COMMENTARY: Who Lost the Cold War? Africans and African Americans
Author(s): GERALD HORNE
Source: Diplomatic History, Vol. 20, No. 4 (Fall 1996), pp. 613-626
Published by: Oxford University Press
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GERALD HORNE
COMMENTARY
Who Lost the Cold War? Africans and African Americans
The story is well known about the man who jumps off the Empire State
Building in New York City and as he passes the thirtieth floor shouts, "So
far, so good."
This story comes to mind when considering the linked themes of race and
foreign policy raised in these three arresting articles. For the fact is that the
Cold War did play a substantial role in eroding the formidable barriers of Jim
Crow and colonialism in Africa. How could Washington credibly charge
Moscow with human rights violations when African Americans in this nation
and Africans in their own land-at the behest of U.S. allies in Western
Europe-were treated like third-class citizens? In turn, newly enfranchised
African American*; rnnlH more effertivelv trnmnpt the raiicp nf their hrethren
in Africa languishing under colonial rule-and vice versa. "So far, so good
However, an essential component of this process was an internationa
and domestic left that championed the basic rights of Africans and African
Americans particularly.1 The weakening of this left-a result of how th
Cold War concluded-has done more than contribute to a situation where
Africa is largely thought to be marginalized: Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Bu
rundi, and Liberia are just the most extreme examples of a catastrophe that
has befallen a continent that could once court East and West to its advan
tage.2 The decline of a secular left also has prompted the rise of various
forms of a religious "fundamentalism" that plays no small role in the tearing
apart of Sudan, Nigeria, Uganda, and a good deal of North Africa.3 Strik
1. Allison Blakely, Russia and the Negro: Blacks in Russian History and Thought (Washington,
1986); Jane Degras, ed., The Communist International, 1919-1943, Documents (London, 1971);
Gerald Home, Black Liberation!Red Scare: Ben Davis and the Communist Party (London, 1994);
James Goodman, Stories of Scottsboro (New York, 1994); Philip S. Foner and James S. Allen,
eds., American Communism and Black Americans: A Documentary History, 1919-1929 (Philadelphia,
1987); Robert Hill, ed., The Crusader, 6 vols. (New York, 1987); W. Alphaeus Hunton, Decision
in Africa: Sources of Current Conflict (New York, i960); Ronald Kasrils, "Armed and Dangerous
My Undercover Struggle against Apartheid (Oxford, 1993).
2. Howard Adelman and John Sorenson, eds., African Refugees: Development Aid and Repatria
tion (Boulder, 1994); Anton Andereggen, France's Relationship with Subsaharan Africa (Westport,
1994); Mohamed Sahnoun, Somalia: The Missed Opportunities (Washington, 1994).
3. Mark Juergensmeyer, The New Cold War? Religious Nationalism Confronts the Secular State
(Berkeley, 1993); Said Adejumobi and Abubakar Momoh, eds., The Political Economy of Nigeria
under Military Rule: 1984-191)3 (Harare, 1995).
Diplomatic History, Vol. 20, No. 4 (Fall 1996). © 1996 The Society for Historians of
American Foreign Relations (SHAFR). Published by Blackwell Publishers, 238 Main Street,
Cambridge MA, 02142, USA, and 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 iJF, UK.
613
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614 : DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
ingly, this same phenomenon also has afflicted African Americans, reeling
from skyrocketing rates in incarceration, attacks on the Voting Rights Act
and affirmative action, and stagnant wages that have impacted them dispro
portionately. + Yes, "we all lost the Cold War" but some-who had further to
fall-lost more than others.
Only in Southern Africa-South Africa in particular-does it appear that
Africans of whatever continent have emerged from the post-Cold War rub
ble with improved prospects. And, most revealing, it is here that the South
African Communist Party rules in alliance with the African National Con
gress and the Congress of South African Trade Unions in the kind of left
labor alliance spurned by the NAACP when it fatefully threw in its lot with
the Truman White House and joined the anti-Communist crusade.'" In
1948, such an alliance may have seemed like the only viable alternative. But
as the NAACP lies in tatters in the 1990s, along with the community it
purports to represent, the time is long past due for historians to evaluate
fateful historical decisions not only with keen hindsight but with keen
foresight as well.
Meanwhile, the "liberation" of what was the Soviet Union has brought
in its wake rapidly declining living standards, genocidal war in the
Caucasus, and the rise of a Mafia class that has spread its tentacles to our
shores.6 The expenditures necessary to accomplish this "victory" have
helped to create a multi-trillion-dollar debt for the nation, while building
up now-formidable rivals in Beijing, Tokyo, and Seoul who will continue
to present substantial challenges to U.S. foreign policy well into the next
century-and beyond.'
It simply will not do-even for a historian-to suggest that Edith
4- Gerald Home, " 'Myth' and the Making of'Malcolm X,' " American Historical Review 98
(April 1993): 440-30; idem, "Blowback: Playing the Nationalist Card Backfires," in After
Political Correctness: The Humanities and Society in the 1990s, ed. Christopher Newfield and Ronald
Strickland (Boulder, 1995), 79-89.
