News — african america communities

 'Year of return': Hundreds of African-Americans resettle in Ghana

(shared via France 24)

Africa is a diverse continent that boasts multiple cultures and languages in its 54 countries. In this clip, Africans are tested for knowledge of their own (extremely diverse) continent to see how much they know and what they really think about each other. The responses are quite hilarious and show varying opinions of African countries by Africans. The diversity of the African continent also becomes evident. How well would you have done in such a test?

Jamaica was once the world's leading exporter of bauxite, which is the ore from which aluminum is made, but decades of mining have taken a toll on the land and the people. With reserves depleted, the government is now pushing to move mining operations into the most ecologically sensitive part of the island known as Cockpit Country. The people of Cockpit Country fought off the British in the 1700s, and now they're conjuring the warrior spirit of their ancestors to take that fight to the mining companies. The Jamaican government seems to be in support of this. What do you think?

 Jholie Moussa, a 16-year-old African American girl, went missing in 2018. For two weeks, the police insisted that she left of her own free will, a run away. No further action was taken. Her body was later found in the woods. This is one example of hundreds of cases of black kids going missing and not much being done to address the case. Additionally, the press is more likely to highlight cases of white children going missing than black kids. Even though African-Americans making up significantly less of the US population than white people, black kids are much more likely to go missing than their white counterparts. What do you think?

In 1837, Houston, Texas was incorporated and divided into four wards. The Southeast ward was named Third Ward and over time this area became an important center of African American-owned businesses and a hub for black culture.

Third Ward originally comprised the area east of Main Street and south of Congress Street. After the Civil War ended former slaves from the areas surrounding Houston began to move into Third Ward.  At the time, African Americans were forced to live on the outskirts of the ward but as whites moved to the suburbs, blacks began to purchase property in the heart of the ward. In 1872, influential African Americans led by Reverend John Henry “Jack” Yates raised $8,000 to purchase four acres of land which would become Emancipation Park, the first park for black Houstonians and home to the annual Juneteenth Celebration commemorating the liberation of African Americans from slavery in Texas.

Between 1910 and 1930 the African American population in the Third Ward exploded from 22,929 to 66,357. As a result of the rapid population growth, African American owned businesses increased along Dowling Street, which became the area’s main business corridor.

Dowling Street also became the center of Houston’s blues movement. Blues clubs were lined up and down the street and became places where artists from throughout the South and Southwest went to experiment and perfect their craft. The Eldorado Ballroom the self-styled “Home of the Happy Feet,” was the premier venue featuring artist like Ray Charles, and B.B. King, as well as local artist Illinois Jacquet, Arnett Cobb, and Jewel Brown.  African Americans came from all over East Texas to frequent the nightlife in Third Ward to have a fun night, allowing them a brief release from the everyday realities of the Jim Crow South.

The Third Ward was also home to other community landmarks such as Jack Yates High School, the second African American high school in Houston, the Covington House which served as Houston’s unofficial guest quarters for many prominent African American visitors, the Shape Community Center and Riverside Hospital, the first non-profit hospital for African Americans in Houston. Texas Southern University, founded in 1947, was the largest institution in the ward.

As African Americans left the South for better opportunities in the North in the first half of the 20th century, the Houston Chamber of Commerce, unlike most white urban leaders in the South, took out advertisements for “Heavenly Houston,” hoping to lure blacks to the city.  By the early 1950s, however, wealthy and middle-class blacks started leaving the Third Ward as they integrated formerly all-white residential areas. That outward migration continued through the 1960s and 1970s and now included business departures.  Those businesses that remained of the began to fail, leaving Third Ward a shell of its former prominence.

Today there are approximately 33,000 residents remaining in Third Ward and despite the efforts to gentrify the area, residents and community leaders have begun a concerted effort to preserve, protect and celebrate the rich history and heritage of Third Ward.

Farai Chideya is an American author, radio host, and Pop and Politics radio series producer and host. She was born in Baltimore, Maryland, to an American mother and a Zimbabwean father on July 27, 1969. Chideya explores and focuses her work on race relations, politics, and labor economics. She began to host her own podcast in September 2020, Our Body Politics, which highlights the experiences of women of color and how major political events and decisions impact their lives.

