Robertson, Aaron: The Black Utopians: Searching for Paradise and The Promised Land in America 2024
The Black Utopians: Searching for Paradise and the Promised Land in America describes the Pastor Albert Cleage, Jr., pastor and founder of The Shrine of the Black Madonna in Detroit and the architect of Black Christian Nationalism. The book also describes the artist Glanton Dowdell, who painted the Black Madonna. The book actually begins with another Utopia, Promise Land, Tennessee, ancestral home of the author, Aaron Robertson, and his father, Dorian Robertson, whose letters to Aaron are dispersed throughout the text.
Marian started us out, saying, "I enjoyed it a lot and in fact I looked it up to see if the Shrine was still open and it is open but it’s only the church, the store and the other community spaces have closed but the fact that they did it, and remember, it was during my lifetime, I did not know anything about this. I had never heard the name Albert Cleage before, but I knew Pearl Cleage, the author. She wrote What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day and I Wish I Had a Red Dress. What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day might have been an Oprah pick, but I never ever heard of Pearl Cleage’s father. I thought I was informed about everything that concerned Black Nationalism. There were movements going on during the same time as the Civil Rights Movement in the South, the growth of the Nation of Islam, the rise of the Black Panther Party, how come I didn’t know about the Detroit part? This is amazing, and they still have the farm in South Carolina. Did you know about this, Barbara?”
Marian followed up with, “Can I ask a question which I tried to ask Barb L the other day, before I finished the book. I said, ‘Barb, who wrote those letters? I know about Albert Cleage, the pastor or the Shrine. I know about the artist Glanton Dowdell, but who is writing the letters?’ His name turned out to be Dorian Robertson, the father of the author.”
Everyone chimed in at this point to say that the author had said this at the beginning of the book.
Marian continued, “I had forgotten that somehow. There was so much information. So here’ s the question: How did Aaron and his father Dorian relate to the Shrine story? It seems to me that they never did.”
Barbara M. responded,“I don’t disagree; I was just trying to think about this space they were trying to find. The father talks about this in the letters: ‘If my life had gone this way, maybe I would have...’and here he is a brilliant writer.”
Alejandra explained further, “ I interpreted it as even in the beginning he mentions not necessarily a connection to that particular place, (the Shrine in Detroit,) but the idea of Promise Land how his father and the author’s story talk about ‘going back’ to a home. (It refers to) not just religion but land. Dorian said in his letter ‘No one in my family ever went to jail, this was not in the cards for me, it was crazy for me that this became my reality and if I had stayed in Tennessee, this might not have happened to me.’”
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| Aaron Robertson, author of The Black Utopians |
Barb L. said, “I kept looking for the author’s voice to emerge when he talked about Sir, the man who did marry his mother, unlike his father, who neglected to marry his mother, but Dorian’s parents sided with her and excluded Dorian. It sounds like Aaron was really tortured by this stepfather, the beatings with belts that had names, the demand to call him Sir and this line of depression: Dorian found his own father drinking in a bar every day after work by himself. You’ve got a grandfather and father obviously struggling with depression. Is that part of Aaron’s story too? I had many questions after finishing the book.”
Nancy told us, “I watched a pretty long video of the author talking to John Hope Franklin on a show on YouTube called ‘Left of Black.’ I think the author’s whole way of coping with all of this is an intellectual way. In his video he was talking about how Utopias never really succeed, and I was thinking of it as a criticism, but he says that success is not really a utopia. The idea is the striving that is what a utopia is all about, whether it’s physical like Beauland Farm or Promise Land or whether it’s more personal and internal in relationships with other people. I think that by showing the letters from his dad, he was striving toward a family utopia. He said in the video that his relationship with his father is currently terrible. From what I read, I feel that Dorian is a man who has a hard time taking responsibility for his actions, and that would make him a hard man to develop a relationship with.”
I have a question that is totally unrelated to what we’re talking about. I found that in the book and in the video the topic of Christianity is prevalent. Christianity is credited with people having love and hope but is also heavily criticized for being this ‘white religion’ that had really hurt Black people. I wondered about how in Africa, how Christianity could take hold. Prior to Christianity Africans had their own religions.
Barbara M elaborated on this, saying, “I was talking to one of my associates, and they’re from China. They were saying that they really didn’t understand the Black experience. He said, “I don’t know why Blacks can’t recover; we did.” And I said, “You were allowed to keep your language, your religion, and your practices. They didn’t allow Black people to do that. And Christianity was the tranquilizer.”
Bonnie added, “The one time enslave people had a little peace was on Sundays, when they were allowed to go to church and it was a little bit of a day off and that may have influenced enslaved people to embrace Christianity.”
Robin pointed out, “I think that when you are in a terrible situation, religion is sometimes the one thing you can turn to. And the enslaved really weren’t allowed to pass on their own heritage. Initially I think that Christianity came with a lot of things still mixed with their own practices. It was forced on the enslaved, but they began to recreate it in their own way.”
Ann offered, “Most enslaved people who came here were from countries that had been colonized, (if not yet colonized, then visited by missionaries.) From the time I spent in Liberia, which was not colonized, the people were not Christian. The only people who became Christian were the ones who knew that they could only get medical help if they claimed Christianity. Others believe in the spirits of nature.”
Ann continued, “One of the books we read in the Humanist Book Club was called Accidental Gods: On Men Unwittingly Turned Divine by Anna Della Subin. The book discusses how when people are in need or suffering, religions are often created. Usually there’s a person or a group who has power. What I liked about The Black Utopians was that I thought the author was showing so much awareness of the complexity of everything, showing how we often do things that are contradictory. Even his father became violent because of his own fear. We want community but we also want self. I like the honesty and openness about how complicated this is. There is no easy answer.”
Maria commented, “It was interesting to me how the white power structure was threatened by this movement. The FBI was snooping around way before the Shrine expanded. People should be free to walk around without being watched. As a white person, all I had to do was grow up. I didn’t have to worry about people watching me and judging me and trying to control me. I just knew that if I got to be twenty-one, I could make my own money, I could live where I wanted to, I could do what I wanted to. But Black people in this country are surveilled all the time.”
Barb L. called our attention to page 35 in the text: “There’s this quote from the book that says, ‘What animates every story that follows is my interest in the ways Black people have tried to stave off loneliness and alienation while finding common causes in the world or carving out private inner sanctums. How Black people together and alone created good places from various nowheres to which they have been consigned for centuries - the darkie town, the ghetto, the reform school, the itinerate camp, the segregated church, the former plantation site...and as in my father’s case, the prison.’”
Bonnie told us, “I didn’t particularly relate to the author’s personal story, I was more into the historical stuff. On p.85 “It appeared that the more money Blacks acquired, the more likely they were to oppose communism and side with those who dismissed an interracial movement for economic self-determination, social inclusiveness and civil rights as ‘subversive.’”
Alejandra commented, “Despite the religious cloak with which the book was covered, I did appreciate the secular aspect of it. I feel that if you didn’t want to sit in church and pray, you could still be part of the community. You could go to the art gallery or attend Black History classes. There were spaces where children could just go and hang out.”
Nancy, trying to address Bonnie’s point that middle to upper class Blacks weren’t attracted to the shrine, pointed us to Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. “What Isabel Wilkerson said in Caste regarding whether it’s about money or race, ‘That’s not the point, the idea of caste supersedes that. People get to a certain level in society. The caste that you’ born into determines so much of what happens to you in your life. Caste is a larger category than religion or race or gender.’”
For the people who don’t consider themselves middle to upper class, the search for utopia still goes on.
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