Bourgeois Radicals: Crushing The “White Man's Burden,” NAACP Style

this program is brought to you by Emory University good afternoon my name is Diane Stewart I am associate professor of religion and African American Studies at Emory University and I'm delighted to welcome you today to Emory University's life of the mind faculty discussion series sponsored by the office of the provost and the faculty Council the series is designed for every faculty to share their research with a wide audience across the emory community and the greater public the format is for two speakers to have about 30 minutes of discussion with each other then we'll open it up for about 20 minutes of questions and comments from the audience this discussion like all of the life of the mind discussions will be recorded and available on the web during the question period please wait for the microphone and remember that your questions and comments will be recorded and made available to web audiences today's featured speaker is Carol Anderson she is associate professor of African American Studies and history professor Anderson his research and teaching focus on public policy particularly the ways that domestic and international policies intersect through issues of race justice and equality in the United States her research has garnered substantial fellowships and grants from the American Council of learned societies the Ford Foundation National Humanities Center Harvard University's Charles Warren Center the Committee on institutional cooperation and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American history professor Anderson is the author of eyes the prize the United Nations and the african-american struggle for human rights 1944 to 1955 which was published by Cambridge University Press and awarded both the Gustavus Myers and Myrna burneth Book Awards she will be discussing with us today her latest book bourgeois radicals the n-double-a-cp and the struggle for colonial liberation 1941 to 1960 in this pioneering work she uncovers the long hidden and important role of the nation's most powerful civil rights organization in the fight for the liberation of people's of color in Africa and Asia both of these works are on sale out front and she will be happy to sign copies for you after the event professor Anderson will be discussing her work with Brett Gatson also associate professor of african-american studies in history his research interests include 20th century african-american history African American freedom struggles and politics post-world War two America race and American political development and law and education he is the author of between north and south Delaware desegregation and the myth of American sectionalism which was published by University of Pennsylvania press in 2013 here he examines the three decades long effort to desegregate the state system of public education professor Gadson is currently working on a book project tentatively tentatively titled from protest politics the making of the second black cabinet JFK to Nixon in this work he is exploring rise black alert or electoral politics direct action campaigns in the South urban uprisings and growing popular support for civil rights advances that brought african-americans often framed as radical advisors into consultative relationships with presidential candidates and later into key cabinet sub-cabinet and other important positions in the Kennedy Johnson and Nixon administration's professor Anderson writes not just for the Academy but also for the wider American and global public her engaged scholarship extends to work with historical exhibitions such as a traveling Florida modern-day slavery Museum which she brought to Emory's campus a few years ago and her noted up IDI pieces and national news outlets in fact her August 2014 Washington Post op-ed on the unfolding events in the weight of Ferguson Missouri teenager Michael Brown's death was the most widely shared up edie at the Washington Post last year it should not surprise us then that she has recently signed a contract with Bloomsbury Press a division of Macmillan to publish white rage a book that will explore further the historical and contemporary roots of racial oppression and divide in the United States professor Anderson brags about being worthless in the kitchen or just and loving football more than all of the men in America combined but it took one African American Studies department potluck to discover that she makes the meanest macaroni and cheese I have ever tasted in my life look I am just happy to share the same mercurial birthday with such an amazing intellect who calls me the good twin and names herself the evil twin professor Anderson is no evil twin however she is unsurpassable in uncovering and analyzing the evils of history and the veiled narratives of peoples and organizations that fought tirelessly to eradicate them professor Gadson is an ideal discussant for today's life of the mind topic and I can assure you that these two 20th century historians will provoke us to wrestle more deliberately with difficult questions about the histories we'd like to tell versus the histories we must tell the title of their discussion today is bourgeois radicals crushing the white man's burden n-double-a-cp style please join me in welcoming professor Carol Anderson and professor Brandt godson Thank You Diane for that great introduction um I wonder Carol if we might just start if you could provide us with just a kind of brief overview of the kind of narrative arc of of gujjar Braddock especially as your work addresses the NAACP's work in southern Africa the Horn of Africa and Indonesia and I will start with that that with how I got started on this because that um will explain the arc the history of the n-double a-c-p particularly in its anti colonial work basically says that the n-double-a-cp turned its back in 1947 when the Cold War came accepted a few pieces of silver in terms of civil rights concessions from the Truman administration and then back the Truman administration in its Cold War foreign policy including supporting the European regimes attempt to control colonialism and