Doctor Feliciano André Gomes [1859-1927]

Preliminary notes on a black tribune in Pernambuco

Abstract

Much has been discussed about the performance of the black population in the Brazilian abolitionist movement and in the immediate post-abolition period. It turned out that, despite all the limitations imposed by the slave system and structural racism, the black population was in evidence and transformed the reality from their mutualist experiences, making use of their safety nets. Feliciano André Gomes, one of the children of the free African Feliciano André Gomes da Costa, was a black man who managed, through associations, studies and political militancy, to rise politically and socially. Between the end of slavery (1888) and the First Republic (1889-1930) we managed to follow the trajectory of this black political and intellectual leader and his actions both in the abolitionist movement and in the workers’and intellectual movement in Pernambuco. Feliciano André Gomes was one of the many black men who imposed on society the recognition of their abilities, contradicting the racial theories in vogue. We will see that, at the same time that Feliciano André Gomes was part of a “black elite”, he also represented categories such as enslaved, artisans, later called workers or “national workers”, becoming a leader of the popular strata. Our initiative, far from wanting to exhaust the debate on the political participation of the black population between abolition and the first republic, is to light a torch, through the life of André Gomes, so that we can deconstruct the images of anomie and “bestialization”, which for a long time fell on the black Brazilian population.