Jeannette Eileen Jones’ research takes her back to an era when many Americans were first exposed to the continent of Africa.

The early images and exhibitions that found their way to the U.S. from what was often referred to as “Darkest Africa” featured dangerous animals and primitive motifs – pygmies, cannibals, and tribal rituals.

Jones, an assistant professor of history and ethnic studies at UNL, examines these representations of Africa and cultural and intellectual responses to them in her new book, “In Search of Brightest Africa: Imagining Africa in America, 1884-1936.” The book is scheduled for a 2010 release.

This topic has intrigued Jones since she was 9 years old. That year, her closest cousins moved to Africa. Jones was interested in her peers’ perceptions of the continent, and how those ideas differed from what she learned from her relatives who were gaining first-hand experience living in Africa as expatriates.

Jeannette Eileen Jones is featured on a College of Arts and Science’s “Academic Stars” poster.

“One of the things that I grew up trying to do was understand the complexity of the African side of my identity,” Jones said. “That’s what attracted me to this project. I was trying to figure out why we were fascinated with this romantic picture of Africa – lions, safaris – and not so much interested in its people. When I was a kid in the 70s, the only images we had of people were of the famine in Ethiopia. It was a monolithic representation – starving Africans and animals that will kill you. I knew that just wasn’t true.”

Jones jumped back in time almost a century to study the earliest images of Africa in the U.S. She wrote about the American Museum of Natural History in New York, in particular its “Hall of African Peoples,” for her dissertation at the University of Buffalo. After arriving at UNL in 2004, she decided to expand her original research into a book-length look at representations of Africa spanning about 50 years. In addition to examining the role of museums in shaping perceptions of Africa, she also researched pan-African activists and African intellectuals, and how Africa became important to African American identity and self-determination.

“I focus mostly on pan-Africanists, but also African American missionaries to Africa, and then a group I call ‘everyday black folk.’ I wanted to look at people who felt some kind of relationship and kinship to people in Africa and felt some kind of duty to participate in anti-colonialism,” Jones said. “In the book, I argue that Africa became important for African Americans’ sense of a kind of race manhood and womanhood.”

Jones found that white Americans who became involved in Africa mainly approached it from the side of science – they were anthropologists, natural historians, and environmentalists. They advocated for preserves, national parks, and gorilla sanctuaries. Jones believes that taking an interest in Africa’s natural environment was a way for white Americans to construct a “new sense of whiteness” in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Over time, Americans’ relationship with Africa varied dramatically by country and region and politics. “In Search of Brightest Africa” looks at America’s special relationship with Liberia, as well as eastern Africa during the colonial period, South Africa and the Belgian Congo. To compile her research, Jones spent time on three continents and turned to newspaper articles, congressional records, records from British foreign office, African American newspapers, expedition travelogues, private letters and correspondence, and films (both Hollywood features such as Tarzan, and expeditionary films produced by travelers in Africa,) and film reviews.

“Ultimately, what I’m looking at is people who were responding to myths about Africa, and what they were doing to undermine those images,” Jones said. “I wanted to see what cultural and intellectual work people were doing to counter the images of darkest Africa.”

In some cases, individuals began making films in homage to Africa. They went to great lengths to film a more accurate representation of African people and cultures, and their work stood in stark contrast to some of the earliest portrayals of the continent. Their work, by and large, remained focused on the flora and fauna of Africa, rather than the lives of its citizens.

Pan-Africanists were interested in uncovering the political past of Africa before colonialist penetration, and argued for an independent, resurgent Africa. They felt it was a role of African Americans to help re-shape the continent’s political future.

“In many ways their critique of imperialism was not so much about going to Africa and prostheletizing and building industries; it was about the fact that Europeans were exploiting the continent,” Jones said. “There was a hope, a belief that African Americans wouldn’t exploit the continent, but instead would help build it up because they had a vested interest.

“In many ways African Americans stylized their own kind of imperialism, born from a sense of duty. But a key difference was that they felt it was coming from a place of sincerity and connection.”

– By Sara Gilliam, University Communications

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