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Voices of Black Protest

Contours of Anticolonialism and Black Liberation

Africa has become the magic word and the new hope.

—John Henrik Clarke, “The New Afro-American Nationalism” (1961)

Anticolonialism, decolonialization, independence, anti-imperialism, self-governance, and self-determination were watchwords of a black new world order in the 1960s. John Henrik Clarke’s observance bespoke considerable energies devoted to the cause of African liberation given by black bodies scattered around the globe, and most especially those asserting themselves throughout cities large and small in the United States. To embrace, digest, and implement the visions embedded in these concepts would not only require analytical sophistication and political agility. These concepts also necessitated a clear plan for the reordering of massive populations of human activity, modes of resource extraction and exchange, commerce, infrastructure, decision-making authority, and long-range vision. Nearly every black activist or intellectual navigating and making sense of Cold War fractures was required to hold forth on any combination of these issues. If not simply to understand this changing world for themselves, such activists were expected to galvanize an increasingly anxious black public on the verge of long-awaited political and social possibilities. Liberator seized the black political imagination as if receiving a call from on high. It would be the space where these issues were argued about and clarified with force. Moreover, it would be “the voice of the black protest movement,” as it declared across its masthead by 1962. By the mid-1960s, even mainstream journalists such as Mike Wallace would call it “the sounding board for the angriest black writers in the black community.”1 Liberator injected itself into the confluence of several strands of transnational debate and local organizing, seeking to give voice to a range of political demands. From the standpoint of its editors, it would be the periodical that announced the death of colonialism to the world. It would be the magazine that proudly reflected Du Bois’s vision of a “rising tide of color,” shaking up the world with black and brown bodies poised to rewrite the history of world leadership. While energized to seize the moment, the activist-writers that made Liberator a go-to voice in black movement activities in the north were up against a countervision led by a U.S. government hell-bent on keeping Africa free of Soviet influence. More directly, Liberator writers and readers alike encountered the chagrin of white liberal American intellectuals and expressly anticommunist commentators, who not only questioned African Americans’ allegiance to Africa, but also bristled at the idea that some black people in the United States would prioritize African affiliation over American citizenship.

In 1959, the journalist turned lecturer from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and American Committee on Africa (ACOA) executive member, Harold R. Isaacs, speaking to an assembly of Africanists at the second annual meeting of the American Society of African Culture (AMSAC), queried: “Can we say that in acquiring a new image of Africa now, the Negro American is really engaged in acquiring nothing less than a new image of himself?”2 The new image of Africa of which Isaacs spoke was the burgeoning shift in African American consciousness toward Africa as it shed the skin of direct colonial rule. Africans on the continent and black people in the United States were paving a united road toward a new day, the thinking went. As numerous writers have pointed out, the attitude of diasporan Africans toward Africa has undergone a number of historical shifts, ebbs, and flows since the mid-1890s. Consciousness of Africa has been the source of both hope and consternation.3 These African-centered global imaginings would be given new life in the 1960s. For his part, Isaacs would be part of a swelling American anticommunist, liberal interest in African independence, and African American political identification with Africa. And as the Year of Africa continued to attract the world’s attention, AMSAC and ACOA would find an eager adversary in the Liberation Committee for Africa (LCA) and its organ, Liberator.

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Of all the African connections that piqued LCA political curiosity and catapulted it into existence, the independence of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah’s charismatic brand of pan-Africanism and his political fortunes, and the Congo Crisis, resulting in Patrice Lumumba’s assassination, loomed largest. All the Liberator’s coverage of Africa pivoted from these two pan-African pressure points. James Meriwether effectively demonstrates African Americans’ attraction to African independence as he highlights several key moments in African history that galvanized entire hemispheres of black activism in the first half of the twentieth century.4 The LCA was one of the formations that owed its existence to histories of black struggle, having grown out of earlier traditions of activism. Yet the late 1950s and early 1960s marked a new epoch in African and African American struggles.

The sixteen African nations that gained independence from colonial rule in 1960, in name if not in effect, nonetheless signaled a sea change to African Americans that was nearly as profound as it was to Africans themselves. This explosion of political independence was subsequently dubbed the Year of Africa, oddly enough by Adlai Stevenson himself according to some accounts. By 1961, the total number of nominally independent nations numbered twenty-eight. The expedience of this movement carried with it numerous complicated and contentious issues, which surfaced as a hindrance to national stability. Largely owing to Cold War alignments, newly independent nations required support from international allies to sustain their autonomy and to guarantee that basic goods and services could be distributed to their citizenry. As new nations, they were not self-sufficient enough to determine how such relationships to the outside world would generate a stable degree of economic productivity. As such, these nations were torn between the influence of the United States and that of the Soviet Union. Others, inspired by the 1955 Bandung Conference, were determining whether a course of nonalignment was tenable.

At the local level, African nation-building initiatives confronted the question of what type of political system would be incorporated, what economic system would be put in place, and how regional differences would be resolved to the success of the national unity. Important, too, would be issues concerning the changes in social and cultural customs as a result of national imperatives toward progress, which resulted in clashes between tradition and modernity.5 So described, Nkrumah’s attempts underscore the multitudinous internal and external facets of nation building in this period, which sought to build a broad sense of cohesion in order to advance the cause of continent-wide unity. He, for one, believed that Ghana’s independence mattered slightly unless it was connected to the independence of other nations, as only then could continental unity be achieved.6

The Liberator’s emergence out of the global anticolonial and domestic antidiscrimination politics that flourished in the late 1950s and 1960s meant its task was in many ways already outlined—utilize the skills and tools of activist journalism to push for African liberation.7 This necessarily included a vibrant and vocal distrust and dissatisfaction with western society, especially its governing institutions. The core staff of the periodical saw themselves as part of the critical vanguard of U.S.-based activists charged with interpreting and analyzing the impact of African liberation on domestic struggles in the United States and vice versa. The Liberator staffers, especially its editor in chief, the bombastic and disgruntled Dan Watts, sought to develop close ties with African diplomats, students, artists, and workers and use these connections as leverage for African American representation at the United Nations, among other goals. Watts was a once-promising New York City architect, who had been hired by one of the most prominent architectural firms of the day, Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. After his demand for promotion to partner failed, he found himself increasingly disenchanted with the profession and the racial glass ceiling of corporate America. Prior to leaving, however, Watts formed a group called the Committee for the Advancement of the Negro in Architecture (CANA), where he would meet Pete Beveridge, who also had an interest in architecture, an awareness that would later serve as safety net. It is interesting that another organization carried a similar acronym and is perhaps better known, the Committee for the Negro in the Arts (CNA), which broke down numerous racial and gender barriers in the hiring practices of the entertainment industry. It is uncertain if these groups had any direct relationship, yet it is likely that Watts was inspired or encouraged by the arts committee to form an organizing unit for his profession. Gathering himself after the crashed hopes of a life in architecture, Watts threw himself headlong into local and international struggles for justice.