5. Fatima Meer, Higher than Hope: A Biography of Nelson Mandela (London, 1990); Basil
Davidson, Joe Slovo, and Anthony R. Wilkinson, Southern Africa: The New Politics of Revolution
(Harmondsworth, 1976); Austin M. Chakaodza, International Diplomacy in Southern Africa: From
Reagan to Mandela (London, 1990); Allister Sparks, Tomorrow is Another Country: The Inside Story
of South Africa's Road to Change (New York, 1995); Alex Boraine, Janet Levy, and Ronel Scheffer,
Dealing with the Past: Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa (Cape Town, 1994).
6. Stephen Handelman, Comrade Criminal: Russia's New Mafia (New Haven, 1994); Claire
Sterling, Thieves' World: The Threat of the New Global Network of Organized Crime (New York,
1994); Suzanne Goldenberg, Pride of Small Nations: The Caucasus and Post-Soviet Disorder (Atlan
tic Highlands, NJ, 1994); Charles Undeland and Nicholas Piatt, The Central Asian Republics:
Fragments of Empire, Magnets of Wealth (New York, 1994). For a prescient view of the post-1989
events see Jonathan Boe, "American Business: The Response to the Soviet Union, 1933—1947"
(Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1979).
7. Eamonn Fingleton, "Japan's Invisible Leviathan," Foreign Affairs 74 (March/April 1995):
69-85; Frank McNeil, Democracy in Japan: The Emerging Global Concern (New York, 1994);
Lillian Craig Harris, China Considers the Middle East (New York, 1993); Young Whan Kihl, ed.,
Korea and the World: Beyond the Cold War (Boulder, 1994); Robert E. Bedeski, The Transformation
of South Korea: Reform and Reconstitution in the Sixth Republic under Roh Tae Woo, 1987-1992 (New
York, 1994).
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Who Lost the Cold War? : 615
Sampson and the NAACP took the proper course when they joined the
anti-Communist crusade while ignoring the "downstream" consequences
such a decision has had. Shouting "so far, so good" at the thirtieth floor
is insufficient.
Laville and Lucas refer to a "national interest" during the Cold War. But
the question must be asked, "whose national interest?" I understand fully
why certain Wall Street investors-or more precisely, Berlin speculators
may celebrate the opportunity to exploit new labor markets and mineral
resources in Eastern Europe, while picking up privatized enterprises on the
cheap; I am less sure about why an African American community that is
predominantly working class and whose jobs now have yet another site to
be shipped to overseas should celebrate. The disintegration of the Soviet
Union has not so much lessened the so-called nuclear threat as it has wid
ened it, as crucial technologies are now subject to a gigantic and chaotic
yard-sale.
Indeed, the fundamental question that Laville and Lucas and Anderson,
to an extent, must confront is this: Presumably "Stalinism" was sufficient
reason for African Americans to join Washington's Cold War, while looking
the other way as stalwarts like W. E. B. Du Bois and Paul Robeson were
persecuted for their refusal to participate. Fine. But if "Stalinism" discredited
socialism, why did slavery, the slave trade, and racism not discredit capital
ism?8 If Soviet intervention in Eastern Europe discredited socialism, then
why did U.S. backing of apartheid South Africa not discredit capitalism?'
Are we saying that what happens to Africans can be rationalized away,
but that what happens to Europeans must be held to a higher standard? Are
we saying that the enslavement and persecution of Africans is less important
than what occurred in Eastern Europe? Are we saying that it is justifiable
8. Peter Kolchin, American Slavery: 1619—187/ (New York, 1993); Theodore Dwight Weld,
American Slavery as It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses (New York, 1968); Eric Williams,
Capitalism and Slavery (Chapel Hill, 1944); Maurice Glele-Ahanhanzo, Report on Contemporary
Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance on His Mission to the
United States of America from 9 to 22 October 1994 (New York, 1995); Civil Rights Congress, We
Charge Genocide! The Historical Petition to the United Nations for Relief from a Crime of the United
States Government against the Negro People (New York, 1951). Anderson refers to "cynical and
opportunistic Soviet support" as a rationale for the NAACP failing to press the United Nations
about human rights claims of African Americans. However, if blacks were to subject real or
potential allies to a test of purity before collaborating, then they would have refused no doubt
to join the North-which countenanced racism and segregation and worse-during the Civil
War; or perhaps they should have reconsidered the decision to collaborate with the Dixiecrat
Secretary of State James Byrnes or his boss, the descendant of slaveowners - Harry S.
Truman-who occupied the White House.
9. Thomas Borstelmann, Apartheid's Reluctant Uncle: The United States and Southern Africa in
the Early Cold War (New York, 1993); Thomas J. Noer, Cold War and Black Liberation: The United
States and White Rule in Africa, 1948—1968 (Columbia, MO, 1985); George M. Frederickson,
Black Liberation: A Comparative History of Black Ideologies in the United States and South Africa (New
York, 1995); Penny Marie Von Eschen, "African-Americans and Anti-Colonialism, 1937—
1957; The Rise and Fall of the Politics of the African Diaspora" (Ph.D. diss., Columbia
University, 1994).
