That history has long been understood as the step-by-step progression that the late John Hope Franklin recounted in his 1947 study, From Slavery to Freedom. The newcomers assumed as their own the identity of their hosts and the history that gave it meaning. Nevertheless the logic of the Ethiopian’s plea eventually prevailed. “I am African and I am an American citizen,” he said “am I not African American?” The answer, “No, no, no, not you,” came from men and women who claimed the name as beneficiaries of a long history of struggle against slavery and oppression, which gave them an identity that they hesitated to extend to people who landed among them already enjoying the freedom so hard-won by their African-American forebears. Members of the Ku Klux Klan parading in Washington, D.C., September 1926Īs Ira Berlin tells it, an American, born in Ethiopia, confronted a hostile audience of other black Americans.
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