In June 1960 the newly established LCA issued a press release that announced the basis of its formation and provided its Statement of Aims, effectively announcing its arrival on the scene. Its opening statement connected the struggles of African people to black people in the United States, plainly stating, “Freedom and equality for Americans of African descent is inextricably linked with the freedom of Africans in their home lands.”8 It went on to pinpoint four aims that reflected their belief in the inextricable bond between African and African American struggles. Its stated aims were:

To work for and support the immediate liberation of all colonial peoples

To provide a public forum for African freedom fighters

To provide concrete aid to African freedom fighters

To re-establish awareness of the common cultural heritage of Afro-Americans with their African brothers9

These broadly conceived aims did not provide a blueprint of how these goals would be accomplished, nor did they reveal a particular ideological perspective or leaning. That would have to be worked out through engagement with the issues. One example of how the LCA hoped to support African independence occurred toward the end of 1961, when the organization solicited financial contributions to send to families in war-torn Northern Rhodesia, yet it would be the flashpoints of Congo and Ghanaian independence that LCA allied itself with.10 The Congo Crisis brought the LCA out of the shadows and well into the center of debates concerning African independence. These aims reflect the LCA’s attempt to provide a vital platform where people could exchange ideas, and where the politics of African and African American liberation could be explored and brought into lived reality. Moreover, these points of emphasis express an active pan-African consciousness that highlights the significance of the African liberation and its relevance to black struggle in the United States. Moreover it envisions a diasporic project based on reciprocal political support and a common vision of tangible empowerment.

At its inception, the LCA sought support from both the black community and white activists and writers who viewed themselves as allies. Under the title, “What Africa Means to Americans,” the LCA placed a full-page ad in The Nation, where it stated that its membership “includes Americans of all races,” and expanded on its stated aims. Though it was primarily concerned with the global black community, in its early goings it explicitly welcomed solidarities that cut across racial and class lines. Over the next year, the LCA sought to “make permanent that unity of purpose and effort” displayed at the UN protest supporting slain Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba in February 1961, adding that its intention was to “give Africans a voice here in the United States.” Last, recognizing its function as a disseminator of information, it sought “to inform all Americans of Africa’s proud heritage, long obscured by racist myths.”11 Indicated in this ad were the political, cultural, and epistemological registers that would occupy this small, fluid grouping throughout its ten-year existence.

In an organized act of defiance, a week following Lumumba’s murder, Black Nationalist organizations and individuals based in Harlem, joined with several other New York–based Black Nationalist groups at a meeting of the UN Security Council on February 15, 1961. A riot broke out, according to the New York Times, when, during the speech of UN Security Council Ambassador Adlai Stevenson, guards arrested a woman who stood up to protest his speech. According to Dan Watts, as reported in the Times article, the demonstration was intended to be a peaceful one. But when Stevenson announced his support for UN secretary general Dag Hammarskjöld, the person many knew to be responsible for the protection of Lumumba, a woman stood up in protest and “guards rushed for her.”12

According to Richard Gibson, “It was [Robert F.] Williams who inspired that much publicized and highly effective demonstration in the United Nations Assembly after the American-inspired murder of Patrice Lumumba.” Mae Mallory, a New York City activist and close associate of Williams, influenced the protest from the beginning. Gibson’s neighbors, Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln, also participated. Williams was away on a speaking engagement and Gibson had to report at CBS News, and thereby missed the demonstration.13 Perhaps, in this instance, playing coy, Watts indicated to the press that the demonstration was not intended to be more than a display of civil disobedience. However, On Guard for Freedom leader Calvin Hicks offered his take on the disruption that offered different details. As he recalled, the demonstration was intended to be disruptive. During Stevenson’s speech, a visiting Cuban student in solidarity with the Lumumba protesters stood up and threw an object in Stevenson’s direction. As guards hurried toward the student, chaos broke out in the chamber. In Hicks’s words, “We tore the place up.”14 As expected, early press accounts reported Washington officials’ effort to discredit the action, calling it “Communist inspired.”15

Adlai Stevenson was one of several high-ranking architects of U.S. relations with newly independent Africa. Stevenson, a typical Cold War liberal, surely expected there to be a vocal and energized opposition to his appointment as U.S. representative to the United Nations in January 1961. But as a friend of civil rights for African Americans, he may not have expected it to come from a collective of black radicals who had made their way into UN chambers to hear him speak on the crisis in the Congo. A May 1960 article he penned for Harper’s Magazine spoke directly to where he believed Africa was heading in the language customary of lively Cold War concerns. He began by bemoaning the “perpetual tribal turbulence of the pre-colonial past,” underscoring what he believed to be the West’s achievement—peace. But this could only be maintained with more western influence, not less. Ultimately, it was America’s, not Africa’s, interests that mattered most: “If non-involvement or neutrality is to be the aim of the New Africa—coupled with a determination to keep itself free from any external domination, whether from the dying colonialism of Europe or the rising imperialism of Russia and China—the aim is certainly compatible with America’s hopes and interests.” Stevenson proceeded to lay out a plan that, for all the ink spent, amounted to a warning more than a plan.16 Stevenson had long expressed interest in postcolonial Africa, ever since his years as governor of Illinois from 1948 to 1952. In the 1950s, his opinions and ideas about independent Africa had become more strident,17 and by the mid-1950s he was holding forth and traveling regularly to Africa. This Harper’s article had summarized viewpoints that had long been aired in the public. The liberal Democrat, who campaigned for president in 1952 and again in 1956, was known to some as a “champion” of civil rights gradualism.18 As it turned out, the same liberal concerns expressed toward black demands in the United States would mirror his attitudes toward independent Africa. Regardless, his interests and outspokenness cohered into enough credibility to earn his appointment as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 1961 to 1965.