Chideya grew up in Baltimore’s Forest Park neighborhood and attended Harford Heights Elementary School’s gifted program. She later attended Western High School graduating in 1986. Four years later Chideya graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature. During her time at Harvard, she wrote movie reviews for the Harvard Daily Crimson and received an internship at Newsweek‘s Boston office after graduation. She then worked for MTV News and CNN as a political analyst during the 1996 presidential race.

In 2006, Chideya became the host of NPR’s News and Notes. Her series included investigative stories on homelessness and drugs in Los Angeles’ Skid Row, interviews of then-Illinois Senator Barack Obama, and First Lady Laura Bush during the 2008 election. She previously worked for ABC News, CNN, and Oxygen Network, and made appearances on MSNBC and Real Time with Bill Maher.

Chideya and has also received multiple awards and honors, including a National Education Reporting Award, a North Star News Prize, and an award from the National Gay and Lesbian Journalists Association for coverage of AIDS. Chideya received a Knight Foundation Fellow from Stanford University in 2001 and Foreign Press Center Fellowship in Japan in 2002.

She released three nonfiction books related to race and ethnic studies: Don’t Believe the Hype: Fighting Cultural Misinformation About African Americans (1995), Trust: Reaching the 100 Million Missing Voters; The Color of Our Future (1999) and a new version of Don’t Believe the Hype: Fighting Cultural Misinformation About African Americans (2004). Chideya also released her first novel, Kiss the Sky, in May 2009. The book follows a former black rockstar struggling to build a new career and highlights the Black Rock movement in New York.

During her career as an award-winning author, writer, professor, and lecturer, Farai has merged media, technology, politics, and race into her work. She is now a Distinguished Writer in Residence at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University. She was also a fellow at Harvard’s Institute of Politics in the spring of 2012.

The Longview Race Riot occurred on July 10-12 in this northeast Texas city where 1,790 blacks comprised 31% of the town’s 5,700 people in 1919. Racial tensions were high across the United States due to race riots that began in March 1919. Just before the Longview Riot, local teacher and newspaper correspondent Samuel L. Jones and Dr. Calvin P. Davis, prominent leaders of the black community, had begun encouraging local black farmers to avoid selling to local white cotton brokers and to instead sell directly to buyers in Galveston. Also, local blacks set up a cooperative store where they competed with and angered local white merchants. These incidents raised tensions in Longview long before the riot occurred.

In early June, a local black man, Lemuel Walters, was beaten by two white men for allegedly making romantic advances towards their sister, a white woman from Kilgore. Walters was arrested and put in the Gregg County jail, but a mob showed up at the jail on June 17, and the sheriff gave Walters to the mob, who shot and killed him. The story was printed in the Chicago Defender on July 10 and enraged local whites who blamed the article on Jones although he denied writing it.

Later that day Jones was attacked and beaten across the street from the Gregg County courthouse by the same men who beat Walters. Dr. Davis arrived in his vehicle and took Jones to his office to treat him. The two men appealed to Mayor Gabriel A. Bodenheim for protection but were instead advised to leave town. Jones hid with relatives and they gathered twenty-five friends to protect his home. Around midnight, a group of white men arrived at Jones house but were met with gunfire. Three of the white men were injured, and another who hid under a nearby house was beaten badly by the black defenders of the home.

As the word spread, a crowd of almost 1,000 whites began to gather back in town with some breaking into Welch’s Hardware Store to take guns and ammunition. The crowd burned down Jones’s home, Dr. Davis’s home and office, and a black dance hall. Although Texas governor William P. Hobby sent eight Texas Rangers to Longview, the violence continued. On the night of July 12, Marion Bush, father-in-law of Dr. Davis, was killed by a local white farmer. On Sunday, July 13, Governor Hobby declared martial law in all of Gregg County, and ordered all residents of Longview to surrender their weapons at the county courthouse. An estimated 5,000 to 7,000 weapons were turned in, and more soldiers and Rangers arrived in town to quell the riots.