stop the liberation of peoples in Africa and Asia and that has been the story since 1971 the problem with that is is that I'm in the n-double-a-cp papers and I'm looking at the finding aid and I see all of these boxes marked Africa Africa Africa Africa Africa Asia Asia Asia Asia and I went I said they can't all be rejection notices or hatred and so I peeked in the box because as a historian were naturally nosy and I peeked in the box and there's this incredible letter from Abdullah he ISA the Prime Minister and future prime minister of Somalia but at the time he was the head of the Somali Youth League and he was writing to the n-double-a-cp in 1949 so two years after the N double ACP back was supposedly turned and he said thank you for all of your help in the UN for keeping the Italians off of us and I went you know you had those scooby-doo moments this was a scooby-doo moment I said almost something's going on here and that is what led to bushwa radicals what I knew then was that no one had looked in the voluminous n-double-a-cp papers to see how the largest oldest most powerful civil rights organization actually waded into this this epic battle for colonial liberation after the end of the Second World War and when I when I started digging it it was Nirvana I saw this battle for against apartheid South Africa for the liberation of Namibia I saw this incredible knock-down drag-out battle for the liberation of Libya Eritrea and Somalia and then what begins to really be very disruptive in terms of our narrative of the n-double a-c-p you know we think of even pan-africanism in that in that that's where the n-double-a-cp is vision just begins and ends but instead I saw them wading into the battle against the Dutch for indonesia's independence and I went oh this is sweet and so that's the arc is looking at how they waded into these battles the mechanisms that they used and then when I'm beginning to see a decline why am I seeing that decline and it was not the Cold War that did it in your in your book you develop this framework when you're kind of analyzing the activism of the NACP that you call the Third Way I wonder if you could elaborate on that kind of conceptual framework one of the things that struck me about the in double AC PS activism for those of us who studied domestic politics and then the road that the n-double-a-cp played in civil rights what we see is that the n-double-a-cp can sometimes be Godzilla you know come in and they just crush all contenders because they are the leader in civil rights when I'm looking at this battle for colonial liberation what I'm seeing instead is a very different type of in double-a-c-p it is an in double-a-c-p that is collaborative it is an N double ACP that in fact takes its cues from the indigenous people and so the beginning of that I saw for instance was a conference in 1945 hosted by the n-double-a-cp bringing in the indigenous leadership and this is March 1940 March April 1945 and the question was what does a new world order look like we have taken on the Nazis we have taken on the Japanese we know that fascism is absolutely destructive to life what does a new world order look like after we're dealing with what is essentially almost 55 million deaths and the answer that the indigenous leadership began to lay out in fact form this Third Way and what that means is is that you have this on one hand and in terms of a kind of a leftist politics you had the Soviet Union being the the leader of this of one camp that you know that you have a communist framework for liberation that would include the end of private property a really strong central government da-da-da-da-da on the other hand the n-double-a-cp is looking at what capitalism has done and it is not impressed it looks at capitalism and what it sees as peonage the n-double-a-cp is you know the fighting pea in each case is left and right they're fighting against labor discrimination particularly discrimination within the unions which are supposed to be the allies and they're fighting that they're seeing massive exploitation and and so there's like that's not going to work either the thing that they saw of that would work was combining private enterprise with human rights because with human rights are beginning to recognize the dignity of the human being and with human rights you're going to end that exploitation that if you embed human rights particularly into the operating code into the DNA of a nation then you have a nation whose governing ethos is the people and when that governing ethos is about the well-being of the people then you have a very different way that you are framing questions in terms of policy and politics that was the n-double-a-cp s third way based upon its collaborative consultation with a range of indigenous leaders hmm well I wonder then if you just discussed this paradox that seems kind of evident in the in your title and the way in which you modify radicals with the term goos wha right which is just just some two words don't seem to go together oh do I know and in what I was getting at fair is the n-double-a-cp has a reputation and w eb des bois was one of its founding members and who was then kicked out of the organization for good and 48 he spoke contemptuously about how the the n-double-a-cp leadership was nothing but a bunch of people just so afraid of doing anything that's not respectable you can't expect them to wade into this battle I mean it was you could just see it dripping and don't get me I love two boys but I was like no you got it wrong this time but that that moniker of being so bourgeois so so dealing with respectability so concerned about not ruffling any kinds of feathers so concerned about being accepted about by the mainstream that it it basically would not do the heavy lifting of challenging an oppressive system except and so then you think about radicals what radicals do is they look at a system and they're saying no it's not working for the people it is not working for the people this thing not only has to be kind of tweaked here and tweak there this thing has to be upset it has to it has to be overturned and so by when I began to look at what the