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616 : DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
for Edith Sampson and the NAACP to collaborate with a
that retarded African freedom but inappropriate for a D
to collaborate with a Soviet government that was supporting
ing apartheid and colonialism? Are African interests so
trivial? Does being African and "American" involve a
abnegation not required of others in this nation? If so, it is l
a Louis Farrakhan can lead a march on Washington that d
sion led by Martin Luther King, Jr., thirty odd years earlie
Although these articles are concerned with the link be
foreign policy during the Cold War, this epochal conflict wa
time that African Americans sought to influence U.S. fo
deed, the Cold War did not present the first time that A
found themselves in conflict with U.S. foreign policy."
Laville and Lucas particularly should consider that it m
nature of being an oppressed nationality to adopt viewp
considered to be beyond the mainstream. Should it be de
for example, that Africans and Indians in South Africa d
views of their Afrikaner counterparts on the late-ninetee
with Great Britain or World War I?'2 What would be the reason for
Africans in North America to support Washington's effort to seize Native
American land and drive them all into poverty, so this land could be
stocked further with African slaves? Indeed, what would be the reason for
Native Americans or Africans to back the Yankees during the 1776 revolu
tion when it was clear that the rebels were bent on further land seizures
and enslavement? In fact, just as it can be questioned whether the Cold
War "victory" was a triumph for Africans and African Americans, it is not
far-fetched to suggest that the interests of darker peoples in North Anter
ica may have been better served had London been able to defeat the
rebels. If, as Edmund Morgan has reminded us, "American Freedom" is
grounded in African slavery, then this conclusion is not at all far-fetched.
It is mandated.'3
While conservatives flinched in the face of the revolutions of 1848 that
10. New York Times, 17 October 1995; Washington Post, 17 October 1995.
11. Gerald Home, "Race for the Planet: African-Americans and U.S. Foreign Policy
Reconsidered," Diplomatic History 19 (Winter 1995): 159-65.
12. Albert Grundlingh, Fighting Their Own War: South African Blacks and the First World War
(Johannesburg, 1987); Surendra Bhana and Bridglal Pachai, eds., A Documentary History of
Indian South Africans (Stanford, 1984).
13. Edmund Morgan, American Slavery/American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia
(New York, 1975); Colin G. Calloway, The American Revolution in Indian Country: Crisis and
Diversity in Native American Communities (New York, 1995); Graham Hodges, ed., The Black
Loyalist Directory: African-Americans in Exile after the American Revolution (New York, 1995);
Robert M. Calhoon, Timothy M. Barnes, and George A. Rawlyk, eds., Loyalists and Commu
nity in North America (Westport, 1994); Sylvia R. Frey, Water from the Rock: Black Resistance in a
Revolutionary Age (Princeton, 1991).
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Who Lost the Cold War? : 617
swept Europe, Africans in North America cheered; comparisons were
drawn between freedom of slaves and freedom for serfs.
Naturally, after being accorded formal citizenship after the Civil War, it
became easier for African Americans to speak with a louder voice on diplo
matic matters. This was particularly true after the founding of the NAACP
in 1909 with Du Bois as its essential operative. In 1910 the association
harshly condemned the czar's expulsion of the Jewish population of Kiev.1'
At a two-day conference sponsored by the NAACP in Washington in May
1917, the assembled delegates drafted resolutions attributing the cause of
World War I to racism and profit seeking.'6 Basically, they accepted the
argument that Germany's aggression was sparked by its dearth of colonies
in Africa.
The point is that it was difficult-in any historical era-for an organiza
tion that purported to speak on behalf of African Americans to take posi
tions on the global scene that were not viewed by some as radical or left
wing or beyond the mainstream. It has been difficult for African Americans
to align internationally with those same elites that have been responsible
domestically for their plight-in 1776, 1848, 1917, 1946, or, dare I say,
1996.
What Anderson needs to consider is that when Walter White in 1948
maneuvered to dump Du Bois from the NAACP and retreated from press
ing the plight of African Americans at the United Nations because of fear of
being associated with the domestic and international left, his actions may
have pleased the White House and brought temporary concessions but they
contradicted the historic and long-term interests of his constituency, which
before and since has found it necessary to adopt unpopular diplomatic
stances.
in discussing tne i\i/v/\Lr, neirner /vnaerson nor Lavine ana Lucas ade
quately sketch how this organization's positions changed so dramatically
after the Cold War was launched, when compared to its viewpoints before
this conflict. During World War II, the NAACP leadership particularly
adopted positions that were to be deemed radical or left wing during the
Cold War. These authors should explain how and why this reversal took
place and what it signifies. If they were to do so, they would notice that this
reversal was not solely voluntary-which suggests further that endorsing
14. Philip S. Foner and George E. Walker, eds., Proceedings of the Black State Conventions,
1840-1865, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1979-80).