Seventeen white men were arrested for attempted murder on July 14, but all were released. Nine other white men were arrested for arson and then released. None of the men were prosecuted. Twenty-one black men were arrested for assault and attempted murder and moved to an Austin, Texas jail for their safety. Eventually, all were released without trials, to avoid any further unrest in Longview. Martial law ended on July 18, and citizens were allowed to retrieve their firearms the next day. The Longview Race Riot was one of twenty-five riots that took place from May through October 1917 during what would be called the Red Summer.

Composer, guitarist, pianist, storyteller Bukka White was born Booker T. Washington White on November 12, 1906, in Houston, Chickasaw County, Mississippi, to Herman and Sarah Farr White. He got his initial start in music, learning the violin with Cajun and blues tunes, and the guitar from his father. White’s mother and legendary blues guitarist B.B. King’s grandmother were sisters.

In 1919 when White was 13, he left for Chicago, where he played on the streets with a blind guitarist. At the age of 14 he returned to Clarksdale, Mississippi, where he stayed with an uncle. During that time, he contacted Delta blues legend Charley Patton, who taught him the rudimentary music theory for improvisation on the guitar and fiddle, and introduced him to other instruments. In addition to music, White pursued careers in sport, playing in Negro League baseball and, for a time, taking up boxing. He later served in the U.S. Navy from 1942 to 1944.

In 1930 White met and impressed Ralph Limbo, a talent scout for the Victor label and traveled to Memphis for his first recordings, singing the blues and gospel material. However, Victor only released four of the 14 songs White recorded that day. In 1937, Bukka recorded “Pinebluff Arkansas'” and “Shake ‘em on down” for the Vocalion label in Chicago. During the music session in Memphis, Tennessee police knocked at the door to arrest him for allegedly shooting a man in self-defense. While awaiting the trial, he jumped bail and headed for Chicago, making two recordings before being apprehended and sent back to Mississippi to serve three years at the Mississippi State Penitentiary called Parchman Farm. While he was serving time, White’s record “Shake ’em on down” became a hit.

In 1939 White, while still at Parchman, recorded for folklorist Alan Lomax’s American Music Project which eventually was housed at the Library of Congress. White’s album recorded for Lomax and called Sky Songs, Vols. 1-3, included more than 60 minutes of Blues. “Parchman Farm Blues” was one of the songs. The improvised songs allowed White to tell stories about the dusty street corners, dirt roads, juke joints, and jails that felt like home to him.

By 1970, White was still performing on the blues festival circuit.  He often experimented with new material but his fans waited to hear him play “Parchman Farm Blues.”  In 1973 White released the album Big Daddy which was a commercial and critical success for the 67-year- old bluesman. It was also his last album.

Bukka White died of cancer on February 26, 1977, in Memphis, Tennessee. He was 70. However, he was posthumously celebrated in 1990 by being inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame. On November 21, 2011, the Recording Academy announced the addition of White’s “Fixin’ to Die Blues” to its 2012 list of Grammy Hall of Fame Award.

The US Armed Forces were segregated until President Harry Truman issued Executive Order 9981 on July 26, 1948 which desegregated all the military service branches. That segregation during World War II helped create the Riot of Bamber Bridge in Great Britain in 1943. When US forces were sent to Britain that year black soldiers were met with respect and often open arms by the local population. The village of Bamber Bridge, Lancashire, then home to U.S. Army Air Base 569 was one such place. The 1511th Quartermaster Truck Regiment, a logistics unit stationed at the base consisted primarily of black soldiers. The all white 234th US Military Police Unit was stationed on the north side of the village and the two units were known to have had several skirmishes over race relations.

The soldiers of the 1511th were welcomed in local establishments, and this did not sit well with white American soldiers who brought their racist ideals with them. When white military police officers insisted that a local pub owner segregate his establishment, the owner replied he would. However, when the MPs returned the next day, they were met with “Blacks Only” signs at three village pubs, sending a clear message to the MPs that their racism was not welcome. British barmaids told white soldiers to wait their turn when they assumed they would be served before black soldiers.