n-double-a-cp was doing in this colonial where they're taking on something as big as colonialism and think about it the European powers had based their great power status on the size of their empire and so Great Britain impart Great Britain would stand there and be so proud of how big its impact upon which the Sun never set right and and so then there was France were like yeah but ours is really in Africa and then the Dutchman yeah but we have Indonesian so you hear them jockeying for position around the table based on the size of their empire and particularly after the Second World War when they have faced devastating losses fighting the Nazis their empire is all that they're hanging onto for their sense of identity and being in stature and so now you have an organization like the n-double-a-cp working with indigenous freedom fighters to upset a way of life that has been in place since what the 1500s and then they really took hold in the late 19th century and has been the ways that the European powers have defined themselves this is radical this is radical so watching this organization in ties and so I've just got to say I'm going to the cover of the book just so here to me this embraced the filling of bruges rawness right so you have mrs. Jessie Van who is the co-owner of the Pittsburgh courier one of the key black newspapers in America and here she has her furs on the big Sunday hat you've got Roy Wilkins all tied up and you have Nehru Prime Minister Nehru of India and they're handing him a lifetime membership in the n-double-a-cp I mean it's just so you begin to think about this because Nehru is sticking in the craw of the British Empire like nobody's business and the n-double-a-cp is working with the Indian government in terms to disrupt these colonial empires but they're suited up you don't see them you know true you know car bind up know they're suited up they're figuring out how power works within the bureaucracies and then they're short-circuiting that power because there's there seems to be a kind of strategic and tactical genius about DNA see bees work in their efforts against anti-colonialism that's that I've got to say that was the thing that struck me when I when I first began first thing that I was looking at was just oh my gosh they're here because 40 years of literature said that they weren't you know they're here I mean oh they're there with this they're at this meeting oh my gosh there they are writing this platform oh my gosh there they are at the White House pounding on the White House and the State Department they're here and then the second phase of that I was like okay so they're here but what did they do and then was watching what they did it was it's so strategic I describe it like a Jenga tower one of the things when we're looking at the ways that the n-double-a-cp work to take down Jim Crow with the brown decision is that it figured out what were the key pillars and that were propping up Jim Crow and then began to remove them with each legal case coming through the Supreme Court they did the same thing with colonialism what's propping up the white man's burden how do we begin to deal egde it amaz what is seen as legitimate and as they began to move those pillars out the thing began to just crumble and quake very strategic now I have to ask this question and forgive me but you you kind of borderline commit an act of apostasy I think yes in in your call to D Center WB Dubois oh that seems to be a particularly bold demand I wish I hope you'll elaborate I mean you also take a really critical approach to another kind of icon of african-american studies and have leftist politics and that's Paul Robeson elaborate please and and what I was in search of was the truth and as a scholar when you're in search of the truth no matter how much you feel an affinity for one of your your your characters that you're you're researching you have to tell the truth and so so let me back up let me start with Dubois home I fell in love with many many many years ago and I still love him I don't know if he loves me now but I still love is that one of the ways that I began to try part of what I had to do was to figure out how did we get here as scholars where we have just erased an organization that has four to five hundred thousand dues-paying members and focused instead on groups that may have at best 100 members and called that african-american mobilisation how did we get here as scholars over over 40 years of scholarship and so I started doing what scholars do I started digging through their footnotes and tracing it back tracing back the genealogy of where we came up with with that idea and what I saw was that the in double-a-c-p papers had not been consulted instead that that premise of the n-double a-c-p turned its back and walked away was based on statements by wev de bois and they were based on statements by w e b2 boys in 1948 and after when he had been kicked out of the organization that he helped found as scholars we have to ask the question what is the perspective what is driving this statement and I'm saying if I'm 80 some years old and I get kicked out of the organization that I helped found I just may not have words kind words for that organization you know as a scholar you have to ask that question but instead because he is the boys and his words are so powerful and eloquent and historians love a good quote is that he became so quotable that so you would get and I have to say that the first article that said turned her back and walked away that source was devoid then the second book the source was Dubois the first article then the third book was the book Dubois in the first article then and so by the time you're done you've got a footnote this thick that actually looks like it is really truly been researched but when you you snake through it it hasn't and so because everybody had then said well because the boy says they're bushwa and worthless because the boy says that they have hopped on the Truman bandwagon and sold out the people of Africa and because the boys has been left then clearly after 1948 any kind of the activism that the n-double-a-cp had left with w eb de