africa, but a specific place in Angola inhabited by specific people.

The passionate commitment of the missionaries to Galangue is evidence of the importance that black Americans accorded to their connection with Africa. Black Americans characterized their deep attachment to the Ovimbundu in terms of family. The family metaphor invoked the historical connections of African Americans with Africa and comparable historical experiences of the Ovimbundu and black Americans with racial discrimination and oppression. The fact of calling the Ovimbundu family, however, did not conceal the tensions that qualified this connection. These tensions revolved around interpretations of race and culture. Abroad, the missionaries experienced their skin color, their race, in ways that were unimaginable in the United States. They were discomfited, however, by the different values which the Ovimbundu attached to color and culture. Further, their experiences in colonized Angola, their encounters with Portuguese and Africans, and their occupation as missionaries, highlighted the ways in which the African Americans fit, however uneasily, into the West. The narratives the African American missionaries told their supporters reveal the limitations, strengths, and ambiguities of a disaporic identity.