On January 21, 1961, the LCA issued an immediate press release, a copy of a telegram sent to the attention of Mrs. Patrice Lumumba in Leopoldville. Signed by Dan Watts, the letter stated, “Your husband, Premier Patrice Lumumba, remains the legitimate head of the Congo, and the symbol of liberation for all Africans at home and abroad. The arrest and public abuse of Premier Patrice Lumumba has aroused the sympathy of many Americans, black and white.” Watts then called for all interested to petition the United Nations and demand the immediate release of Lumumba.19 Although the news was not released to the world press, Lumumba had been killed four days prior to Watts’s press release, on January 17, 1961. The deaths of Lumumba and his associates, Maurice Mpolo and Joseph Okito, were not announced until February 13, 1961.20 When the news was finally made public, the LCA fired off another press release. This time it denounced the U.S. government, UN secretary general Dag Hammarskjöld, and Hammarskjöld’s assistant Ralph Bunche as the individuals responsible for Lumumba’s capture and murder.21

Upon receiving news of Lumumba’s assassination, On Guard for Freedom, Harlem Writer’s Guild members, and other Black Nationalist and left-oriented groups felt it was their responsibility to demonstrate their anger and discontent in front of the world leaders assembling at the United Nations. These activists demanded accountability for the untimely and unnecessary death of Lumumba and his close associates. On Guard for Freedom leader Calvin Hicks could not recall exactly the specifics of the plans for follow-up after the protest, but the consensus among all the groups involved was an indictment of the United States for its complicity in Lumumba’s unwarranted death.22 Writing in the New York Times, Lorraine Hansberry defended the protest action in a letter to the editor following an earlier one from James Baldwin, saying she too wished she had been there. Eschewing prevailing and accepted notions that Lumumba was assassinated because of “pro-Soviet” influences, Hansberry defended his outspokenness and principled commitment to independence, which had attracted western animosity. Independence, according to U.S. officialdom, “remains an intolerable aspect in colonials in the eyes of imperialists,” Hansberry argued. Finally, the acclaimed playwright thought it absurd that UN representative Ralph Bunche saw fit to apologize for the disturbance of his more militant black brothers and sisters. Hansberry scoffed and thought the apologies were misdirected: “I hasten to publicly apologize to Mme. Pauline Lumumba and the Congolese people for our Dr. Bunche.”23

Dan Watts seized the moment and made sure journalists covering the protest would hear from him if they heard from anyone. Then and there he proudly announced the formation of the Liberation Committee for Africa, which had been officially formed the previous June. From that moment forward the LCA was one among many that saw its charge as exposing the role of the U.S. government in disrupting the political and economic freedom anticipated throughout newly independent Africa, which for them mirrored the limitations on citizenship in the United States. The pages of the Liberator would thereafter be dedicated to documenting and disseminating information about the struggles for black liberation in the United States and around the world. Inspired to build on the energy captured at the protest, the LCA, which came to focus on publishing Liberator as its main objective, would utilize the passion and talents of a politicized group of cultural workers. Many would become stalwarts in the Black Arts and Black Power movements or produced work that proved deeply influential to this movement.

In March 1961, under a masthead that read “Liberation” (as this first issue was called) in bold lettering, Liberator ran a five-page analysis of the Congo Crisis and U.S. complicity in the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, written by Beveridge. This incident, calculated by western forces in concert with local anti-Lumumba factions in the Congo, thousands of miles away, catapulted Liberator magazine into a national debate on African liberation. The LCA, during its short existence as an organization before yielding to its central and more influential role publishing Liberator, would dedicate itself to domestic lobbying efforts on behalf of African independence. At its start, the newly named Liberator was still little more than a five-page newsletter of LCA activities, interests, and opinions, mixed with a few notable community events and briefings on African political leaders. And though Lumumba and the Congo Crisis loomed large in the formation of the LCA, Congo was but one flashpoint in a larger project of transnational advocacy for African liberation. The coverage of independence in Africa is telling of the magazine’s scope, which was central to its organizing and political outlook. It saw the domestic struggle for justice in the context of global liberation efforts. When the LCA was formed, it had in its purview the winds of national liberation sweeping across Africa. Almost as soon as it formed, it took serious the responsibility of conducting advocacy, coordinating panels, offering lectures, and taking out ads in mainstream newspapers to dramatize its positions from protesting Lumumba’s assassination to standing against nuclear testing.24

Daniel Henry Watts, 1969. Steve Larson / Denver Post / Getty Images.

Their earliest organizational documents show that Dan Watts, Richard Gibson, and Pete Beveridge founded the LCA, though the bulk of the work was primarily Watts and Beveridge’s responsibility. Gibson would play a distant role throughout the life of the organization, submitting articles sparingly but not responsible for the day-to-day business of the group. Gibson, a former Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC) organizer who worked for CBS News and was later a correspondent and English-language editor for the radical Algeria-based journal Revolution Africaine, was also a longtime friend of Watts since the days when they shared the same New York City apartment building, in the late 1950s and 1960s.25 At one point he sought to secure a press pass for his friend Watts, but to no avail. Later on Gibson would establish an international news service under the banner “Richard Gibson Reports,” which was designed to supplement wire reports about Africa and distributed to editors of periodicals around the globe. Most of his later reports published in Liberator appeared through this dispatch.26