bois then i'm asking myself self then why am I seeing Abdullah he ISA thanking the n-double-a-cp for its work in 1949 if that activism has left and so when and so I likened it to in in the introduction to the old Ptolemaic system of understanding the universe where you had this kind of Earth centered cosmology and and everything was based on the earth being the center the boys was the center of that kind of anti-colonial work on earth on african-americans but if you remove if you begin to look at what the evidence actually says you see that the earth is not the center in fact it's a solar system and and and so what scholars were doing with that Ptolemaic system is they're doing all kinds of what I call mathematical gymnastics trying to make the evidence fit what they think is the center of the earth and after well your mathematics can't stretch that far and this is what was happening if you looked in the n-double-a-cp records then all of a sudden Dubois is not the center of this anti-colonial universe in the n-double-a-cp there is this sense that the thing that they are fighting domestically the white supremacy that is propping up Jim Crow is the same white supremacy that is propping up colonialism and so you can't take it down here and think you have eradicated the problem you have to wipe this thing out globally and so that became the core of their operating principle not Du Bois now with Robeson that one was doubly hard and and I think here what we see for historians is that we love the arc of a martyr we love to write the tale of someone who had everything and then gave it up for a greater good and so here with Robeson you have a man who has an Ivy League education he's a star on Broadway he's a star on Hollywood he has this fabulous singing career he has a mansion the beaches an infield in Connecticut and again this is a black man in the 1930s and 40s I mean so he has really hit the pinnacle and he is fighting for anti-colonialism and so when and and he believes that the way to do that is through the Soviet Union he he is a firm believer in the power and the the goodness of the Soviet Union that this is a force for good in the world now the problem is it's the way when we write that and so because he believes in the Soviet Union when the second Red Scare comes the US government took him on and took him down and he lost everything as historians when we write that that is a powerful story to tell and I don't deny that story at all but what I began to do is when I first ensuite to the Italian colonies issue with scholars right about Robeson they're particularly focused in on his work in South Africa and it's really easy to see the congruity there between Soviet foreign policy and Robeson's policy and it just all works in that you have the West backing the apartheid regime it just makes it easy it's just easy to write that but the story gets more complex when you go north and that complexity has the Soviet Union's policy swinging so in 45 the Soviet Union says that it thinks that it wants a part of Libya as its down payment on reparations from Italy and and and it's like and so you what you have the Soviet Union this largest anti colonial power ready to become a colonial power by taking over a piece of Libya Robeson says I think that's a great idea and you're like and then in 48 and meanwhile you have the Libyans the eretrians and the Somalis as well as the Ethiopians who had had to deal with an Italian invasion fighting tooth and nail to try to keep Italy from being able to regain any of that territory and so in 48 the Communist Party in Italy they had in the midterm election had won 40% of the election and so the Soviets are looking up because the Cold War has really started right now the Soviets are looking up and said you know if we play our cards right we can have a duly elected communist government sitting in Western Europe and then you almost can hear more and so the Soviets come up with this great idea that it's going to throw its enormous weight behind the communist party by saying that we believe that Italy should regain control over all of its former colonies now here we have the indigenous people saying if Italy gets there is going to be war we're willing to fight to the death here you have the world's greatest anti colonial power saying yeah we think it'll be ought to get its colonies back I'm looking for what Robeson saying because Robeson has been fighting all along saying all along that Italy should not hit his colonies back Robeson goes silent I mean that kind of Wow crazy silent I looked in the Robeson papers I looked in the Dubois papers I looked in the W Alphaeus hunting papers I looked in their newsletter for the council on African affair I looked in the FBI file on Robeson I looked in the mi5 file on Robeson not a mumbling word and I went and it was the n-double-a-cp that stood up and said not on my watch and came out swinging for the Libyans the eretrians and the Somalis and I thought whoa whoa so and part of as a historian part of what we have to understand is that our heroes can be flawed they don't always make the best decisions and what does it mean what are the implications of that as scholars we have to wrestle with that we can't elide over it well in your study of Robson I think seems to have a tremendous impact on how we study the left just in general and the left's internationalism and I think there it's because once again you get that kind of heroic arc that because what happened during colonialism was so brutal so heinous is that the automatic assumption is that if you just adopt leftist policies leftist politics oh it's all going to be good and and I so therefore I mention in in bushwa radicals that the issue really isn't right or left because what we have seen in the post-colonial era are that regimes that are of right-wing regimes can be just as brutal as communist regimes we have Pol Pot who was a communist who took out 1.7 million of his seven million people he's a communist being a communist does not necessarily make this work for a nation and so we have to ask another set of questions and that's what I'm pushing us to do with scholars and the