Ford: The anthem maker

Much has been written and observed about Jamaican Marcus Mosiah Garvey and his Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), and the aim to achieve Black nationalism through the celebration of African history and culture.

Garvey also subscribed to the idea of blacks returning to their ancestral Africa home. But there was another man – 10 years Garvey’s senior – who would one day rub shoulders with Garvey and who played an integral part in raising self-pride and self-awareness among people of African ancestry in the early 20th century. He was Barbadian Arnold Josiah Ford.

Ford was born in Barbados on April 23, 1877. His mother Elizabeth Brathwaite, had emigrated to Barbados from Sierra Leone.
His father Edward Ford was from Nigeria and worked as a police officer and sometimes preacher.

Edward had a reputation as a “fiery preacher” at the Wesleyan Methodist Church where Arnold was baptised. Yet, it is not known if Edward’s teaching espoused traditional Methodist beliefs or if it urged the embrace of Judaism that his son would later advocate.

Ford’s early education centered on music including lessons on the harp, the violin, and the bass. By age 20, he was an accomplished musician.

He enlisted in the British Royal Navy in 1899 and was assigned to the music corps, which took him to ports throughout the world including Africa. After the Navy, he worked briefly as a clerk in Bermuda and then as a public works administrator in Liberia where freed American slaves had begun to settle in 1821.

Ford’s travels eventually took him to the United States, and his passion for music led him, in 1910, to the vibrant and burgeoning music scene in New York City’s Harlem neighborhood. Within two years, he was appearing with an early jazz group at the Clef Club, an influential gathering place for Harlem musicians.

Ford also engaged in the politics of the day by becoming director of the New Amsterdam Musical Association, the union for black musicians. At some point around 1916, he married Olive Nurse with whom he would have two children.

During this period, Garvey founded the UNIA in 1915, to “unite all people of African ancestry of the world to one great body to establish a country and absolute government of their own.”

Garvey believed that music was central to attracting and inspiring members, and he solicited Ford to take charge of the movement’s music program.

Ford collaborated with Benjamin Burrell to compose an anthem that would convey the pride of African heritage.

The piece, “The Universal Ethiopian Anthem,” became wildly popular.

Ford studied Hebrew, religion and history, and held services at Liberty Hall, the headquarters of the UNIA.

“As a paid officer, Rabbi Ford, as he was now called, was responsible for orchestrating much of the pageantry of Garvey’s highly attractive ceremonies. Ford was prominently situated among both Muslim and Christian clergy in the UNIA.

Ford’s contributions to the UNIA, however, were not limited to musical and religious matters. He and E.L. Gaines wrote the handbook of rules and regulation for the paramilitary African Legion (which was modelled after the Zionist Jewish Legion) and developed guidelines for the Black Cross Nurses.

He served on committees, spoke at rallies, and was elected one of the delegates representing the 35,000 members of the New York chapter at the First International Convention of Negro Peoples of the World, held in 1920 at Madison Square Garden.

There the governing body adopted the red, black, and green flag as its ensign, and Ford’s song “Universal Ethiopian Anthem” was required under the UNIA constitution to be sung at every gathering.

During that same year, Ford published the Universal Ethiopian Hymnal. Ford was a proponent of replacing the term “Negro” with the term “Ethiopian”, as a general reference to people of African descent. This allowed the biblical verse “Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hand to God,” (Psalm 68:3) to be interpreted as applying to their efforts and it became a popular slogan of the organisation.

At the 1922 convention, Ford opened the proceedings for the session devoted to “The Politics and Future of the West Indian Negro” and he represented the advocates of Judaism on a five-person ad hoc committee formed to investigate “the Future Religion of the Negro”.

Following Garvey’s arrest in 1923, the UNIA lost much of its internal cohesion.

Since Ford and his small band of followers were motivated by principles that were independent of Garvey’s charismatic appeal, they were repeatedly approached by government agents and asked to testify against Garvey at trial, which they refused to do.

However, in 1925, Ford brought separate law suits against Garvey and the UNIA for failing to pay him royalties from the sale of recordings and sheet music, and in 1926 the judge ruled in Ford’s favor. No longer musical director, and despite his personal and business differences with the organisation, Rabbi Ford maintained a connection with the UNIA and was invited to give the invocation at the annual convention in 1926.

Several black religious leaders were experimenting with Judaism in various degrees between the two world wars. Rabbi Ford formed intermittent partnerships with some of these leaders. He and Samuel Valentine started a short-lived congregation called Beth B’nai Israel.

Ford then worked with Mordecai Herman and the Moorish Zionist Temple, until they had an altercation over theological and financial issues. Finally, he established Beth B’nai Abraham in Harlem in 1924.

A Jewish scholar who visited the congregation described their services as “a mixture of Reform and Orthodox Judaism, but when they practise the old customs they are seriously orthodox”.

In 1928, Rabbi Ford created a business adjunct to the congregation called the B’nai Abraham Progressive Corporation.

Reminiscent of many of Garvey’s ventures, this corporation issued one hundred shares of stock and purchased two buildings from which it operated a religious and vocational school in one and leased apartments in the other.

However, resources dwindled as the Depression became more pronounced, and the corporation went bankrupt in 1930.

Once again it seemed that Ford’s dream of building a black community with cultural integrity, economic viability, and political virility was dashed, but out of the ashes of this disappointment, he mustered the resolve to make a final attempt in Ethiopia.

The Ethiopian government had been encouraging black people with skills and education to immigrate to Ethiopia for almost a decade, and Ford knew that there were over 40,000 indigenous black Jews already in Ethiopia.

The announced coronation of Haile Selassie in 1930 as the first black ruler of an African nation in modern times raised the hopes of black people all over the world and led Ford to believe that the timing of his Ethiopian colony was providential.

Ford arrived in Ethiopia with a small musical contingent in time to perform during the coronation festivities. They then sustained themselves in Addis Abba by performing at local hotels and relying on assistance from supporters in the United States who were members of the Aurienoth Club, a civic group of black Jews and black nationalists, and members of the Commandment Keepers Congregation, led by Rabbi W. A. Matthew, Ford’s most loyal protégé. Mignon Innis arrived with a second delegation in 1931 to work as Ford’s private secretary. She soon became Ford’s wife, and they had two children in Ethiopia. Mrs. Ford established a school for boys and girls that specialized in English and music.

Ford managed to secure eight hundred acres of land on which to begin his colony and approximately one hundred individuals came to help him develop it. Unbeknownst to Ford, the U.S. State Department monitored Ford’s efforts with irrational alarm, dispatching reports with such headings as “American Negroes in Ethiopia—Inspiration Back of Their Coming Here —‘Rabbi’ Josiah A. Ford,” and instituting discriminatory policies to curtail the travel of black citizens to Ethiopia.

Ford had no intention of leaving Ethiopia, so he drew up a certificate of ordination for Rabbi Matthew that was sanctioned by the Ethiopian government in the hope that this document would give Matthew the necessary credentials to continue the work that Ford had begun in the United States. By 1935 the black Jewish experiment with Ethiopian Zionism was on the verge of collapse.

Those who did not leave because of the hard agricultural work joined the stampede of foreign nationals who sensed that war with Italy was imminent and defeat for Ethiopia certain.

Ford died in September of that year, it was said, of exhaustion and heartbreak, a few weeks before the Italian invasion. Ford had been the most important catalyst for the spread of Judaism among African Americans.

Through his successors, communities of black Jews emerged and survived in several American cities. Ford was recognised as the pioneering figure of the Black Hebrew movement. (Adapted)