15. See generally Gerald Home, Black and Red: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Afro-American
Response to the Cold War, 1944-1963 (Albany, 1986); Charles Kellogg, NAACP (Baltimore, 1967),
44, 250; and Arnold Shankman, "Brothers across the Sea: Afro-Americans on the Persecution
of Russian Jews, Jewish Social Studies 37 (Spring 1975): 14.
i 6. Home, Black and Red; James Ivy, "Traditional NAACP Interest in Africa (as reflected
in the pages of Crisis)," in Africa as Seen by American Negro Scholars, ed. American Society of
African Culture (New York, 1963); W. E. B. Du Bois, Color and Democracy: Colonies and Peace
(Millwood, NY, 1975).
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618 : DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
the Cold War agenda contradicted the historic and contem
of African Americans.
Richard Dalfiume has commented that World War II "stimulated the
race consciousness and the desire for change among Negroes. . . . The
hypocrisy and paradox involved in fighting a world war for the four free
doms and against aggression by an enemy preaching a master race ideology,
while at the same time upholding racial segregation and white supremacy
were too obvious."1'
As in past wars, the United States needed African American labor in
rvf il or tr» /-\ o fo n t fko K.ltu/I fna urUi fût- f Rq rfn/r/i f/-»f .
o
however, in this case, the foe-Nazi Germany-was the embodiment of
racialism and reactionary politics. The combination of these elements
along with an alliance with the once-reviled Moscow - at once put the domes
tic right wing on the defensive, while elevating the left, which, as noted
had been the major predominantly Euro-American force championing th
rights of blacks.'8 Simultaneously, U.S. elites had to be concerned with th
special problem of Japan, which had played no small role in the formation o
the Nation of Islam and whose attempt to portray itself as champion of the
"darker races" had resonated among African Americans from the time this
island nation had defeated Russia in 1905.19
The confluence of these elements-the retreat of the right, the rise of the
left, the necessity to defuse Tokyo's special appeal to the "darker races"reflected in the 1944 "Declaration of Negro Voters," whose rhetoric and
thrust sounds as if it were a document of the left-led National Negro Co
gress when, in fact, it was endorsed by the NAACP, along with other major
black sororities and fraternities, professional organizations, etc. "We ar
concerned that this war bring to an end imperialism and colonial exploit
tion. We believe that political and economic democracy must displace th
present system of exploitation in Africa, the West Indies, India and othe
cuiuinai ai cab. ~ i nib appiuacu ib iciiccicu m uic b uwii inajui
resolution of 1944, which too reflects the influence of the lef
with progressive workers in all lands and from all groups we s
of imperialism both as a matter of justice to the victims
exploitation and in order to remove a cause for war. The
special stake in the abolition of imperialism because the m
17. Richard Dalfiume, "The Forgotten Years of the Negro Revolution,"
Depression and War: Prelude to Revolution, 1930-1945, ed. Bernard Sternshe
298-316; Richard M. Dalfiume, Desegregation of the U.S. Armed Forces: Fight
'939~'953 (Columbia, MO, 1969).
18. Ralph B. Levering, American Opinion and the Russian Alliance, 1939-1
1976).
19. Ernest Allen, Jr., "When Japan was 'Champion of the Darker Races': Satokata
Takahashi and the Flowering of Black Messianic Nationalism," Black Scholar: Journal of Black
Studies and Research 24:1 (1994): 23-46; Richard Storrv, Japan and the Decline of the West in Asia,
1894-1943 (New York, 1979).
20. Home, Black and Red, 21—22.
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Who Lost the Cold War? : 619
various colored races constitute most though not all of the victims of impe
rialist exploitation."21
It was not a Communist who castigated Winston Churchill "and his class
who would perpetuate imperialism for the benefit of the few. " It was not a
Communist who favored "alliance with a steadily powerful Russia [rather]
than further [reliance] on an Anglo-Saxon capitalist world." It was Walter
White of the NAACP.22
It is with this background firmly in mind that one should assess the
NAACP's subsequent Cold War "alliance" with the "Anglo-Saxon capitalist
world." It is sometimes said of Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat that he plays a
weak hand strongly. The opposite can be said of the post-World War II
African American leadership: They played a strong hand weakly. For it was
clear that World War II already had begun to erode the rationale and sinews
of formal Jim Crow. The leadership did not have to sign on to the Cold War
agenda-which ultimately was harmful to their interests-in order to receive
civil rights concessions that already were in the pipeline.
Certainly, it was not their constituency that impelled the NAACP to
endorse the Cold War agenda. It has long been known that anticommunism,
the wars in Korea and Vietnam, and the like were much less popular among
African Americans than others.23 When World War II discredited outright
racialism as a rationale for subordinating African Americans, the Dixiecrats
who held sway within the Democratic party quickly shifted ground and
began scoring black activists as "Red." This slowed down the granting of
civil rights concessions and gave racism a new lease of life; when the
NAACP capitulated to the Red Scare, it hastened this process. Similarly, as
World War II closed, white supremacists shifted from suggesting that colo
nialism was a boon for "inferior" Africans to suggesting that "premature
independence" for the colonized would leave them vulnerable to the Sovi
ets. The result was the same: continued colonial exploitation.