On the night of June 24, two MPs, Corporal Roy A. Windsor and PFC Ralph F. Ridgeway, entered Ye Old Hob Inn, and attempted to arrest Private Eugene Nunn of the 1511th, citing him for being improperly dressed and without a pass. The soldiers and MPs began to argue. Local townsfolk and women from the British Auxiliary Territorial Service sided with the men of the 1511th and demanded that the MPs leave the black soldiers alone. Private Lynn M. Adams of the 1511th advanced on one of the MPs with a bottle, and Corporal Windsor drew his gun. Sergeant William Byrd of the 1511th was able to defuse the situation and finally persuade the MPs to leave. While they were driving away, Private Adams threw a bottle at the jeep, and the MPs drove to their base to pick up reinforcements to return to the pub to arrest the black soldiers.

As the soldiers of the 1511th walked back to base, they were apprehended by the returning MPs. A fight broke out and MP Carson W. Bozman drew his gun and shot Private Adams in the neck. The soldiers of the 1511th returned to their base and at midnight, armed with rifles and a machine gun truck, arrived at the MP camp in retaliation. The soldiers of the 1511th raided the MPs’ gun room and armed themselves as the two sides began shooting at each other in the darkness. By four o’clock in the morning, the violence ceased. Private William Crossland of the 1511th was killed, and five other soldiers were wounded along with two MPs. There were two trials resulting in 27 out of 32 black soldiers being found guilty of various charges. Most of the sentences were reduced or dismissed, however, because of the overwhelming support of the black troops by the British public.

In June 2013, an anniversary symposium was held at the University of Central Lancashire, that included a screening of the 2009 documentary “Choc’late Soldiers from the USA” to commemorate the Bamber Bridge Riot.

The University of the West Indies (UWI) is a public regional university unique in the world of higher education.  The university is supported by and operating for the benefit of the people of 17 nations and territories in and around the Caribbean. These nations include Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Montserrat, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, and Turks and Caicos. Each of these countries is either a member of the British Commonwealth of Nations or a British Overseas Territory.

The University currently consists of three major campuses: Mona in Jamaica, St. Augustine in Trinidad and Tobago, and Cave Hill in Barbados.  There are satellite campuses in Mount Hope, Trinidad and Tobago, Montego Bay, Jamaica, and Nassau, Bahamas.  Each nation without a branch or satellite campus nonetheless has an Open Campus, that is, a small facility that symbolizes the physical presence of the University and has the same governance structure.  The Open Campus although located in 13 separate countries and territories nonetheless constitutes the fourth campus of the University of the West Indies.

The University of the West Indies was established in 1948 initially at Mona Jamaica.  The original campus was a branch of the University of London.  It achieved independent University status in 1962, ironically the year that Jamaica became an independent nation. The St. Augustine Campus in Trinidad, formerly the Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture, was started in 1960 and the Cave Hill Campus in Barbados was founded in 1963.  The Open Campus was established in 2008.

The current enrollment on all four campuses combined is approximately 56,000 students and there are about 1,000 faculty and staff. UWI offers programs for undergraduate and graduate students in the fields of Humanities & Education, Law, Medical Sciences, Pure & Applied Science and Social Sciences.

The University of the West Indies has a number of notable alumni, including Derek Walcott, the poet and Nobel Laureate; Sir Arthur Lewis, a Nobel Laureate in Economics; the historian Walter Rodney; and the current and former Prime Ministers of sixteen Caribbean nations.

Black Americans venturing overseas during the interwar period are usually presented as fleeing from Jim Crow oppression east to Europe (think Josephine Baker in Paris). Less known are their experiences in crossing the Pacific. African Americans were active in Asia in the 1920s and 1930s and indeed, the strong through-line that emerges from examining their Asia-focused endeavors is their range and ambition. Whether as a means to benefit from their talents or as an avenue to share their gifts, the extent of Black Americans’ agency and success in interwar Asia merits attention.

Depictions in film and elsewhere of Black Jazz Age artists spreading that new artistic form in post-World War I Europe abound. However, a similar dynamic was also unfolding in the Asian Pacific. Indeed, performing artists formed the largest and most visible group of African Americans in Asia during the two decades between the World Wars.