human rights framework actually gets us a way to avoid those kind of pitfalls of of hero worship and good now in your career you seem to straddle two seemingly kind of incongruous historical subfields right who african-american studies or african-american history and diplomatic history and kind of in the history of the profession the two have not met very often and yet you've kind of grabbed them both and pulled them together I wonder if you especially it's that kind of as a kind of maybe model for a graduate ambitious graduate students describe that okay so yeah let me tell you how that craziness came about so I'm in grad school and I have to write a research paper you know you're in the research seminar you got to come up with the paper and I had been doing my reading you know how we're reading that crazy schedule of almost a book a day and what I noticed was that so I'm reading in Cold War history and then I'm reading in African American and civil rights history and I'm reading in Human Rights history and I'm reading an anti colonial history and all of this is happening at the same time but none of these works are talking to each other they all have a lot of the same characters but none of these works are even referencing that these characters are thinking about any of the other things that are happening and I thought well that doesn't make any sense it's not like President Truman said okay now I'm going to deal with the Cold War and he opens up his brain and you know puts the Cold War brain in closes a skull up just deals with Cold War stuff and okay now I'm gonna deal with civil right Carter opens it up and puts in his civil rights break like I said that doesn't make any sense so I salt her into my advisors office and I said you know I think I'm gonna write about something about Cold War and civil rights you know you remember those moments he went and he said what and I said I'm thinking about riding on Cold War civil rights what and so I do this explanation and he said and by this time and I'm trying to get my swag on you know you're his best you can as a grad student I've tried to get my intellectual sorry I'm going to write on Cold War civil rights and he said well if you can find it go for it and I walked out of there light and then it hit me I was like oh I think your mouth just wrote a check that your butt can't cash I had no idea where to begin because there what there was not this field you know it didn't exist and I thought well if anybody might possibly know something about this it might be the n-double-a-cp and so I just thought let me go through their Board of Directors minutes and see if there's anything there oh my gosh every meeting they were talking about anti-colonialism and human rights as well as Jim Crow every meeting and that's and so I began so what happened had to happen then as a scholar is I had to begin to really master the field of african-american history I had to know the characters I had to know the currents I had to know the debates I had to know the scholarship I also had to master the the field of diplomatic history I had to understand the Cold War and all of the players I had to understand these these key events and so that helps me understand why sometimes when scholars were going through the n-double-a-cp papers and they saw for instance there's multiple files dealing with the Italian colonies issue that because they didn't have that Cold War diplomatic history frame they didn't understand how central Italy was to us cold war foreign policy but it was by having training in these two fields that allowed me to crosstalk and see what these references meant for helping us understand why we look the way we do after the Second World War oh that's interesting just one final question before we open it up to the audience I wonder if you might think about the kind of broader implications of your work especially as you kind of push past your temporal the backside of your temple frame yeah as we think about two concepts political independence and human rights right the history of kind of u.s. and Western intervention and Asia and Africa maybe so so as I'm winding up the book part of what you know as I said the n-double-a-cp working with indigenous leaders had a framework that political independence would require human rights and and let me just say so you you know you back up to reconstruction and so African Americans gain their freedom their independence but there was no there were no human rights around them from the right to vote to the right to health care the right to education and what that did was created a level of vulnerability and instability that put them right in the crosshairs in double-a-c-p is looking at this saying as we move from a colonial world to a world full of nations if we do not treat the people with dignity if we do not ensure that we have a viable education system so that people are able to run their own government in their own systems if we do not ensure that people have the right to healthcare because when people are sick when they are ill it is very difficult for them to fully participate in democracy if we do not ensure that we have Labor Standards then we would continue to have the kinds of economic exploitation that will drag people down and ensure systemic poverty part of what happened in the international system as we started moving into the 1950s as you begin to see political independence gaining greater and greater traction but human rights being stalled at the UN's door for a variety of reasons you could not find a chief advocate the u.s. because of Jim Crow in America and the power of the Southern Democrats did not want human rights anywhere near America's borders the Soviet Union because of its gulag system crushing the the the crushing East Germany crushing Hungary crushing Poland 53 and 56 they don't want to deal with human rights either the colonial powers are and so then I'm looking at the indigenous leadership and part of what begins to happen as you get to independence is that the issue becomes more on territorial integrity than on what is happening to the people themselves it's almost like you get a prioritization