Gibson had been involved in a number of debates throughout the late 1950s as one of several notable black expatriates in Europe, including Richard Wright, William Gardener Smith, and James Baldwin. Gibson had returned to the United States in 1958. Though bred in the United States, he had traveled widely, which proved impactful on his political evolution. The writing, arguments in print and in person, and most of all, travel pushed him to reconsider the promises of white American liberalism. Gibson was foremost a writer who, like most of his generation, used writing to critically explore the dynamics of race and published a novel in the United Kingdom. Gibson also had his share of feuds, notably one with Harold Cruse, who seemed to never enter a fight he didn’t like. In 1959, Gibson was among a coterie of panelists at the “Negro Writers and His Roots” conference held in New York City. The question of roots, source material, and indigenous African American culture lay at the center of the conference theme. To a lesser degree, concerns over the political orientation and ideology of the black writer would also figure prominently. Here, Gibson was among many participants with a growing dissatisfaction toward American notions of assimilation as a salve to the problem of racial and spatial discrimination. As a writer and journalist with a questioning, if not cynical, view toward the possibilities facing black people in the United States and the prospects of future racial reconciliation, Gibson would spend subsequent years organizing in the leadership of the New York chapter of the FPCC, and traveling extensively throughout Africa. As a self-styled documentarian of the uneasiness of African nationalism, he nonetheless devoted much of his time attempting to make sense of the meaning of this new political era for black and white radicals in Africa, Europe, and the United States.27 Notably as well, Gibson was chiefly responsible for one of the most influential events that fanned the embers of black radicalism, recruiting a who’s who of black radical activists and writers to visit Cuba in 1960. Subsequently, Gibson would work on behalf of the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) in Algeria while continuing to write.28

According to Gibson, in addition to being prompted by his departure from the architecture firm, Watts was also inspired to engage in the international black freedom movement by Gibson’s work with the United Nations and his role in FPCC.29 Around the time Gibson was working for CBS News, he also acquired a position with the FLN Observer Mission to the United Nations while living in New York, though the details of his role there are not clear. He worked at CBS News until the FPCC was engulfed with controversy concerning its origins and membership.30 According to him, this controversy may have been the reason he was given a fellowship to Columbia University, a credential he used to gain access to the United Nations.31 Dan Watts’ friendship with Gibson provided him with a model for a life of self-styled activism, journalism, debate, and travel that Watts came to desire. Unfulfilled by, and ultimately rejecting, the professional world of architecture, Watts’s career may not have taken the course he initially sought, but it would be the one, for better or worse, for which his name would be known. Watts and Gibson would mutually benefit from each other’s work throughout the 1960s. Watts’s magazine would publish Gibson’s reports, and those reports served to keep Liberator relevant as a site documenting the struggles of African nationalism throughout the decade.

Early on, the workload of the incipient LCA would have to be divided evenly, though, naturally, the members of such a small collective would each have to do a great deal of work. LCA organization letterhead indicate Watts as chairman, Gibson as executive secretary, and Beveridge as research director and editor. In December 1961, they announced the members of the LCA executive committee, which listed Watts as chairman, Beveridge as secretary, and Evelyn Battle as social director.32 The community of African and African American activists throughout New York brought together Evelyn Battle and Ernest Kalibala. Battle, who was then a senior at Fordham University, would go on to play a key role in Liberator’s day-to-day operations. Kalibala, originally of Uganda, was then pursuing the Ph.D. in Business Administration at New York University as fellow of U.S. Steel. The couple married in 1962.33

Though Watts, Beveridge, and John Henrik Clarke were listed as the initial editorial board of the Liberator, Watts and Beveridge were primarily responsible for the collection of articles, meeting deadlines, copyediting, printing, and distribution, while Clarke devoted much of his editorial energies to Freedomways.34 Though the Liberator would eventually publish the writings of Julian Mayfield, Carlos Russell, Askia Touré (Rolland Snellings), Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones), Abbey Lincoln, Richard B. Moore, Sonia Sanchez, James Baldwin, Larry Neal, Toni Cade, and others, it initially relied solely on a tiny cadre of three individuals: Watts, Beveridge, and Gibson, or on the occasional letter or article from veteran activists such as Clarke and Richard B. Moore.35

Beveridge served as production editor of Liberator from 1961 to 1965, when he departed the organization due to the heightened sense of racial autonomy and the growing intolerance toward whites supporting the black liberation movement.36 Beveridge worked with a number of organizations throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Notably, he served as education director for the Brooklyn chapter of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, participated in several events sponsored by AMSAC before their CIA ties were discovered, helped to organize an ad hoc group called Action for South Africa, and was a member of the Brooklyn Reform Democratic Club, which helped elect Shirley Chisholm to local office. From 1959 until 1963 he was also a member of the Communist Party.37 His work with the LCA, however, would occupy most of his time through 1965. And once he was nudged away from Liberator, he “retooled” himself and trained as an interior designer, later turning that training into a profession.

An equally important figure was Pete’s wife, Hortense “Tee” Sie Beveridge. Tee was as devoted as Pete to the cause of African liberation and the politics of black liberation in the United States. As an African American, however, the politics of race and liberation struck her in dramatically different ways. The only account of Tee’s activist life is a brief biographical sketch written by Pete at the time of her death in 1993. They had been married for forty years. Hortense Sie was born to African American and Liberian parents. Her mother, Rachel Hall Sie, was a domestic worker from Baltimore who relocated to New York as part of the flow of African Americans moving to the urban north in the 1920s. Her father, Thorgues Tor Sie Sr., was a Kru-speaking Liberian student from Grand Cess, on the southwest coast of Liberia. Tee was born in 1923, shortly after her parents’ union. Though Tee did not grow up with her father, when he was home their dwelling was a regular meeting place for a community of Liberian seamen docked in New York. Tee succeeded in school and earned entrance to Hunter College, where she majored in social work. In college she was introduced to the Communist Party. She believed this to be one of the only organizations that spoke to the triple oppression of black, working-class women. Joining the party as a student, she would take up an active role in the Labor Youth League. She subsequently left school after her sophomore year and immersed herself in radical politics. It would be well over two decades before she would return to complete her college degree.38 Following her departure from school, she spent two months traveling throughout Central and Eastern Europe, attending an International Youth Conference while there. As would be expected in this period, such activity quickly drew the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). It summarily opened a file on Tee dating back to January 1953 and up through September 1962.39

A Harlem resident just returning from Europe, Tee extended her activism in the Harlem-based CNA, while taking night classes in film at NYU. CNA helped her gain an apprenticeship as a film editor. It is likely that the experience in Europe—with the emergence of documentary realism as an effective medium to convey political and grassroots struggle—inspired her interest in film. In any case, Tee subsequently decided to make a career in film editing, a challenging prospect considering this area of filmmaking was typically the exclusive reserve of white males and involved a rather secure father-son apprenticeship-turned-inheritance. Tee would become one of the first women and the first black woman allowed membership in the Editors’ Local of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), which protected the path she had set upon.