Some artists made a circuit, either around the world with stops in a few Asian cities, or around Asia itself which might include destinations such as Batavia (now Jakarta) in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), Singapore, Calcutta, India, Manila, Philippines, Kobe and Tokyo, Japan, and Shanghai and the then British colony of Hong Kong. Others took up extended residence in a particular city such as musicians Teddy Weatherford in Calcutta, or Bill Hegamin, who arrived in Shanghai in the mid-1920s and went on to make a small fortune performing and operating a studio and music school until interned by the Japanese in 1942. Some combined multiple talents operating as performers, talent scouts, managers, writers, and businessmen while other others focused on performance alone.

The go-go zeitgeist of the 1920s seemed to impel many across the Pacific with the chance to simultaneously experiment and prosper. A decade later, the difficulties of finding work in Depression-era America made the opportunities in Asia all the more attractive. From cities across America performers were recruited: Earl Whaley and his band from Seattle; Teddy Weatherford, a stellar pianist from Chicago; and from Los Angeles, Valaida Snow (whose talent on the trumpet was compared to Louis Armstrong’s, and so impressive that Queen Wilhemina of the Netherlands bestowed upon her a golden trumpet, which the Nazis confiscated in 1941). There was also Buck Clayton and his 14-piece Harlem Gentlemen from the most famous black community in the United States.

Life in Shanghai, the ‘Paris of the Orient,’ was particularly attractive. Pay was good, the cost of living low, and the glamorous, modern hotels, ballrooms and clubs with a vibrant nightlife were all a big draw. In his memoir, Buck Clayton vividly describes the delights of delicious cuisine, custom-tailored wardrobes, regular horseback riding, and the pleasure of hearing bands from all over: Russia, the Philippines, India, the United States, as well as homegrown talent from China. Clayton went on to have a long and successful career performing with some of the best-known names in American jazz, but regarding his time in Shanghai, he wrote in 1986: “I still say today that the two years I spent in China were the happiest two years of my life. My life seemed to begin in Shanghai. We were recognized for a change and treated with so much respect” (emphasis added).

American artists left a mark beyond the impact of their performance alone. Clayton influenced the emergence of Chinese popular music by collaborating with Li Jinhui, often referred to as the ‘Father of Chinese popular music.’ Li worked closely with Clayton in melding American jazz with traditional Chinese music, deriving arrangements that became ‘Chinese jazz.’ Midge Williams was another artist who influenced the emergence of a ‘vernacular’ form of jazz in Japan. During her 1934 stint at the Florida Ballroom in Tokyo, Japanese musicians and singers were enraptured by her style and technique. She provided them ‘master classes’ and made highly regarded recordings singing in Japanese and English, with arrangements by Japanese musicians. Her contributions were viewed by Japan’s emerging jazz community as substantial.

Following World War l, emancipation from imperialism became an important rallying point for the people of Asia and Africa and opportunities for discussion of imperialism and colonization emerged around the world. Even as the United States suppressed African American participation in policy and politics, people in Asia eagerly sought Black Americans’ perspectives on emancipation from white imperialist control.

The Institute of Pacific Relations’ (IPR), formed in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1925 was one of the leading organizations convening international discussions in this era. The IPR, akin to a non-governmental precursor to today’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), offered a connection point to address common concerns and defuse tensions for societies around the rim of the Pacific Ocean. The organization was governed by ‘national councils’ made up of citizens from the United States, Japan, China, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand.

In 1927, even though the Japanese specifically requested that a ‘Negro of distinction’ be included at the IPR’s second conference in Honolulu, the White American hosts determined Black Americans had nothing to contribute to policy discussions involving Asia. For the 1929 conference in Kyoto, Japan the Americans weighed honoring the host’s desire for Black participation vs. creating a precedent that recognized Black Americans did have something to contribute.