list that first we have to deal with our borders our boundaries and then we will look and what happens then is that human rights gets shunted aside and so you end up with political independence coming really rushing to the floor in 1960 but you don't have the mechanisms underneath that in fact ensure the viability of a people and so that's that and when you begin to think about the UN's current Millennium Development Goals as its dealing with poverty what is dealing with is the lack of human rights across the board right thank you very much thank you so if we could spend a little bit of time asking questions I would just ask that you keep your questions succinct more question than statement because I want to hear Carol talks and wait yes Mike yes thanks I just wanted to ask you about our current situation and how we'll be looked at fifty hundred years from now a few quick things the Congo the massive rape it's like Hitler being alive today and it sees countries all over the world that are mining for minerals it's not the kind of people it's it's these businesses and at the Jimmy Carter Library they had a guy who wrote a book on it all these millions of girls being raped they have military regimens protecting the mines for minerals for cell phones and computer chips but at the end of the day they say you did a good job now go out and rape the girls how are historians going to look at us and this going on and it being ignored because you can call on your cell phone and talk to the girls who've been raped and the fathers who've been killed trying to stop it that's one perspective the other is in this country we have one percent of the population owning 40% of the country and we have valet workers here at Emory you don't have health insurance and they get sick and they can't go to the emergency room that they work in front of or Medicaid expansion that doesn't pay us here and that's like dragging somebody through the street until their cancer spreads and then they can get care and so I will try to deal with that succinctly and when what I will say is I teach several courses I and I some of my students are here and I have the best students in the world I'm just gonna put it out there is for instance we deal with this in my war crimes and genocide class we deal with this in my American human rights policy class and as it has always been a struggle but one of the things in which I find solace doesn't even get close to it is that there have always been people in organizations that say not on my watch and they mobilize and they fight and so the reason we know about conflict minerals and because people are in there getting the word out the reason we know about the 1% in the lack of health care because people are in there spreading the knowledge because part of what I saw in the n-double a-c-p x' work when they're saying because what they're really saying is how do we change the norm how do we change what is acceptable to unacceptable how do we change apartheid from being a you know an apartheid South Africa from being a valued ally of the West to being an international pariah this worked it's long slow hard work but it's working under the less and so the way that historians will write this is if we win if we win if that mobilization if those norms get changed if we're able to save those girls if we're able to ensure that we have human rights in the United States that's how historians will write this that this was the moment where the mobilization really began to take hold that's our question over here yes so Carol you said that the n-double-a-cp backed off and the end of colonialism eventually but it wasn't because they called war so what's the story and and I'm telling you it just kind of blew me away as I'm getting into the the archives the thing that threw the n-double-a-cp off was the brown decision because with brown v board of education the south rose up and said you're going to die and did everything that it that it could in order to run the n-double-a-cp out of business so here in Georgia for instance they levied a tax bill I think the six-figure range maybe close to that saying you know you're not some nonprofit little organization in fact you're you're an entity that needs to be taxed so instead so in not just these but your back taxes and then handed the n-double-a-cp the bills that pay it yeah now think about it this is an organization where 75% of its funding comes from African Americans seventy-five percent of its funding comes from a people who are facing incredible economic discrimination in the workplace and where you have very not only disparate wealth you have got disparate income and so when you said turn to this organization and say come up with this fine if you can't come up with this fine we're going to take you to court and we're going to destroy you they the Alabama was demanding the membership list of the n-double a-c-p the Attorney General what they were going to do with that list was to find out exactly who these n-double-a-cp members were distribute them put them put those names in the newspaper and so that their members could then face a credible economic extortion that you could be fired from your job your mortgage could be called in it just ways to the organization several of these states passed laws that said in double-a-c-p members could not hold public employment and and so the n-double-a-cp is fighting tooth and nail to try just for the organization to exist and to protect its members that way you know and so it has to it has to refocus and it's trying to get brown implement it so it's fighting for its very life it's trying to get Brown implemented it's like what are we going to do what they did and what I best I can tell nobody has identified yet except me that it began to work with other organizations to create an organization solely committed to the liberation of Africa and that was the American Committee on Africa I mean so you see a kind of vision there that we often don't associate with the n-double-a-cp not just domestically but even globally so so it was brown it was their greatest triumph that in fact really knocked them off stride in terms of