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Spokespersons and Advocates

The Contested Intellectual Life of African Independence

The pattern that sets the course for the intellectual as outsider is best exemplified by the condition of exile, the state of never being fully adjusted, always feeling outside the chatty, familiar world inhabited by natives, so to speak, tending to avoid and even dislike the trappings of accommodation and national well-being. Exile for the intellectual in this metaphysical sense is restlessness, movement, constantly being unsettled, and unsettling others. You cannot go back to some earlier and perhaps more stable condition of being at home; and alas, you can never fully arrive, be at one with your new home or situation.

—Edward W. Said, “Intellectuals and Exile,” Representations of the Intellectual

African American grassroots groups prepared to support African liberation had their work cut out for them. On one hand they were poised to influence U.S. policy in Africa; on the other hand the work of liberation was right outside their New York City door. Desiring to influence the course of African independence and inspired to take their domestic disputes global, African American radicals would have to organize more effectively, be unafraid of the most spontaneous debate, stay prepared for an impromptu protest, and offer fresh but hard-hitting analyses that could rarely be found elsewhere. Independent Africa unleashed a wave of debate on all aspects of African life. Lawrence Jackson captured the expectations facing advocates and spokespersons to great effect when he states, “By the end of the 1950s, to hold the post of representative authority for black America, a writer would have to appeal to the streets, seem capable of commercial success, be independent of orthodox communism, and espouse a radicalism that would make whites as uncomfortable as middle-class blacks.”1 Just who would speak for Africa’s future: black Americans, white Americans, Africans themselves, or some combination of these? Said’s notion of exile, of being in and out simultaneously, at once at home and away, effectively adds understanding to the quality of engagement expected of Liberator writers, an expectation that was in many ways of their own choosing. In Said’s view, the intellectual exile prefers “to remain outside the mainstream, unaccommodated, unco-opted, resistant,” working through a self-conscious and purposeful “productive anguish.” “Exile,” he argues, “means that you are always going to be marginal, and that what you do as an intellectual has to be made up because you cannot follow a prescribed path.” He contends that such bodily awareness is not experienced as “a deprivation and as something to be bewailed,” but rather a “unique pleasure” gained from going after the problems of the world as one sees fit.2 Said seems to have insightfully captured Liberator’s raison d’être and that of an entire generation of iconoclasts. Yet Jackson’s observation does not rule out mainstream attention. To be sure, Liberator oscillated between Said’s poignant description of the exiled intellect and Jackson’s sense of the high stakes of indignation.

If officially recognized platforms for African American defenders of African liberation were still out of their reach, they would need to establish them. Thus, Liberator eagerly joined a vast pool of commentary on Africa and its relationship to the world that had reached a tipping point in the 1950s, as independence seemed just within reach. Debating Africa’s future became a cottage industry unto itself. This debate raged in the early part of the 1960s, and Liberator intended, with limited resources, to turn the Year of Africa into the Decade of Africa. While Liberator set its sights on battling mainstream liberal opinion, its influence is perhaps best understood in the context of a tradition of grassroots black radicalism. These groups can be viewed along an ideological spectrum, from ultra-nationalist groups such as the African Nationalist Pioneer Movement, a late and politically conservative offshoot of the Garvey Movement, to socialist-influenced, Black Nationalist anticolonial groups such as the Liberation Committee for Africa, to groups that were anti-nationalist groups domestically but pro-nationalist in regard to Africa, such as the NAACP and American Society of African Culture (AMSAC).

John Henrik Clarke had presciently identified several organizations that fall along this spectrum as evidence of a new sense of nationalism spreading throughout black communities in the United States.3 Clarke focused on the more or less grassroots formations of African-identified liberation support groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, the Universal African Nationalist Movement (UANM), the Cultural Association of Women for African Heritage (CAWAH), the African Nationalist Pioneer Movement (ANPM), On Guard Committee for Freedom, the Provisional Committee for a Free Africa, and the Liberation Committee for Africa (LCA). For his part, Carlos Cooks was long known as a staunch defender of African liberation, stretching back into the 1950s. Ever the propagandist, Cooks established several pamphlets, newsletters, and other print materials, such as The Black Challenge and The Street Speaker, that proselytized for African freedoms.