By the 1950s Tee’s activism brought her to the Council on African Affairs (CAA). The CAA frequently recruited a range of activists, students, and professionals. One of these recruits was a graduate student in African History at Columbia University, Pete Beveridge. Tee and Pete would meet while doing work for CAA. Pete’s scholarly skillset assisted the composition of several articles in CAA’s Freedom newsletter, whereas Tee was more of a strategic organizer. They could not have known at the time that they would spend the next phase of their life together. Yet, as activists who spent time organizing around New York and traveling to Washington, DC, to protest the arrest and death sentence of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, their commitment to freedom and their affection for one another grew. As Pete recalled, the Mayflower Pancake House was one of the only integrated restaurants in the DC area then. Pancakes would be the main-course meal for many of their dates. Pete was drafted into the army just as the Korean War was coming to a close. Despite opposition from family, some friends, and no less an authority than the U.S. Army, Tee and Pete decided to formalize their union, and they were married at St. Philip’s Church in Harlem.40 Shortly thereafter, Pete received a less than honorable discharge from the army for refusing to sign a loyalty oath, a decision that would be reversed years later, due in part to Tee’s organizing of the Servicemen’s Defense Committee, a group that performed essential legal and political work to exonerate soldiers discharged for refusing the oath. From that moment, however, both he and Tee would come under the watchful eye of the FBI.

Lowell “Pete” Beveridge and Hortense “Tee” Beveridge, Fort Dix, New Jersey, 1953. Courtesy of Pete Beveridge.

It would be Tee’s work hosting African students and activists visiting the United States in the era of decolonization that would demonstrate her commitment to supporting African liberation. Tee sponsored numerous African students studying in the United States. One of these visitors, Christie Doe of Liberia, was actually her cousin. Others included Eddy Gyando of Ghana, Oliver Tambo of the African National Congress in South Africa, Vusumzi Make of the Pan-African Congress (South Africa), Jareretundu Kozenguizi of the South West National Union (SWANU, Namibia), Markus Kooper, the religious leader from Namibia and one of the main petitioners on behalf of his country at the United Nations, and Mbrumba and Jane Kerina. Mbrumba is credited with renaming Namibia from its geocolonial placard, South West Africa.41 Mbrumba Kerina had established a lobbying group called Action for South Africa, which drew support from the CAA and attracted the interest of the ACOA.42

While providing respite to would-be or aspirant leaders of African independence struggles, Tee Beveridge also played a leading role in the Brooklyn chapter of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH), heading up campaigns to expand the teaching of African American history in all sectors of the education system throughout New York.43 Pete recalled inheriting a wide circle of comrades upon meeting Tee, including Ernest Chrichlow, Elayne V. Jones, Sidney Poitier, Ruth Jett, Roy De Carava, Rosa Guy, Alice Childress, Leo Hurwitz, Jacob Lawrence, and Ray Lev, among others.44 Though there are no known mentions of Hortense Beveridge in the historical literature, it is evident that she played a deeply committed role as a long-distance runner45 and principled participant in several overlapping projects. Her erasure may be attributed to the fact that she did not leave behind any writings or speeches, yet her contribution should not go unnoticed. In addition to these activities, Tee made a fairly successful living as a film editor. She is credited with several documentary shorts, documentaries, and features, the most well-known being the Blaxploitation-era flick Honeybaby, Honeybaby (1974), which starred Diana Sands and Calvin Lockhart, and the documentary Fundi (1981), which was centered on the life of pioneering activist Ella Baker.46 Tee Beveridge, though far lesser known, stands alongside Abbey Lincoln, Rosa Guy, Maya Angelou, Lorraine Hansberry, Liberator staffer Evelyn Battle-Kalibala, and numerous others who devoted their lives to the work and activism of African independence and black liberation. These and many other lesser-known women would continue this work long after, well into the next decade.

Besides AMSAC, which early on counted numerous left-leaning artists and writers among its rank, the LCA would have to compete with yet another group with an equally broad reach. The ACOA was founded in 1953 by pacifist clergymen George Shepard and George Houser, with the goal of supporting African liberation struggles through a mixture of missionary activity and largely pro-western political engagement. ACOA’s contacts were broad owing to its roots in the church, and it subsequently drew the attention of virtually every stripe of African student and potential leader, including African American pacifists Bayard Rustin, Bill Sutherland, William H. Booth, Wendell Foster, columnist Chuck Stone, and civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr.47 Two of ACOA’s most prominent members, Peter and Cora Weiss, traveled extensively throughout Africa, racking up a Rolodex of numerous African students, activists, and would-be leaders, including Pascoal Mocumbi of the Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO), FRELIMO leader Eduardo Mondlane, and Amilcar Cabral.48 ACOA’s friendly relationships were efforts to court left-leaning and potentially socialist leaders in Africa in the hopes of steering them toward western influence.49 By any measurement, LCA and ACOA were headed in two radically different directions. ACOA was funded and privileged with certain connections not available to LCA. As a liberal, civil-society, white-led outfit that held fast to its anticommunist and religious origins, ACOA was able to make significant end roads with U.S. policymakers. Often serving as an intermediary between U.S. officials, UN representatives, and African petitioners, it arranged speakers’ bureaus and events, such as “Africa Freedom Day,” that featured Tom Mboya, Kenneth Kaunda, Oliver Tambo, Mbrumba Kerina, and others, including, on at least one occasion, James Baldwin. None other than President John F. Kennedy was encouraged by their work: “Your meeting today is symbolic of America’s dedication to … freedom everywhere, and reflects again the welcome which Americans have throughout their history accorded to champions of human liberty.”50 ACOA summed up its activities by reminding potential supporters and board members alike of its intentions: “It is the fervent hope of the ACOA that our Government may more and more reflect, in her actions towards Africa, our own heritage of liberation from colonial rule.”51 In their estimation, independent Africa had more in common with the United States than with African Americans within the United States, who viewed these struggles as interdependent. During the Kennedy Airlift, however, other formations, such as the African American Students Foundation (AASF), set up meetings between the eighty-one Kenyan students who had made the first trek to the United States and such notable African American figures as Jackie Robinson, Lorraine Hansberry, and Malcolm X in September 1960.52 Clearly, LCA viewed itself as the ideological rival to both AMSAC and ACOA. As an ideological heir of the CAA it is evident that LCA sought to form a grassroots counterweight to the explicit anticommunism of the more recognized groups. Although it had been forced to disband by 1955 under McCarthyism, the CAA had a profound influence on the African liberation support and political activism of a host of individuals and groupings in the post–World War II era. As historian Penny Von Eschen has explained, the group, led by Paul Robeson, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Alpheaus Hunton, was becoming a formidable presence in shaping anticolonial ties between African Americans and Africans. Its critique of American empire during the 1940s attracted relentless government scorn, and as a result the group suffered irreparable repression during the Cold War.53 Throughout its organizing life, LCA come face-to-face with the question of how to win over African students and UN petitioners while lacking the institutional supports many of them needed. While its principles naturally shaped its political work, it was poised to fight on at least two main fronts: on behalf of African independence and against the power brokers of racial capitalism in the United States. While rarely bemoaning these complexities, LCA’s work reveals the challenges of actually providing essential support to the African liberation struggle, supporting the proud call of decolonization, and staying firmly anti-imperialist, all while drawing support from black communities in the United States.