anti-colonialism more questions yes hi my question is could you talk a little bit more about Paul Robeson in the case of Italy do someone know no matter how official the Soviet Union's plans forgiving Italy backed economies were and if Robeson ever had any was subsequently asked after the fact about it so in the 1948 election and I mean in Italy was a major battleground and aundrea is here so Italy was a major battleground the u.s. is pumping in millions and millions of dollars via the Marshall Plan and via the CIA to try to swing this election the Soviets are doing all that they can one of the things that they did is that there was what they called a for Power Commission that went into North Africa and the Horn to in fact do an assessment from the indigenous people themselves about what they wanted their future to be the Americans and the British are on this side the Soviets team up with the French because the fridge had been fighting this this issue of liberation the entire time because the French are trying to hold on to Morocco Tunisia and Algeria and as they said they were afraid that this all this independence stuff would leak out from Libya and in fact their their their areas and so the French and the Soviets are going and saying don't you want the Italians back and and and the folks are going absolutely not and the the Soviets and the French would record absolutely and the British and the Americans are going oh you missed the not and so you see the Soviets in Libya in Eritrea in Somalia teaming up with the fridge trying to and sending the word back to Italy look how we're fighting for you look how we're fighting for you but the Christian Democrats actually won the election in 1948 in Italy not the Communist Party of Italy so a few months later there's the conference a council of foreign ministers meeting where they're going to try to decide what to do with the Italian colonies and the Soviets come into the meeting and they sit there and they're like okay so I think we're all in agreement the Americans are saying I think we're all in agreement here on at least one item and that is that at least Somalia can go back to Italy obvious that yet stop right there we believe that what we really need is to have an international administration of all of the colonies a UN trusteeship over all the colonies and this is because the Italian Communist Party lost the election so now there was no need for the Soviets so you know so the Soviets swing once again three days later Paul Robeson and his group get together and they issue basically a press release saying that they believe that what needs to happen for the Italian colonies is an international administration of these colonies you know that the UN which and I'm sitting there going wow as far as I can tell no one called him on it no one called him on it what I can tell is that the n-double-a-cp called the Soviets on it Walter White who was the head of the n-double a-c-p was not a rabid anti-communist he was anti-communist but not a rabid anti-communist and he had an affinity for Paul Robeson he respected him in many ways and so he wasn't going to call him out but he wasn't about to abide by the policy either just a little follow up so when you said the so he's in the French teen up that was before the 1948 election right yes this was right before the election again as a way to try to swing the votes in Italy to the Communist Party by saying that only the Communist Party had the great power backing in order for Italy to become a colonial power again your framework really troubles this kind of east-west to global divide that I think animates so much of US and European history I think it's kind of interesting to think about the you know the West and the East kind of in cahoots in terms of perpetuating some kind of colonial dominance over those especially the natural resources of the south right and and you know and we're part of another place where you see that in cahoots where you often don't think of it in our current historiography was even at the founding conference of the UN where when it came to the human rights you know having human rights and put into the UN Charter when it comes to article 2 section 7 which is the domestic jurisdiction clause that says that the UN has absolutely no authority to do anything unless then you know it to violate the sovereignty of a nation just right what they're doing this is right after Hitler really so and what what you what we don't see is that the Americans the British and the Soviets at around the table has said we like article 2 section 7 so you see them signing off because they all have their own secure national security or a person or interest reasons for for doing that the Soviets knew that they you know they were they came out of that war the second largest power on earth and there were things had wanted and human rights we're not about to get in the way of that the British are trying to hold on to their empire at all cost and the Americans have Jim Crow and all of the other ills including a really racist immigration policy they did not want to have the UN having the authority to look at that so part of what not being tied to one camp or the other but instead letting the the evidence drive what you see that in fact to me creates a much richer much more natural and much more realistic story about how we got here any more questions yes thanks Carol very much if there's one liberation movement that had close ties the n-double-a-cp going back to Niagara Falls is the African National Congress there you do have the overthrow of apartheid and a black majority government oppression in this country and the terrorists in this country is far worse than anything I've ever seen in South Africa that's aside today though whoever the ANC if you can sort of shed some light on the origins of their relationship with the end sit with the n-double-a-cp and how they have evolved might be useful for informing the current kind of forsaking of some of the better instincts of their nature I mean Cornel West has lectured the South Africans I thought very appropriately on prophetic fire Mandela and sort of saying where are you