Although it has not been noted sufficiently, African Americans were a
disproportionate victim of McCarthyism. Philip S. Foner has observed that
"the black tobacco workers were the first to feel the sting of the CIO's red
baiting drive" and that 65 percent of those in the International Longshore
men and Warehousemen's Union who were "screened" from the waterfront
for decidedly "pinkish tendencies" were African American. Ferdinand
Smith, a Jamaican-American and Communist leader of the National Mari
21. Ibid., 22-23.
22. Ibid., 23.
23. Ibid., 2; Alfred O. Hero, American Religious Groups View Foreign Policy: Trends in Rank
and File Opinion, igjj-igôp (Durham, 1973), 85, 90-91; idem, "American Negroes and U.S.
Foreign Policy: 1937—1967," Journal of Conflict Resolution 8 (June 1969): 220—51; James L.
Roark, "American Black Leaders: The Response to Colonialism and the Cold War, 1943—
1953," African Flistorical Studies 4 (1971): 253-70. The instant debate makes the point: The
debate on blacks and the Cold War is not between the center and the right, as so often happens
when the East-West conflict is mooted; it is a debate between the left and the center.
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Ô20 : DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
time Union, was one of the first victims of the Justice Departmen
deport "aliens" who were Cold War opponents. This "Red
Negro Protest" was designed not only to scare blacks away f
traditional allies of the domestic and international left but also to
protest would not veer from the narrow path of civil rights towar
perilous terrain of redistribution of wealth and property.
As I have noted recently, this weakening of black labor particul
have had the "advantage" of helping to deflect African Americans
international arena where their often stinging opposition to t
caused so much consternation, but it also facilitated the rise o
"anti-white" tendencies that were to explode in urban conflagratio
1960s and racial tensions that continue to exist in the 1990s
inclusive and collective approach of black labor and the left falter
easier for African Americans to listen to the once-tiny Nation of
its mantra that one should "do for self,
Laville and Lucas and Anderson-and other students of the intersection
of race and the Cold War-should contemplate more carefully how, after
World War II, the construction of "whiteness" merged with anticommu
nism as a defense of the status quo, property and privilege; a more candid
and racialist defense of white supremacy became more difficult with the
discrediting of Hitlerism.26 Similarly, the links between racism and anticom
munism globally await a detailed analysis. It may not be coincidental that
Communist parties were ousted from power in Europe after 1989 but re
tained power in Asia (China, Vietnam, North Korea, Laos) and Latin Amer
ica (Cuba, a nation with a significant percentage of citizens of African
descent). It may not be coincidental that, perhaps, the most popular Com
munist party in the world today is in South Africa. This development is not
a worrisome concern of the propertyless black majority; it is a worrisome
concern for the privileged white minority.
By signing on to the Cold War agenda, the NAACP leadership served
to weaken a domestic and international left that had been their prime
champion at a time when the Democrats were influenced strongly by
24- Philip S. Foner, Organized Labor and the Black Worker, 1619-1993 (New York, 1982), 282,
283, 286; Richard Freeland, The Truman Doctrine and the Origins of McCarthyism: Foreign Policy,
Domestic Politics, and Internal Security, 1946-11)48 (New York, 1974); Jane Cassels Record, "The
Red Tagging of Negro Protest," American Scholar 26 (Summer 1957): 325—33.
25. Gerald Home, Fire This Time: The Watts Uprising and the 1960s (Charlottesville, 1995).
26. David R. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working
Class (New York, 1991); Eric Lott, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working
Class (New York, 1993); Wayne Addison Clark, "An Analysis of the Relationship between
Anti-Communism and Segregationist Thought in the Deep South" (Ph.D. diss., University of
North Carolina, 1976); David Jacob Group, "The Legal Repression of the American Commu
nist Partv, 1946-1951" (Ph.D. diss., University of Massachusetts, 1979); Rubin F. Weston,
Racism in U.S. Imperialism: The Influence of Racial Assumptions on American Foreign Policy, 1893
1946 (Columbia, SC, 1972); Michael H. Hunt, Ideology and U.S. Foreign Policy (New Haven,
1987).
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W ho Lost the Cold War? : 621
Dixiecrats and Republicans were continuing their quest to become "lily
white. "2? The domestic assault on the left helped to set the stage for the
coming of a war in Vietnam-the ultimate expression of the Cold War
agenda-that drained tax dollars that could better have been spent on
pressing domestic needs.28 By casting leaders like Du Bois into purgatory
because of failure to endorse the Cold War agenda, the NAACP leadership
prompted the rise of a resurgent right wing that by the 1990s would cast
into doubt basic civil rights guarantees.29
It is with this perspective firmly in mind that we can take a closer look at
the NAACP and Edith Sampson. Sampson was not alone in her globetrotting
on behalt of a btate Department desperately seeking a black voice to reassure
skeptical audiences that Jim Crow America was not all that bad. The writer J.
