Why Did Ethiopia Play a Critical Role in the Black American Political Imagination?

Ethiopia for so long place such a critical role in the black American and also black international political imagination. You write from early on quote Ethiopianism spread throughout the black world, calling for the redemption of Africa by any means necessary. Ethiopia had a different kind of symbolic value even created in Egypt. And I think we come out of a tradition of Old Testament thinking where black people as enslaved people identified with the oppressed Jews in Egypt.