The following is an excerpt from Cross-Border Cosmopolitans: The Making of a Pan-African North America by Wendell Nii Laryea Adjetey, available everywhere books are sold. THE MESSIANIC MOMENT, 1919–1931 The year 1919 marked the tercentennial of chattel slavery’s genesis in English North America. White supremacy may have warped notions of forgiveness, of forbearance, and of the significance of African bondage, but the arrival of this anniversary coincided with a watershed moment for racial consciousness. A resurgence of white power had toppled Reconstruction in the South, ushered in Jim Crow, and triggered an upsurge in Ku Klux...