On the other end of the spectrum of Africa-inspired activity, the venerable scholar St. Clair Drake highlighted some of the more established and better-funded organizations and institutions. As a scholar of the African diaspora, Drake understood, and to some degree, appreciated better than most, African Americans’ attraction to Africa. Some of these organizations were nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) financed by the American government, or otherwise private corporations that fostered intellectual and humanitarian or other relationships with Africa from the 1950s to 1960s. Such groups include the African-American Institute, Operation Crossroads Africa, the African Studies Association, the American Committee on Africa (ACOA), AMSAC, the Peace Corps, and the American Negro Leadership Conference on Africa. As Drake observed, ideological positions had to be considered in the relations between African Americans and Africans, and for that matter, American intellectuals in general in this period, as not all groups agreed on the meaning of African independence for American activists and intellectuals.4 Indeed, as Brenda Gayle Plummer writes, “AMSAC provides an example of how a clandestine government agency played an active role in scattering the seeds of a movement that it was simultaneously trying to contain.”5 AMSAC epitomized western Cold War interests. “A Western victory in the cold war required the recruitment of emerging states and their most important citizens: new classes and politicized youth who would share elite values,” Plummer contends. “While the goal of independence for the global South would be upheld, broader critiques of the international behavior of Western powers were disallowed or deemed subversive of world order.”6

In many ways, AMSAC, ACOA, and the LCA help to characterize the general makeup of the African American and white liberal interest in Africa in this period. They represent a continuum, which was enumerated by Clarke and Drake. More than any other Africa-oriented group in this period, AMSAC attracted the attention (and later the scorn) of Liberator writers, especially in the first two years of the publication. AMSAC, whose stated objectives were to further understand and support the cultural achievement and political development of newly independent Africa, was formed in 1957 partially in response to the activity of the Council on African Affairs (CAA), which emerged from left-wing tendencies. As it turned out, AMSAC was financed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Committee on Race and Class in World Affairs (CORAC), and was led by men such as Horace Mann Bond and John A. Davis, ties that drew considerable controversy. The significance of AMSAC in this period stems from the esteem it received in elite intellectual and government circles, where it was encouraged to track, discuss, and debate the role independent Africa would play in world politics. As an organization with institutional recognition that attracted scholars, artists, entrepreneurs, and ambassadors, it also reflected U.S. governmental and corporate interests in Africa, a dubious aspect of its work to say the least. Through these connections, however, AMSAC also sponsored a number of art exhibitions and writing projects that highlighted the cultural exchanges between Africans and African Americans. Some of these initiatives included the work of Jacob Lawrence, Elton Fax, Saunders Redding, Randy Weston, Chinua Achebe, David Rubadiri, Thomas Melone, Kofi Antubam, and Afewerk Tekle.

AMSAC’s publishing projects also included important collections of African American writing on Africa, such as the seminal Africa Seen by American Negro Scholars (1958), which included essays from St. Clair Drake, Martin Kilson, William Leo Hansberry, Lorenzo Turner, Pearl Primus, Mercer Cook, Rayford Logan, E. Franklin Frazier, Adelaide Cromwell Hill, and other first-rate African American scholars. AMSAC was also responsible for the publication of The American Writer and His Roots (1959), which included writing by Julian Mayfield, John Henrik Clarke, and St. Clair Drake, and finally Pan-Africanism Reconsidered (1962), which published the presentations and debates at the Third Annual AMSAC international conference.7 The fact that the CIA, in whole or in part, funded all of this activity was certain to fan the flames of dissension and distrust. But it is also a consequence of African Americans’ and liberal white intellectuals’ passionate, if sometimes naïve, identification with Africa.