guys going today because you now have power you have state power and and you're not living up to those traditions have you looked at all into the kind historiography of the ANC and the as they perceived the n-double-a-cp and we know how much they were impacted by dr. King and the movement in the 60s but give us a little context here and whether or not there's leverage today african-americans have leverage do you think on that situation because it's terribly important oh I love these easy questions I will start with what is an article that I'm working on right now and it's called hang your conscience on a peg the n-double-a-cp the African National Congress and the struggle against the World Bank and what I'm seeing in the late 40s early 50s is an alliance between the N double ACP and the African National Congress to take down a series of World Bank loans to the apartheid regime they had in fact worked out the the mechanisms the strategy that would eventually become the divestment movement that we see in the 80s the late 70s the 80s in the early 90s part of what they worked out was that this regime could not stand without external funds massive external funds because when you require a police state in order to suppress ninety percent of your population what that cost is so prohibitive that in fact the ten percent cannot enjoy any kind of quality of life because you've got this incredible police state so you have to have a massive infusion of funds coming in consistently to prop that up and so they said let's shut off the dollars that sounds like divestment and so they started putting pressure on the World Bank that that started sending in millions of dollars to develop South Africa to develop the railroads to create greater access to the mines to create greater electricity capacity and all of those things and there's this incredible correspondence between Walter White the head of the n-double a-c-p and Eugene black the head of the World Bank so yes and I see the irony there white and and Walter White says what are you doing these folks are Nazis you're propping up Nazis and and Eugene black says no we think our loans will help the Africans more than anybody else and so and and so you hear a Walter White almost in the marginalia going but what he does is he turns to Z K Mathews who was the head of the ANC in Cape Town and whom the n-double-a-cp had helped sponsor for a trip over here so they turned to Z K Mathews Lee I think okay this is what he said but what we know when you're taking on these kinds of regimes is you can't argue from sentiment you have to argue from fact we need the facts and Z K Matthews knowing that his male may be censored or may be looked at sent over a slew of documentation that the eight that the n-double-a-cp continued to use and and so part of the strategy again with the anti-apartheid movement was the use of media because how do you change the norms how do you begin to help people understand that this is wrong and so they began to use the media to say we have Nazis we are using the dollars designed for the development of liberal democracies to in fact prop up a racist fascist regime that bowels at the altar of Adolf Hitler that is highly problematic this is how you begin to reshape the norms and so they're using the media they're using direct action tactics we don't often think of the in double-a-c-p is picketing right you you get the ginn that's really flat narrative that all they do is work through the cool but instead they're financing picketing of the South African delegation at the UN now just fast-forward to the picketing of the South African embassy in Washington DC during the the more understood anti-apartheid movement and so they are working out the strategies use I see the crosstalk between these two groups how's this going what about this this is what we need okay we're going to come out on this way we're going to come at them that way and the World Bank doesn't budge but their records were Declassified and I went through all of the process and got them Declassified so I could figure out what the I got some of the documentation originally about the programs that were being funded but what I wanted to know was what did the World Bank see and what I'm finding is that there was a knock-down drag-out battle in the board of directors of the World Bank over whether to fund apartheid South Africa as well and so part of the N double ACP strategy I'm seeing this in this anti-colonial book is that you find you have allies in these spaces if you flatten it office Lee is a state department or if you're not I see you and it's the World Bank but what they knew is that they had allies in there if you can get to those allies with your viewpoints with your documentation then they can carry that into the council around the table and begin to shape the terms of debate and again this is a slow drip drip drip drip but it eventually worked part of what the ANC had to deal with with the end of the apartheid regime was the World Bank basically saying yes now you have to take on all of the loans from this regime so no you don't get any kind of you know fresh start and begin to think about it in a really weird sick way that's what happened to Haiti when Haiti got its freedom is that it had to take on all of the debt and France for its freedom in order to be recognized as a nation of the world so when we when we kind of write these things we have to be able to look at them within this this much larger global context and the pressures that are put on new regimes as they're trying to find their way and this again is not to abdicate responsibility that if anybody is going to look after your people it's got to be you you've got to find a way to do that thank you well I think we've gone a good long bit Thank You Carol Anderson this was a great talk and thank you audience for some wonderful wonderful questions this was really informative and your book certainly gives us a lot to think about the preceding program is copyrighted by Emory University

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Length: 63min 6sec (3786 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 02 2015