Though the LCA’s ties to African diplomats were never as secure as was hoped, Watts galvanized what effort he could muster to let the nation know that African independence demanded Afro-diasporic attention. Moreover, he urged that black people should play a critical role in their own sociopolitical destinies as well as that of Africa. Such an approach was designed to create space to participate in globally recognized institutions, to pressure the U.S. government against colluding with western nations in the recolonization of Africa, and to rectify what left-wing, anticolonial activists considered colonial relationships on the home front. Collectives such as Liberator punctuate the understanding of this era’s local organizing as a period of heightened anxieties and consciousness, as well as political and creative activity. Anticolonial projects were as much about shifting the balance of power in the United States as about promoting and building global solidarity against imperialism.

Like most outfits of its day, Liberator’s origins intimately connect to the three individuals who inaugurated the pamphlet-cum-magazine. Later, growing in size and reliability, the LCA established a subsidiary unit called the African American Research Institute, which continued to publish Liberator, though the group still used LCA as its distribution arm. The galvanizing impact of African independence and attendant anticolonial struggle on black activists, artists and intellectuals in the United States was crucial to Liberator’s beginnings. As an organization determined to build grassroots solidarity with African independence movements, it provides the clearest evidence of how they perceived their proximity, even if largely political and regionally remote, to the struggles unfolding on the African continent and their meaning for justice seekers on the U.S. side of the Atlantic.

The early days of the organization and magazine’s career reveal its attempt to balance coverage of Africa with coverage of domestic struggles for justice coupled with local acts of self-determination. These impulses reveal much about the range of activist strategies available in the period and demonstrate the ambitious efforts of this small but influential group of committed individuals. These voices—at times harmonious and at others discordant—facilitate greater attention to the scope and dynamism of black activists and their political relationship to Africa in this period. Though Watts seemed to cut his teeth in attempting to organize black architects, the Lumumba protest at the United Nations was his and LCA’s coming-out party.

Between AMSAC, ACOA, the United Nations, and U.S. officialdom, grassroots-level agitators such as the LCA were almost certain to be left out of any policy conversation concerning Africa’s future direction. Yet it was clear that not only was the United Nations the right stage, but Stevenson, as spokesperson, was perhaps the right target of protest. To the LCA and their comrades, protesting that the United Nations represented a necessary strategy rather than a philosophical commitment or belief in the UN process. Dominated as it was by western interests, LCA associates knew far better than to hitch their hopes and dreams fully to this platform. Instead, LCA and its associates throughout New York and indeed the nation were demonstrating a contemporary form of black universalism that imagined human possibility unhinged from the constraints of western imperialism and the hurried political desires of U.S. patriotism.54

Thus, the political climate around the protest that erupted in the wake of Lumumba’s assassination spurred black radicals throughout New York City into greater action, even if it meant they would be under the watchful eye of the government, though this would not be a new circumstance for many of them. Although it seemed to have emerged out of purely political concerns, the action also revealed personal ties. Many members of On Guard for Freedom were also members of the Harlem Writers Guild (HWG). Its leader, John O. Killens had traveled extensively throughout Africa.55 Some HWG members, such as novelist Rosa Guy, spoke and read in French. For Guy, her work as a writer and activist would allow her to meet and befriend many of the French-speaking Congolese and West African students and government representatives visiting or studying in the United States. These organizations had already been paying close attention to the crisis brewing in the Congo and were closely following events in Africa generally. And many had already spoken publicly or written statements of solidarity or support for Lumumba. Moreover, interest and personal alignment with the destiny of Africa was hardly a new concept in black communities.56

The LCA embraced a straightforward pan-Africanist perspective through an internationalism centered on African independence. African independence movements drove the activity of the committee and occupied a significant portion of the Liberator’s contents, especially in the early years of the publication. As events unfolded in Africa, Liberator frequently offered analyses rarely seen in print. As a periodical, it went where the action was, took bold positions, and made efforts to stay close to issues local people cared about. Far from the think-tank, policy-oriented style of many government-funded organizations or nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), the LCA would be a gathering space of black radical discontent with western influence in Africa. It shared with many a form of pan-Africanism that appreciated some sense of the political and cultural unity of African descendants, while also fully embracing local exigencies of considerable difference. Africa’s problems were its own but were inextricably tied to African descendants around the globe.57 It was a uniquely shared condition of multiple forms of oppression, rooted in history and reflected in contemporary racial and class antagonisms that would offer the committee its most enduring links throughout the black world. Though not all black internationalist perspectives are based on a belief in African and African American political or cultural unity, the LCA was one organization that articulated this unified vision even as it did not adhere to or offer a strict definition. The committee unwaveringly (and often times romantically) supported African independence, and maintained the view that African independence weighed heavily upon the fight for equality and political power in the United States. Moreover, it reflected the view that African and African Americans should have a place at the table of world leadership.