When the LCA formed it was foremost out of a rejection of the U.S. diplomacy, European western influence, and American liberal anticommunism that ran through the United Nations, the White House, and nongovernmental organizations like ACOA and AMSAC. By contrast, the left-wing political milieu out of which the LCA grew made anti-imperialist struggle in Africa central to its perspective, which distinguished the group from much of the attention paid to African independence. A January 1962 Liberator editorial questioned the role of the United States in Nigeria, specifically critiquing the establishment of an economic enterprise named the American-Nigerian Chamber of Commerce, Inc., whose plans were already underway. Though Nigeria could not afford to respond explicitly to the calls for a “United States of Africa,” to which Kwame Nkrumah actively subscribed, LCA, owing to its general pan-Africanist proclivities, still held that country in high regard. The editors were swift to point out that “part of the stated purpose of the new organization is to provide intercourse between American and Nigerian businessmen,” but went on to reveal that “this part of the program is handicapped from the beginning, since, possibly by oversight, no Nigerians were placed on the board of directors.” The list of companies represented in this new economic venture were IBM, Chase Manhattan Bank, A.C. Israel Commodity Corporation, Mobil Oil, Chase International Investment Corporation, Westinghouse, RCA, Bank of America, Pepsi, Texaco, Farrell Lines, and First National City Bank of New York. This heavy corporate interest in Nigeria alarmed LCA writers, as it was evident that U.S. economic interests were equal to its political interests in Africa, moves that erased differences between the U.S. and the European nations who had established political and economic control across Africa decades earlier.8 Later, Liberator republished an editorial from the Nigerian-based African Pilot, which questioned the role of Ford Foundation grants to Nigeria when American cities suffered. “We believe that charity begins at home,” it read. “It is all well to help build a hostel at Ibadan, but how much better would it have been to rid Detroit, Pittsburgh, and New York of Negro ghettoes?”9 American corporate interests abroad were part and parcel of the mounting evidence that pointed to U.S. designs toward empire.

As far as NGOs went, the pages of Liberator contained open criticism of AMSAC’s efforts in Africa. In the February 1962 issue, the editors ran an article entitled, “A Cold Reception for AMSAC in Nigeria,” and went on to dramatize the dissatisfaction growing around AMSAC’s activities. “The Nigerian press,” it reads, “has virtually poured cold water on any future programs of the American Society of African Culture, more popularly called AMSAC here, with their criticism of the first AMSAC tour in Lagos, Nigeria, last December [1961].”10 The March issue ran an art review entitled, “Why AMSAC Festival Was a Flop” and went on to critique some of the performances as lacking knowledge of Nigerian culture or wasting the talents of otherwise phenomenal artists by scheduling them alongside artists they had never before accompanied. By far the most comical of the critiques of the festival performances was put forth in the question that concluded the review: “But what on Earth has Madame Butterfly got to do with African Culture?”11 The editors never missed a chance to critique AMSAC’s presence in American foreign policy circles, and early on they perceived that AMSAC’s cultural directive was little more than a smokescreen for American political positioning on the continent. For Liberator activists, who had earlier been envious of the organization’s more structured diplomatic relations with African dignitaries, it was not hard to level critique at an intellectual arm of U.S. imperial policy. It is important that this critique in Liberator anticipated revelations that AMSAC was a front for the CIA.

While coming to the realization that pan-African unity was less stable than first imagined, LCA expressly allied itself with the Casablanca faction of African nationalists, who were open to some form of continental unity and Eastern bloc affiliation. It also however continued to support Nigeria’s course of nationalism, which pulled it away from continental cohesion in favor of focused attention on exigencies within its own borders. In this way, the LCA embodied what can be called a Casablanca-plus-one political outlook, which saw no contradiction in solidarity with both Nkrumah and Azikiwe, as indicated by the coverage it accorded the leaders of both Ghana and Nigeria in back-to-back issues in July and August 1962. This also suggests that Liberator associates were sensitive to the continent-specific exigencies to be resolved, while among U.S.-based black activists, both Nkrumah and Azikiwe enjoyed a nearly equal amount of acclaim.

