Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: "Admiral Southerland says that as soon as the crisis is over he?ll send a band to play for the town."

U.S. Consul James Weldon Johnson, Corinto, Nicaragua, 1912

Those eager to understand the imperial mindset of a Condoleeza Rice or a Colin Powell could do worse than recall the complicated response of African American intellectuals to U.S. expansion one hundred years ago. Even as Charles Chesnutt, Ida B. Wells, and other black intellectuals critiqued the nation's imperial aims, equally influential figures such as Booker T. Washington and Edward E. Cooper proved willing to endorse U.S. expansion, however cautiously. No major African American intellectual of the era illustrates the vexed political appeal of a pro-imperialist stance more visibly than James Weldon Johnson, the musician and writer who served as a U.S. consul to Puerto Cabello, Venezuela (1906-1909) and Corinto, Nicaragua (1909-1912). Johnson fulfilled his quotidian duties in both posts and proved a crucial figure in the U.S. military?s support of Nicaraguan dictator Adolfo Diaz in 1912. Yet Johnson also found much to criticize with respect to U.S. imperialism. His libretto to the opera, "Tolosa" (1899) satirizes the U.S. annexation of Pacific islands; his speech "Why Latin Americans Dislike the United States" (1913) argues that Jim Crow segregation made the nation unpopular south of the border; most famously, his articles on the military occupation of Haiti indict U.S. hemispheric policy (1920)

In this paper, I examine how Johnson's divided perspective on empire manifests itself with respect to his favorite cultural form, black popular music, specifically, ragtime. Examining his boastful commentary on "the world-conquering" sound of ragtime in such essays as "American Music"(1916), the preface to The Book of American Negro Poetry (1922), and the novel The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912; 1927), I argue that Johnson attempts to find in the global popularity of black music a way of resolving his problematic relationship to U.S. expansion. When Johnson describes ragtime in terms of triumphant marches and "the blare and jangle of national spirit," he suggests not only that U.S. military and black music can work together for national glory, but also that African Americans should see in U.S. imperialism the possibility of greater political enfranchisement. That Johnson's enthusiasm for a black imperial sound never succeeded in eliminating his anxieties over the racial and political costs of identifying with U.S. expansion emerges in The Autobiography--a novel which troubles "the world conquering" vision of black music the black diplomat usually found so appealing. My paper ends by examining how that novel's titular character fails to complete a successful global ragtime tour and to mine the resources of black folk music at home: a series of linked disappointments that lead to his decision to abandon entirely the black struggle and pass for white. In this instructive narrative, the swaggering sound of the empire rag gives way to the private lament of the racial passer; or, to put it another way, the black imperialist finds a new song to sing.