The LCA emerged from one of the translocal hotbeds of Africa-centric activities. John Henrik Clarke’s considering Africa both a “magic word” and “new hope” was no understatement. A number of New York–based nationalist groups interested in the liberation of African people and descendants formed organizations in this period. Even educational organizations such as the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (formed by Carter G. Woodson in 1915) formed part of this milieu, and several key LCA members participated in local chapters of that professional organization. Moreover, Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach (who composed the African liberation themed “WE INSIST! Freedom Now Suite” in 1960) lived in the same apartment building as Dan Watts, his wife Marilyn Lieberman Watts, and Richard Gibson, and were equally concerned about African liberation and the black freedom struggle in the United States.58 While U.S. officials were recruiting black artists and writers to travel abroad in hopes of demonstrating democracy’s success, not all artists were interested if this meant denial of the hard truths of racism and marginalization widespread throughout the United States. Lincoln’s Cultural Association for Women of African Heritage (CAWAH) would be one of the few organizations that embraced radicalism led explicitly by black women.

Groups such as On Guard for Freedom, led by Calvin Hicks and Sarah Wright;59 the United African Nationalist Movement, led by James Lawson; as well as the Universal African Legion, Inc., and the African Nationalist Pioneer Movement, led by Carlos Cooks; among a number of other groups, all viewed the liberation of Africa as part of the struggle for black liberation in the United States.60 Some of these formations viewed themselves as late expressions of Garveyism and proclaimed black people worldwide as African people, but each, in their own way, helped the New York grassroots radical landscape that challenged U.S. orthodoxy, and informed wide swaths of communities on African affairs. As such, New York City was a cornerstone of Black Nationalist political and literary activity in the 1960s.61 Liberator’s presence on the scene brings into closer focus New York City as a fertile urban landscape for black radical activity. Many of the individuals associated with the periodical had participated in numerous local political struggles throughout the city and were members of political and cultural groupings prior to, during, and long after their work with Liberator. Far from appearing out of the clear blue, Liberator staffers came to the periodical already deeply invested in the political fate and economic fortunes of black communities around the globe. Such connections reveal Liberator as beneficiary and benefactor of black radical thought in this period.

Proclaiming itself “The Voice of the Black Protest Movement” atop its full-length inaugural series, Liberator eagerly published articles that demanded the right to self-government, emphasized self-determination, and advocated the struggle for political, economic, and cultural autonomy, hallmark aspects of black radical thought in the twentieth century.62 Equally central to its outlook was its criticism of racial capitalism’s function in the perpetuation of African and African American exploitation. In fact, the Liberation Committee, like many other internationalist-oriented organizations, saw capitalism as the nemesis of all freedom-seeking peoples engaged in the overthrow of colonialism and imperialism. It therefore wrestled with a socialist solution, although owing to its ties to the old black Left, it sought to avoid sectarianism and the dogmatism found in adhering to prescribed party lines. This meant, among other things, that it explicitly demonstrated support for newly independent African, Latin American, and Caribbean countries that were at least open to strategic solidarity against the West.

Liberator relied on a range of personal contacts. Watts obtained a printing deal through family ties. His wife at the time, Marilyn, was the niece of a Brooklyn printer named Maurice Golden. Watts arranged to have the magazine printed through Golden’s shop at a lower price than he would normally charge, and Watts and his associates were responsible for the distribution. According to Marilyn, distribution was a problem Watts regularly lamented.63 About a year later, Rose and James Finkenstaedt joined the Liberator collective. Along with Beveridge, these were the only other white associates that gained LCA’s trust and held consistent working relationships with the organization.

Rose’s involvement emerged alongside her evolving political consciousness and willingness to play a supporting but active role in black liberation efforts while a Ph.D. student at Columbia University. In the early years of the magazine, Rose would contribute a number of penetrating, insightful articles. James Finkenstaedt, who was vice president of William Morrow publishers, got involved through his wife’s urging. James (also known as “Fink”) and Charlie Russell, another staff writer and brother of basketball star Bill Russell, took over the responsibilities of magazine distribution to local bookstores, newspaper stands and vendors. According to Rose, newsstands in Queens, Brooklyn, Greenwich Village and the Lower East Side often carried the magazine. Though his ball-playing days were long eclipsed by the stardom of his brother (National Basketball Association legend Bill Russell), Charlie put his 6′7″ imposing frame to good use in occasionally “convincing” reluctant vendors to sell the magazine. Regarding national distribution, Rose recalled Watts saying that the Liberator was being read in San Francisco and Detroit, owing to the militant translocalism of both cities, but “otherwise it was a New York operation.”64 Nonetheless, the letters to the editor reveal that the magazine was attracting the attention of readers as far away as Detroit, Michigan; Silver Springs, Maryland; Lake Charles, Louisiana; Memphis, Tennessee: Berkeley and Downey, California; Laramie, Wyoming; Seattle, Washington: and all over the five boroughs of New York City.

As the magazine was not a moneymaking, advertisement-driven venture, Watts and Beveridge often used their personal finances to cover the costs of publishing, which put strains on their families. For a short while this seemed feasible; politics was the driving force anyway. According to Beveridge, these costs were generally more than they were able to recoup through memberships, subscriptions, and other forms of revenue such as book sales through its book service, which carried signature titles in history, literature, and politics.65 Though they were able to attract a number of established and up-and-coming writers, Watts was rarely in a position to compensate them for articles. Though there are no indications of exactly how many members the LCA had, a summary of finances published in June 1961 indicated that membership dues, literature sales, magazine subscriptions, and contributions donated to cover costs for ads in the New York Times brought in a modest $4,395. Their overall expenses at the time totaled $3,218.66 Though a good public gesture, this was the last time the LCA published a financial summary of this type. And although many writers and artists published in Liberator, very few were actually members of the LCA, and those that were continued to work in multiple capacities.

