AARON ROBERTSON The Black Utopians: Visions of hope and resistance in America. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck

What might utopia look like for African Americans? Aaron Robertson examines how Black communities have striven for a better life.

In his preface to Black Utopians, Aaron Robertson asks, ‘How [do] the disillusioned, the betrayed, the confined, the forgotten, and the persecuted not merely hold on to life but expand its possibilities and preserve its beauty?’ How does a vilified minority make sense of life in a society whose Declaration of Independence champions equality yet fails to practise it? This is a problem that continues to confront African Americans. Robertson reproduces a letter from his father, who pointed to ‘The Confederate church, [which] used to have celebrations of the lynching of dark people, yet they called themselves Christian.’

One way to escape such hate is to isolate yourself from those who persecute you. Robertson examines two different attempts at isolation through the lens of utopias. ‘Utopia is not a fiction set apart from history,’ he argues, ‘but a method of shaping it.’ It is a way of making a better future.

The first example relates to the history of his ancestors, who established a self-sufficient rural community in Tennessee following the end of the Civil War. It is estimated ‘that there may have once been anywhere between 200 and 1200 blacktowns and settlements that existed throughout North America’. Some were destroyed by white vigilantism; others fell apart when future generations moved on, looking for something new; and others ended following the breaking up of land between children with the passing generations, combined with the pressures of land taxes.

Most of Black Utopians, however,is devoted to the development of Black Christian nationalism under the leadership of Albert Cleage Jr. His church was based in Detroit, though it opened Shrines in other parts of the country and a farm, named Beulah Land, in Calhoun Falls, South Carolina. At its height it had nine Shrines and approximately 6000 followers. In examining the development of Cleage’s theology and work, Robertson provides an in-depth analysis of life in Detroit from the beginning of the twentieth century through to the 1970s, including insights into the extent of poverty, crime and degradation that existed there, the recurring racial hatred and violence in America in general and Detroit in particular – the 1960s and early 1970s were an intense period of violence and killings as the civil rights movement encountered intense white resistance – and debates within the Black community on how to respond to these problems.

Cleage wanted a church focused on the real-world needs of Black Americans that could help them in the here and now, rather than prepare them for the afterlife. He wanted African Americans to get away from what he referred to as ‘slave thinking’, which had been imposed on them by white society. Cleage believed that by rejecting such attitudes, and developing their better selves through Christian worship, African Americans could create a New Jerusalem. He saw his role as convincing ‘all black people, religious or not, that they already possessed the means for their own transcendence, though it would necessitate constant struggle to cultivate and maintain them’:

The assumption undergirding the beliefs of many black utopian movements is that false information about the nature of black people’s humanity has been passed down for centuries to obscure our views of ourselves. Because reality has been distorted by the lie of black inferiority, some utopians have insisted that there are hidden stores of knowledge available to those who know where to look. The forces of hatred and alienation have made many black people into gnostics and mystics, those who declare that they have access to fundamental truths that others cannot see.

Crucial to the development of Cleage’s church was the painting The Black Madonna (1967) by the Detroit artist Glanton Dowdell. This provided a visual representation of the holiness of Cleage’s mission to his followers. He subsequently changed the name of his church to the ‘Shrine of the Black Madonna’.

Robertson devotes several chapters to Dowdell’s life and art. He was born into poverty and lived in Detroit’s ‘Black Bottom’. As a child he saw a two-month-old baby who had died from rat bites. When he was 17, he stabbed a white man who was raping an 11-year-old Black girl. He lived on the edge and was incarcerated for several years. Art helped him find himself and provided a career after his release. After several attempts on his life, attacks on his art studio and run-ins with police, Dowdell sought political asylum in Sweden. The US government tried to extradite him back to America, and his case became a cause célèbre in early 1970s Sweden, which had been a haven for many, especially African Americans, seeking asylum during the Vietnam War. Sweden ruled against America’s request, Dowdell was granted asylum, and lived out his life in Sweden.

Cleage wanted to establish separate spaces for followers of his church to escape from white America. More than two-thirds of Black Utopians provides an account of such ventures in Detroit and across America, including the purchase of the farm in South Carolina. These developments are set against broader economic, political and social forces that have impacted on America more generally. Of particular concern has been the scourge of drug addiction, the war on drugs and the high incarceration rates of African Americans.

Cleage died in 2000 (as did Dowdell). His church continues to operate in Detroit, Atlanta and Houston, as does Beulah Land. His work has not had the impact he had hoped in the 1960s. Robertson, however, does not interpret this as failure:

The urge to act out alternatives to the constrictive rhythms of our days lies at the heart of utopia. It is not necessarily a place, but an expression of faith that is sustained by the innumerable ways we could have led our lives and could still. Those who believe in utopia’s power refuse to live as though any path has been foreclosed. It is an ongoing exchange between people, and so it is never achieved, attained, or finished. It is only rehearsed. Utopias always describe a crossroads, a perpetual opening.

Aaron Robertson’s The Black Utopians uses the lens of religious belief to unpack the racist hatred that has torn apart the threads of ‘The Stars and Stripes’. It examines attempts by African Americans to find a way to live not just a good but a holy life in a society that has been unrelentingly hostile to them. It is a work of extraordinary insight that also provides useful background on the historical framing of utopias in the US, a valuable history of Black Detroit during the twentieth century and the figure of Albert Cleage Jr, and an illustration of the difficulties of finding a solution to America’s longstanding racism.

Aaron Robertson The Black Utopians: Visions of hope and resistance in America Chatto & Windus 2025 HB 400pp $42.99

Braham Dabscheck is a Senior Fellow at the Melbourne Law School at the University of Melbourne who writes on industrial relations, sport and other things.

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