Saunders Redding traveled to India for this purpose. Carl Rowan ventured to
India, Pakistan, and Southeast Asia "to try to convince Asians that they
should keep faith in democracy."'0 All faced doubting audiences who were
quite familiar with the landmark petition to the United Nations of the left-led
Civil Rights Congress-noted in passing by Anderson-which presented a
devastating account of the "genocide" that was being visited upon African
Americans.'1
When Sampson traveled to India, she faced a barrage of embarrassing
questions about the dire plight of African Americans. Said one, "We will
believe in America's altruistic motives after we see the American govern
ment raise the living standard of the Negroes and extend to them full justice
and equality." On one occasion, she was asked why she omitted the names
of Du Bois and Robeson when she was listing noted African Americans.
27. Donald J. Lisio, Hoover, Blacks, and Lily-Whites: A Study of Southern Strategies (Chapel
Hill, 1985); Allen J. Lichtman, Prejudice and the Old Politics: The Presidential Election of 1928
(Chapel Hill, 1979); Ralph J. Bunche, The Political Status of the Negro in the Age of FDR (Chicago,
1973); Thomas and Mary D. Edsall, Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race, Rights, and Taxes on
American Politics (New York, 1991 ); Donald R. McCoy and Richard T. Ruetten, Quest and
Response: Minority Rights and the Truman Administration (Lawrence, 1973); William C. Berman,
The Politics of Civil Rights in the Truman Administration (Columbus, OH, 1970).
28. Seymour Melman, Pentagon Capitalism: The Political Economy of War (New York, 1970);
Roger W. Lotchin, Fortress California, 1910-1961: From Warfare to Welfare (New York, 1992);
Seymour Melman, The Defense Economy : Conversion of Industries and Occupations to Civilian Needs
(New York, 1970).
29. Gerald Home, Reversing Discrimination: The Case for Affirmative Action (New York,
1992); Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton, American Apartheid: Segregation and the
Making of the Underclass (Cambridge, MA, 1993); Nijole V. Benokraitis, Affirmative Action and
Equal Opportunity: Action, Inaction, Reaction (Boulder, 1978); Mel Laiman, The Political Economy
of Racism: A History (Boulder, 1993). See also Herbert Haines, Black Radicals and the Civil Rights
Mainstream, 1994-1990 (Knoxville, 1988). As demonstrated here, when the left was weakened,
civil rights concessions slowed down; thus, the actions of the NAACP leadership ultimately
were self-defeating.
30. Home, Black and Red, 280; J. Saunders Redding, An American in India: A Personal Report
on the India Dilemma and the Nature of Her Conflicts (Indianapolis, 1954); Carl Thomas Rowan,
The Pitiful and the Proud (New York, 1956).
31. Gerald Home, Communist Front? The Civil Rights Congress, 1946-1996 (Rutherford, NJ,
1988).
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622 : DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
Despite her exalted post, Sampson was not the most diplo
tors. At one point she was quoted as saying that freeing
before they are prepared . . . might result in their su
colonialism of the Soviet Union.' " This standard rationale for anticommu
nism might have warmed the cockles of her State Department sponsors, but
it won her little credibility among Indians-a "subject people" for a good
deal of the twentieth century. She was heckled in Vienna when she "denied
that the color bar is typical in the U.S."32
The point is that for generations, blacks, like Frederick Douglass, had
traveled abroad in order to rallv support against racism and barbarism at
home.33 The Cold War junkets of Sampson, Redding, Rowan, et al. repre
sented a relatively new development: blacks traveling abroad-on behalf of
the U.S. government - to cover up racism and barbarism at home.
Although Laville and Lucas cite an early statement from Martin Luther
King, Jr., that seems to reflect anticommunism, they neglect to mention
that the Nobel laureate's reluctance to dump alleged Communists like Jack
O'Dell and Stanley Levison helps to account for the unremitting hostility
he experienced at the hands of the FBI.3+ O'Dell got it right when he
proclaimed - after King had moved to dismiss him because of FBI pressure " 'I am not the issue!' " The real issue, as he told the writer Taylor Branch,
was "control of the movement. "35 This point was lost on Walter White years
earlier—and on Laville and Lucas today.
Laville and Lucas claim that "Sampson had become an essential part of
the counterattack against Soviet criticism of racial discrimination." How
ever, as Michael Krenn notes sagely, when U.S. elites were plotting a "coun
terattack against Soviet criticism" at an important juncture, "nothing in the
papers of groups such as the NAACP or individuals such as Ralph Bunche
indicates they were ever consulted during this matter. Even after the contro
versy over the U95° World s rairj exhibit broke out, nothing was done to
contact black leaders." Like most African Americans who have collaborated
with U.S. elites on diplomatic affairs, Sampson was kept distant from
32. Home, Black and Red, 280-81. Paul Robeson's paper, Freedom, expressed the senti
ments of many of his compatriots when it editorialized that African American "leadership must
decide whether its mission in life is to 'foil the Russians' or to free the Negroes." Freedom, July
■951 -
33. R. J. M. Blackett, Building an Antislavery Wall: Black Americans in the Atlantic Abolitionist
Movement (Baton Rouge, 1983); Waldo E. Martin, Jr., The Mind of Frederick Douglass (Chapel
Hill, 1984); Philip S. Foner, ed., The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass, 4 vols. (New York,
'950-55)
34. Stephen B. Oates, Let the Trumpet Sound: The Life of Martin Luther King, Jr. (New York,
1982); David Garrow, Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference, 1933-1968 (New York, 1986).
35. Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1934-1963 (New York,
1988), 845; Kenneth O' Reillv and David Gallen, ed., Black Americans: The FBI Files (New
York, 1994), 28.
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Who Lost the Cold War? : 623
important matters like policymaking; she was a hired gun (is the term
"stooge" too harsh?) useful for a specific question-that inevitably involved
race-but not deemed essential when the heavy lifting was to be done.
Sampson campaigned for prisoners of war from Nazi Germany captured
by the Soviets, sang the praises of "American democracy" (though most
African Americans in the Deep South still could not vote), denied that Jim
Crow existed on "street cars in . . . Chicago" (while disingenuously omit
ting Montgomery, perhaps because she "had not visited" the Deep South in
the 1950s), and worse. She had "little contact" with the civil rights move
ment, though it could have used her legal skills to rescue activists from Deep
South dungeons. Yet, for all that, she was still dumped by U.S. elites when
she had outlived her usefulness.
Laville and Lucas tell us much about Truman's words in favor of civil rights
but much less about his deeds. They ignore the fact that the war in Korea
where black soldiers complained mishtilv about racial discrimination
derailed whatever civil rights plans Truman may have developed in 1948 in
order to ensure that Henry Wallace would not garner the black vote. "Aboli
tion of poll taxes" did not occur until the King-led movement, which facili
tated passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965; "desegregation of interstate
transportation" did not occur until the "Freedom Rides" of the 1960s; "dis
crimination in the federal government and the armed forces" continues to
exist. Laville and Lucas deny Du Bois's allegation that the NAACP was "tied
in 'with the reactionary, war-mongering colonial imperialism of the present
administration' " but say nothing about how its denial corresponds with the
NAACP leadership's backing of war in Korea and NAACP inactivity about
Truman's support for the apartheid regime in South Africa —whose soldiers
fought on the same side as the United States during this war. There is much
said about paper resolutions of the NAACP board; much less about what
they actually did in the way of petitions, marches, conferences, or demonstra
tions in support of, say, Mandela's African National Congress. But, of course,
since the ANC was in alliance with South African Communists, it would
have been unwise for the NAACP to be vocal in support-if it wished to
retain the goodwill of U.S. elites.
Laville and Lucas hail NAACP support for the Marshall Plan but say
nothing about how aid to colonial powers like fascist Portugal helped this
NATO ally repress further Angolans and Mozambicans; nor do they dis
cuss how aid to France facilitated Paris's wars of aggression against Algeria
and Madagascar, not to mention Indochina. Laville and Lucas should ask
why the NAACP leadership did not press for Marshall Plan aid to the
victims of colonialism, as opposed to the perpetrators. Was not their mission
designed
It was
to a U.S.
Kenneth
to propel the "advancement of colored people"?
bad enough for the NAACP leadership to provide aid and succor
foreign policy that supported apartheid; but worse perhaps, as
O'Reilly has pointed out, was this leadership's abject and direct
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624
DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
collaboration with the r B1 in order to isola
to go along with their policy. '6
I am afraid that Anderson as well stumbles on this FBI issue. She relies
heavily on their agents' accounts to describe the motives and doings of the
National Negro Congress, which is akin to citing Birmingham police chief
"Bull" Connor as the chief witness for the motives and doings of King's
movement. Perhaps this is why in one sentence she has the Communists
ditching the NNC in favor of "infiltrating" the NAACP (query: When
Republicans, Democrats, and Catholics "join" the NAACP, should they be
described as "infiltrating" too?) and in the very next sentence she describes
the reality, which is that the NNC was folded into the Civil Rights Con
gress, which continued its work.
These are not trivial matters. Although Anderson suggests skepticism, or
at least no backing, of the anti-Communist claims that undergirded the
Truman administration's intervention in Greece, like most U.S. historians,
jiiv. ij iiiucii 11iui v. avv^vpinig auwui uv>iiiv-jiiv. ami v>uiiiiiiuiii.ii v-iauiu, pi vjuiii"
ably because of U.S. Communists' alleged "slavish" devotion to
But why? Vietnamese Communists received more support fro
Communists-and for a while, Chinese Communists-than U.S. Commu
nists did; with such reasoning this should have been sufficient reason to
back the U.S. war in Vietnam. And, of course, such reasoning did lead to
support for this disastrous conflict. Opponents of progress from Vietnam to
South Africa charged local Communists with "slavish" devotion to Moscow;
Fidel Castro had a point when he reputedly complained after the collapse of
the Soviet Union that first Washington disliked him because he was suppos
edly a Moscow puppet, now they hate him because he is not.