Richard Gibson’s activities in this period ranged from serving as acting executive secretary of FPCC, to participation in the Monroe Defense Committee (MDC), “a broad, non-partisan defense committee” established to support Robert F. Williams. As Calvin Hicks, the committee’s executive secretary, stated in a letter soliciting support for the MDC, “The committee was organized and is sponsored by many individuals who may not agree with each other on the way in which full equality for Afro-Americans is to be achieved. However, they do agree that the oppression, brutality and travesty of justice in Monroe, N.C. which forced Robert F. Williams to flee for his life must be rectified.”67 The MDC sponsor list, as identified in Hicks’s letter, contained the names of a number of important political and cultural figures—many of whom published in the Liberator or were close associates of the LCA—including James Baldwin, John Henrik Clarke, Richard Gibson, Jesse Grey, Leroi Jones, Paule Marshall, Julian and Ana Mayfield, Bayard Rustin, Dan Watts, Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln, Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, and Maya Angelou, a grouping that in this instance transcended ideological differences to include some civil rights militants as well as committed radicals.68

Though many of these connections were political in nature, some were personal. Angelou was at this time married to Vusumzi Make (pronounced ma-key) of the Pan-African Congress of South Africa. According to Gibson, Make, who was “the darling of black militants” in New York City, was also a key influence on the formation of the LCA. “Like Williams,” Gibson contends, “[Make] was convinced that an armed struggle would be necessary to end white rule in South Africa.” Make’s role in supporting the liberation struggle in the United States for black rights was thus an extension of the struggle against South African apartheid.69 Though Make did not have an extended engagement with LCA, he did participate in a number of LCA events. He was a featured speaker alongside authors John O. Killens, James Baldwin, and journalist William Worthy at a May 1961 public forum entitled, “Nationalism, Colonialism and the United States—One Minute to 12!” that was hosted by the LCA. In April 1962, one of the few articles Make published in the United States was printed in Liberator. In the article, Make sought to provide a context for the ongoing struggle against apartheid South Africa, but tellingly demonstrated the complicity of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) countries in the apartheid regime’s massacring of black South Africans. NATO “aid,” Make wrote, assisted the buildup of a military state in South Africa. He emphasized how ammunitions and tanks purchased from Britain were used in the Sharpeville and Langa massacres of March 21, 1960. Since that time, he warned, “The South African regime has been preparing for … a civil war.”70 This was additional justification of the LCA’s role assisting African liberation. Make’s description of liberation efforts would be an early example of Liberator efforts at continued coverage of strained, yet potent, political vision and tumult on the continent. Above all, Liberator stressed independence, whether that was found in its support of political independence in the United States and abroad, in its support for culturally relevant education, or in challenging the media representation of the black liberation struggle.

If supporting the promise and project of African liberation was a core element of LCA activity, attention to the civil rights movement in the United States occupied the second column of its racial justice work. From its inception, the LCA began to the political left of the civil rights establishment. It opposed a steadfast adherence to nonviolence when black people were confronted with violence in the North or in the South. Distrustful of liberalism and gradualist approaches to social change, Liberator was naturally skeptical about the discourse of integration. Watts and his crew tended to disregard any talk of integration that did not include a deep critique of economic segregation. In a sense, activities of dissidents and controversial figures such as Robert F. Williams, Mae Mallory, and William Worthy drew the praise of Liberator writers. Virtually any black activist who received the scorn or indifference of the mainstream was welcomed among Liberator ranks.

In June 1961, the editors carried an unsigned article on the Freedom Rides, which provides an example of its viewpoint regarding the civil rights struggle occurring throughout the South, albeit from its northern perch. The Liberator hailed the importance of the Freedom Rides for “giving new life to the liberation struggle at home.” The Freedom Rides had not only demonstrated to the world that race relations in the United States were still marked by acts of white savagery, but the rides had also “quickened the pace and raised the level of struggle.” However, they did not support the riders’ steadfast adherence to nonviolence. Moreover, the LCA argued, “By announcing ahead of time that they will not fight back, the Freedom Riders have given license to the most degraded and cowardly elements to indulge in mob violence.”71 Though supportive of the Freedom Riders’ effort to test the Supreme Court’s prohibition of segregation in interstate travel, the LCA, like many others, shared the belief that the riders must have government protection. Recognizing that nonviolence would not prevent violence nor guarantee protection, the LCA expressed support for the African American community’s right to self-defense. This perspective made it the natural adversary of the political perspective of the established black leadership, including individuals such as Martin Luther King Jr., Whitney Young, and James Farmer, figures whom it routinely criticized. Instead, the LCA promoted the activism of Robert F. Williams, Mae Mallory, Malcolm X, Gloria Richardson, Adam Clayton Powell, and Albert Cleage, and championed the pan-Africanism and anticolonial concerns of W. E. B. Du Bois and Kwame Nkrumah. And yet, a focus on prominent figures such as these loses sight of just how widespread these activities were. Informal, ad hoc, issue-specific coalitions formed under the broad umbrella of decolonization, self-determination, and liberation and were as instrumental in furthering these politics and key to their dissemination.

John Henrik Clarke’s identification of the LCA as one of many groups reflecting a new sense of militancy, what he called “New Afro-American Nationalism,” proved prescient.72 What Clarke could not have known at the time was just how dedicated to the cause Watts and his crew would become. In Clarke’s view, considering African and African American struggles as inherently linked in the effort to defeat imperialism also marked a simultaneous shift in identity.73 For the black activists associated with the LCA, this was a shift they were eager to make. Formed in a political milieu that had been sliced in two by the Cold War, splintered by the emergence of New Left politics, and shaped by the continued struggle for civil and human rights for African Americans in the United States, the LCA was a small, yet pivotal formation that was dedicated to domestic and international black liberation and committed to radical sociopolitical transformation. Chief among the issues it confronted in a vehement campaign were racial torture, political erasure, and spatial segregation. Having announced their arrival and intention to mobilize resources and energy in the service of African independence and civil rights militancy, the Liberator would expressly position itself as a mouthpiece of black radical thought throughout the 1960s.