Respect for the host won out and James Weldon Johnson—best known today as co-author of ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing,’ (the Black National Anthem)—was invited as the sole Black American among the total 45 U.S. delegates. Johnson’s experience as a former diplomat and his role as Secretary of the NAACP provided him familiarity with both international and U.S. domestic policy questions. Japanese media covered him prominently, presenting him as a ‘world figure’ known for commitment to ‘the emancipation of the non-white races of the world.’ People followed him like a celebrity on the streets of Tokyo and he was accorded the honor of an invitation to a garden party hosted by Emperor Hirohito.

The 1929 conference focused on the theme “the peoples of the Pacific have become the captains of their own destinies.” Certainly, a man as schooled in the political realities facing Black Americans as Johnson was, would have compelling insights on that theme.

For many Black Americans, Japan’s success in modernization was seen as a rebuke to Western imperialism’s premise that only Whites possessed capacity for self-governance and industrial development. When the IPR’s Kyoto conference was held, Japan’s military actions had not yet raised imperialist concerns that their 1931 appropriation of Manchurian territory would. In the coming decade, Japan as an object of admiration or caution, became a prism for discussion of imperialism by African American intellectuals.

Another participant in the quest for national self-determination was Trinidad-born Percy Chen. His father, Eugene Chen, became Trinidad’s first ethnic Chinese lawyer. The senior Chen heeded Sun Yat Sen’s appeal to the Chinese diaspora to join the revolution overthrowing the imperial system in 1911. In 1912 Eugene Chen went to China, serving in various capacities, and in 1926 became Foreign Minister.

Percy, whose mother was of African and French ancestry, completed his law training in England in 1922, practiced in Trinidad, then in 1926 followed his father to China. During a period of tension with the British government representatives in Wuhan, and within the Nationalist Party itself, Percy became an aide to his father in China’s Foreign Ministry.

After the 1927 split between the more conservative and leftist wings of China’s Nationalist Party, which Eugene Chen’s side lost, Percy Chen made an epic overland escape to Russia. Eight years later in 1935, his father, retired but still influential, sent Percy on a mission to build an alliance amongst left- and right-wing Chinese to defend against Japan’s looming aggression. During the Second World War, Percy worked in Chongqing as the private secretary of Sun Fo (the son of Sun Yat Sen). In 1947, he moved to Hong Kong and successfully practiced as a barrister, maintaining his role as a connection point between the West and different Chinese political factions.

The Pentecostal movement that began at the Azusa Street Revival held at a Black-led church in Los Angeles in 1906, created the first black denomination founded in the 20th Century. Pentecostalism quickly spread around the United States and then overseas. The evangelist Edward A. Carter Sr. was an example of its international ambition. Carter, a member of the Holiness Church in Los Angeles and his Anglo-Indian wife, Mary, in 1925 moved with their three children to Calcutta to launch a mission. The Carters had great success in attracting converts, but their marriage broke down and in 1927, Carter boarded a ship with the three children, intending to return to Los Angeles. Typhoid fever forced disembarkation in Shanghai. Carter’s younger son, William, required a lengthy hospital stay, leading his elder son, Edward Jr. to ask whether God was offering a suggestion on where Carter should next work.

Carter began preaching at evangelistic meetings at the Chinese YMCA in Shanghai. His fervor attracted standing room only crowds. By 1928, he was traveling to neighboring cities and three Holiness missions had been established in Shanghai. Significantly, Carter ascribed his being Black as part of the source of his success. At a time of strong antiforeign sentiment where just a year earlier, various Westerners including a prominent White missionary, had been killed by Chinese soldiers and citizens in the Nanking Incident, Carter was welcomed to evangelize in provinces beyond the protections of Western-controlled Shanghai. Carter’s statements about this period suggest pride that his identity enabled him to serve where other Western missionaries couldn’t.

Black-led faith connections in Asia also catalyzed exchanges that would eventually shape the 1950s and 1960s Civil Rights Movement in the United States. Mahatma Gandhi’s use of nonviolence to achieve political change in India and its impact on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. ‘s nonviolent direct actions are well known. Less familiar is the tilling of the soil that an African American couple undertook twenty years earlier, when they became the first Black Americans to meet Gandhi.

