From David Walker to Barack Obama

In FROM DAVID WALKER TO BARACK OBAMA, Dr. Emma S. Etuk contends that well-known Ethiopianists have o?ered the inspiration for black freedom and must not be forgotten.

Ethiopianists and Ethiopianism have little or nothing to do with the government or the country known today as Ethiopia in East Africa. Ethiopianists shared the common belief, hope, and faith in Africa as the land of their ancestors to which, by the grace of God, they would return as free people. They based their hope and faith in Africa upon a biblical text found in Psalm 68:31: Princes shall come out of Egypt; Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God. Ethiopianism was the ideology, and Ethiopianists were the apostles of the ideology.

In this study, Etuk o?ers studies of well-known Ethiopianists W. E. B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Edward Blyden, Henry Garnet, Alexander Crummell, Bishop Henry Turner, Martin R. Delany, David Walker, and Frances E. W. Harper, the famed African American poet. Etuk, a professional historian, resurrects these names with a new perspective and argues that these men and women were the keepers of the African Dream. He provides an exhaustive record of their speeches, writings, and actions to provide a solid foundation for his thesis that Ethiopianists are the keepers of the African Dream.