Reflecting on the interrelated nature of black protest in the United States and South Africa, Nelson Mandela observed, “We were part of a worldwide movement … Just as we watched and learned from the continuing struggle within the United States, so too did activists there gain strength from our struggles.”Footnote ¹ In The Americans Are Coming! Robert Trent Vinson seeks to trace the origins of these global networks that would go on to play a significant role in informing antiapartheid protest in South Africa. Focussing specifically on the United States and South Africa in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Vinson documents how African American religious missionaries, educators, celebrities and, perhaps most significantly, the political philosophy of Marcus Garvey all influenced black South Africans. Based on original archival research in both the United States and South Africa, The Americans Are Coming! makes an important contribution to recent work by Penny Von Eschen, Kevin Gaines and others who have helped us to understand the complex interconnected histories of black protest in the United States and Africa.

The first two chapters of the book focus on the influence of religion and education in forging links between both countries. Opening with the story of the Virginia Jubilee Singers, a group of ten Hampton Institute graduates who travelled to South Africa in 1890, Vinson argues that African Americans who travelled to South Africa seemed to provide “inspirational evidence that access to Western education, Christian piety, and entrepreneurial capitalism could transform blacks into first-class citizens in a racially inclusive country” (16–17). The travel experiences of prominent black South Africans such as John Dube, Pixley Seme and Sol Plaatje in the United States also helped reinforce this enlightened view of African Americans as “role models and potential liberators” (2). Acutely aware of how white supremacy was reinforced across borders, Vinson provides a fascinating account of how segregationists, increasingly wary of the African American presence in South Africa, responded by introducing legislation that limited black travel in and out of the country.

The remaining four chapters of the book largely deal with the development of Garveyism as a political philosophy in South Africa. Appearing as a symbol of black modernity and emergent nationhood, more chapters of Garvey's United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) were established in South Africa than in any other country outside the United States. Black South African political leaders such as James Theale and Clements Kadalie were strongly influenced by Garvey's prophecies of African liberation, whilst the African National Congress contained a significant Garveyite presence. In what amounts to a significant historiographical reevaluation of the Garvey movement, Vinson demonstrates how the political philosophy of Garveyism continued to flourish in South Africa even as Marcus Garvey's personal influence in the United States appeared to be in terminal decline. Even after Garvey's incarceration on charges of mail fraud in 1925 new UNIA chapters continued to open up in South Africa. The ANC wrote to President Coolidge in the same year to demand a review of Garvey's conviction, whilst local branches of the UNIA and the ANC continued to organize monthly “Marcus Garvey Day” meetings. In what is a particularly intriguing chapter, Vinson tells the story of Wellington Butelezi, a black South African who created the persona of Dr. Butler Hansford Wellington – an “American Negro” whom Garvey had personally sent to South Africa. Butelezi travelled around South Africa under this adopted name in a chauffeur-driven Dodge sedan giving speeches in which he claimed that “General” Marcus Garvey was preparing a fleet of airplanes that would bring African American troops to South Africa in order to establish a black state (103).

Throughout his book Vinson is careful to acknowledge the agency black South Africans displayed when “shaping and reshaping” representations of the “American Negro” in order to challenge segregation. However, his argument that African Americans appeared as “inspirational models of black success” largely fails to explore how black South Africans were able to influence the global outlook of black activists in the United States. At this time African Americans did not universally embrace pan-African politics, and when they did, this was often bound up with problematic ideas relating to the perceived need to “civilize” those in Africa. Vinson's study therefore prompts a number of questions relating to the way in which African Americans responded to black South Africans in the United States and the extent to which they themselves were influenced by the anti-segregationist efforts of these individuals throughout this period. Perhaps here it is important to keep in mind Mandela's telling observation at the beginning of this review – that just as it is true that black activism in the United States inspired others to challenge white supremacy, African Americans, too, “gained strength” from black South Africa.

Overall, The Americans Are Coming! represents an important contribution to the recent scholarship on the transnational flow of people, ideas and institutions between the United States and Africa. Through his extensive archival work in South Africa, Vinson manages to go beyond many existing accounts in order to demonstrate how black South Africans were active participants in constructing the African American struggle for civil rights as a global issue.