Walter White retreated from the international arena rather than face the
same allegation of being accused of such "slavish" devotion. It is high time
to challenge positions on their merit-or lack thereof-rather than resorting
to the intellectually lazy charge of "slavish" devotion to Moscow, and this
should be the case whether Vietnam, South Africa, Cuba, Greece, or the
United States is involved. At least since the dissolution of the Communist
International during World II, Belgrade's break with Moscow a few years
later, and China's rupture with the Soviet Union a few years after that, the
notion of an "international Communist conspiracy" that could justify a
global war because of local Communists' "slavish" devotion has been a
dangerous illusion. More recent studies have suggested that this illusion is
no less misleading when applied to the United States.37
36. Kenneth O'Reilly, "Racial Matters": The FBI's Secret File on Black America, 1960-11)72
(New York, 1989); O'Reilly and Gallen, Black Americans, 21, 25; Home, Communist Front? 140,
246.
37. Robin D. G. Kelley, Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depression
(Chapel Hill, 1990); Mark Naison, Communists in Harlem during the Depression (Urbana, 1983).
Interestingly, those who have subscribed to overheated "conspiracy theory" when discussing
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Who Lost the Cold War? : 62s
In any event, using FBI documents to score points on the left is a perilous
business, not only because these agents often had an incentive to distort and
inflate in order to satisfy the anti-Communist impulses of J. Edgar Hoo
ver. 38 Then as now, those truly concerned about the fate-and history-of
African Americans should be more concerned about their leadership's
"slavish"-here this adjective is all too appropriate-devotion to the predilec
tions of U.S. elites.
This brings us to a major point: These articles - particularly Michael
Krenn's superb effort-suggest that we can learn more about the all
important topic of race and foreign policy by examining the archives of U.S.
elites, rather than the files of Edith Sampson, the NAACP leadership, and
other centrists. As Krenn has observed, these centrists were on the periphery,
and by 1948 were firmly within the Cold War camp-end of story, except for
a few details, perhaps, about collaboration with the CIA abroad, sabotaging
nf flip A \1 ( onrl afKpr onfi_pnlnniol mmrpmpnfc pfp Ac Krpnn hoc Hnnp wre*
need an investigation of the archives of key government agencies; we
close examination of the cable traffic between U.S. embassies and the State
Department and the holdings of presidential libraries from Hoover to Rea
gan. We need excavation in archives abroad, particularly in Moscow, so we
can establish definitively whether Du Bois, Robeson, and other dissenters
were being directed by those ultimate "outside agitators"-the ever-busy
inhabitants of the Kremlin, efficiently fomenting subversion from South
Africa to the South Bronx on behalf of blacks too unenlightened to be aware
of their true interests.
We need detailed examinations of race and foreign policy from the colo
nial era to the present. For the post-World War 11 era, we need to know
more about, for example, the Black Panthers' relationship to Cuba, China,
and Algeria; Malcolm X's ties to independent Africa; Dr. King's relation
ship with the peace and antiwar movements; the Nation of Islam's evolving
relationship with Japan.
When this examination is done, it needs to be placed in a larger context:
For example, African American ties to London, Mexico City, and Moscow
should be compared with, say, Ireland's centuries-old effort to build an
alliance with France against their mutual antagonist in England. Likewise,
those wondering why various ethnic and religious groups in Bosnia are
reluctant to become a "minority"-a motive force for "ethnic cleansing"
the links between Moscow and U.S. Communists have neglected fundamentally the question
of black radicals and radicalism, which-along with labor-was the central domestic preoccupa
tion of the Reds; similarly, they have hardly touched the post-World War II era. See Harvey
Klehr, John Earl Haynes, and Fridrikh Igorevich Firsov, The Secret World of American Commu
nism (New Haven, 1995).
38. David Garrow, "FBI Political Harassment and FBI Historiography: Analyzing Infor
mation and Measuring the Effects," Public Historian 10 (Fall 1988): 5-18. See also Home,
Communist Front?
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626 : DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
might understand why it they understood better the min
in the United States, w
The comedian Richard Pryor once joked that blacks should keep quiet
about their association with the "Buffalo Soldiers," those U.S. army men
who were so essential in routing and displacing Native Americans in the Far
West. "You want them to hate us too?" he remarked.African Americans
should claim no credit for a Cold War "triumph" that the twenty-first
century will reveal was costly indeed. In retrospect, Du Bois was right.
Sampson and the NAACP leadership were wrong in endorsing the Cold
War agenda-if the principal criterion for judging is what has been in the
best interests of Africans and African Americans. More to the point, we do
not need to create what could well be called a "Richard Pryor School of
History" that causes us to celebrate what should be mourned. Laville and
Lucas and Anderson, to an extent, should digest this sober lesson.
39- David Rieff, Slaughterhouse: Bosnia and the Failure of the West (New York, 1995); Robert J.
Donia and John V. A. Fine, Jr., Bosnia and Hercegovina: A Tradition Betrayed (New York, 1994).
40. John A. and Dennis A. Williams, If I Stop I'll Die: The Comedy and Tragedy of Richard
Pryor (New York, 1991 ); Mel Watkins, On the Real Side: Laughing, Lying, and Signifying-The
Underground Tradition of African-American Humor that Transformed American Culture from Slavery
to Richard Pryor (New York, 1994).
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