In the March issue of that year, Liberator published a statement from Azikiwe congratulating Nkrumah on the fifth anniversary of Ghana’s independence. Azikiwe’s statement shows that, unlike in AMSAC, the division between Ghana and Nigeria on the question of continental unity did not adversely affect the LCA vision of a liberated Africa, and perhaps neither were positioned to appeal fully to the political interests of black people scattered throughout the diaspora.

On behalf of the people of the Federation of Nigeria I send you sincere greetings on the occasion of Ghana’s Fifth Anniversary as a free sovereign and independent state. In this respect I congratulate you and the people of Ghana in the spirit of one pioneer nationalist to another pioneer nationalist in the struggle for human freedom in Africa.… And may God strengthen you and your people to forge ahead and contribute your fair share to the solution of world problems and the unity of Africa. My dear Kwame, come thunderstorms at home come deliberate fabrications in the foreign press come vagaries of human life all African nationalist[s] are genuinely dedicated to the manumission of Mother Africa from foreign yoke with the positive goal to enable Africans to live like free men and free women in free African states enjoying fundamental human rights under rule of law. Fighting for such eternal principles you can always count on me and the people of Nigeria as worthy comrades in arms in this common struggle. Once more accept sincere assurances of our high esteem.

Fraternally yours, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Governor-General12

Despite the fraternal respect shown in Azikiwe’s message, the disagreement between Ghana and Nigeria on the question of continental unity and pan-Africanism was palpable. One might look to the fact that Nigeria did not make a public effort to attract and enlist assistance from the African diasporic community in the same way Nkrumah did, as evidence of its attitude on black global unity. Considering this, it might seem that there was no sense of global solidarity emergent from Nigeria. Upon closer look, however, local activists, and not necessarily those with ties to government leaders, shared in a vision of Africa’s global redemption. The reality was that these countries were very different and faced different sets of political challenges as they moved toward decolonization. The challenges of pan-African unity had more to do with exigencies on the ground, which pivoted on the ownership and distribution of extractable resources, than hard-line ideological positioning.

The World and Africa: Liberator and African Independence

If W. E. B. Du Bois’s classic post–World War II polemic, The World and Africa, proved Africa’s importance to the world,13 for Liberator it might have read in reverse: “Africa and the world,” as the periodical centered its global coverage on African independence. Like Du Bois, Liberator reflected the growing sense of urgency to rid the world of colonialism with a critical eye on who it perceived to be the world’s largest perpetuator and beneficiary, the U.S. government. Its guiding perspective viewed the victory over imperialism squarely in the fight against racist capitalist oppression in the United States. Liberator’s coverage of the independence movement in Africa was passionate and determined, if at times eager and disjointed, as it drew on extant resources to impact American foreign policy toward Africa. Liberator’s continental coverage was independent, interpretive, and galvanizing. It was equally chaotic, shifting, and at times difficult to grasp as its writers made efforts to track closely the sudden changes of the immediate postcolonial period.