Sue Bailey Thurman and Howard Thurman were arguably the leading Black intellectual couple of the interwar period. Each of them possessed impressive achievements and both were committed to social equality in the United States. In a multi-month period between 1935 and 1936, they led the first African American delegation to India. The ‘Pilgrimage of Friendship to the East,’ enlisted participation by student Christian movements in America, India, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), and Burma (now Myanmar). As was true in China for Edward Carter Sr., the Thurmans’ Black identity was seen positively by the people of South Asia. Keenly aware of Indians’ hostility toward white missionaries known for cooperating with colonial oppression, the Pilgrimage’s Indian organizer sought Black Americans in hopes of fostering constructive exchange.

Gandhi impressed the Thurmans deeply. Howard Thurman would spend the rest of his long ministry applying Gandhi’s teachings. In 1944, the Thurmans co-founded the first nondenominational interracial church in the United States, the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples in San Francisco. Howard Thurman’s most famous book, Jesus and the Disinherited was published in 1949 and used the Gospels to show how a nonviolent movement could successfully achieve civil rights in America. It was the book Martin Luther King Jr. carried with him everywhere, influencing his thinking on how to approach the situation in the United States. Today, Dr. King is recognized as one of America’s giants. The seeds leading to the fruitful harvest of his profound achievements were first pollinated by the Thurmans’ 1935-36 pilgrimage to South Asia.

As part of the post-World War I critique of Western imperialism, Japan sought to present itself as a refutation of white supremacy’s claims, while cloaking its own imperial ambitions in language of pan-Asian unity. Two of America’s preeminent writers of the interwar era, W.E.B. Du Bois and Langston Hughes, spent time in, and wrote about, Asia, with differing impacts on their reputations.

Du Bois first began writing about Japan’s rise in 1905 at the time of the Russo-Japanese War. By the early 1930’s, Japan had invaded China’s northeast province, Manchuria, and declared the formation of a separate puppet state, Manchukuo. It has also provoked a military conflict in Shanghai. Yet, Du Bois was still publicly equating Japan and China to sparring relatives engaged in a family fight. His disdain for imperialism as practiced by the West did not extend to Japan. In fact, Du Bois argued that Japan’s actions were understandable in light of what he characterized as China’s disunity and naive engagement with the West.

In 1936, Du Bois took an extended trip in Asia, marveling at the wonders of Japan-dominated Manchukuo and reveling in the welcome he was accorded in Japan. In contrast he reviled Western-dominated Shanghai which he claimed evoked a Jim Crow-esque atmosphere. His impressions of Shanghai reinforced his concerns about Western dominance and what he viewed as the placating servility of the Chinese. By contrast, experiences in Manchukuo and Japan buttressed his favorable assessments of Japan.

Three years earlier in 1933, Hughes arrived in Asia as part of a round-the-world trek. He, too, observed American-style segregation in aspects of how Shanghai operated, but drew from them very different conclusions, seeing the Chinese as sympathetic. In Japan, Hughes’s reception could not have been more different than that accorded Du Bois. The Tokyo police brought him in for interrogation: why had he gone to Moscow? Had he served as a courier bringing materials from the USSR? Why was he consorting with leftist Japanese writers and actors? The upshot was Hughes was ordered to refrain from further interactions with Japanese citizens, forced to leave the country, and forbidden to return.

Following Japan’s invasion of China in 1937 with widespread reports of civilian atrocities, Du Bois was still defending Japan. By contrast, Hughes penned a pro-China anti-colonial poem ‘Roar, China!’ Both writers influenced American discussion of Japan and China, but one’s analysis has held up better over the decades than the other. When in the early 1960s Du Bois visited China under Mao, he finally repudiated his earlier assessments.

Even when faced with considerable constraints at home, during the interwar period African Americans engaged in Asia across a range of fields. The best known among them is in the performing arts, but as these examples show, African Americans were also making contributions in international relations, faith, and writing/journalism. Additionally, in the performing arts domain, the scope of participation by Black artists in Asia was often more impactful than is commonly recognized: either by virtue of the effect these performers’ artistry had on Asian creators and consumers of popular culture, or as a jumping off point for the artists’ other interests (such as by honing new aspects of artistic talent or exploring business opportunities).