Yet, in its role as watchdog of U.S. foreign policy toward Africa, Liberator also highlighted efforts to uproot colonialism on the continent accurately. In an editorial discussing the importance of the All-African Peoples Conference, its global perspective of domestic struggle is evident: “This Conference, attended by over 200 delegates representing 69 parties, organizations and unions from 36 African countries was virtually ignored by the American press. The Liberation Committee for Africa and all other African friends of African freedom must take the speeches and resolutions of the Cairo conference as a direct challenge to demonstrate solidarity with the Freedom Fighters of Africa by opposing and exposing the racist, imperialist policies of the foremost Neo-Colonial power not only in the Congo and Liberia; in Laos and the Philippines; in Cuba and Brazil; but in Alabama and Mississippi as well.”14 The relationship of the civil rights struggle of black people in the United States to the anti-imperialist struggle in Africa and across the globe positioned the LCA as a direct beneficiary of the internationalism inspired by Bandung and the upsurge of anticolonial fervor in the Congo. Its efforts to follow the developments at the United Nations, coupled with close attention paid to the African press and the relationships between Africans and African Americans in the United States, shaped its outlook and journalistic activism. Over the magazine’s first five years, the Liberator published nearly one hundred articles and analyses dealing with African liberation movements and independence, and it would continue its coverage throughout the rest of the decade. Liberator dutifully watched U.S. government activity in Africa. Most articles dealt with the Congo, Ghanaian independence, and South African apartheid, while others covered political entanglements and cultural engagements in Angola, Tunisia, and Kenya.

The September 1961 issue of the magazine included a small note requesting financial support from subscriptions. Proud of its increasing circulation, which had just crossed fifteen hundred, it enthusiastically reported that readers throughout the country and in Africa were pleased with the efforts the small organization had displayed.15 With the modest goal of doubling its circulation, the LCA headed into the New Year with the wind at its back. In December, the budding periodical resumed its coverage of the Congo Crisis. Included in this issue were reports on Northern Rhodesia and the experiences of African students studying in the United States. The editors also critiqued African Americans who lent rhetorical support for U.S. participation in undermining African independence. For example, in its coverage of Congo, the Liberator routinely criticized African American journalist George Schuyler, who utilized his column in the Pittsburgh Courier as a launching pad for his conservative opinions, calling him “The Afro-Americans’ Tshombe,” and claiming he stoked, and then benefited from, Lumumba’s fatal demise. They also shamed former CAA associate Max Yergan, and writer William F. Buckley as intellectual apologists of American empire.16

In particular, Beveridge provided a strong rebuke of New York Times coverage of the events unfolding in the Congo, while Watts made the rounds on local radio debating journalists and, when possible, media representatives of Tshombe’s pro-western government. This particular article was a rebuttal to an ad placed in the Times requesting support for Tshombe under the name “American Committee for Aid to Katanga Freedom Fighters.” Point by point, Beveridge challenged the positions expressed in the ad. Efforts to counter mainstream press accounts quickly became the magazine’s raison d’être. Having decided to make his lot with leftist radicals at a young age, and having joined the Communist Party (CPUSA) as a young adult, his sense of internationalism drew him to the study of colonialism in Africa and Asia. His training in African history allowed him to develop a consistent critique of western influence in Africa. In 1953, while at Columbia University, Beveridge completed a master’s thesis on the subject of white supremacy in South Africa.17 He was therefore well equipped to discuss the particularities of western control over the continent. His deep interest in education and politics informed many of his Liberator writings.18 Writers representing various African and Arab student groups were regularly featured in the periodical up to this point. One student spoke of the difficulty of having honest discussions with Americans about crises in Africa. When invited to parties and meetings hosted by campus organizations, the student noted that faces often turned sour when he would try to discuss “politics.” So harsh had his experiences been that this student simply signed his article anonymously, “An African Student.”19

The LCA’s habit of monitoring mainstream press commentary on African affairs enhanced its credentials as a viable alternative site for news and information. Spending much of its early efforts countering press coverage of visiting African diplomats and a growing African student population, it began its 1962 series with a long critique of the Institute for International Education’s survey and study of African students’ educational experiences in the United States.20 Its critique of that study initiated the LCA’s own investigation into the experiences of African students, which reached beyond the personal contacts of Beveridge and others. Throughout the year, they would compile letters, personal biographies, academic success stories, and political commentary from African students around the country. An Arab student leader wrote to Watts in response to an article published in December 1961, wherein Watts identified the complicity of the United States and the state of Israel in undermining African independence through aid projects.21 The student appreciated Watts’s position and proceeded to recount his disdain for what he interpreted as the global influence of Zionism.22

Another writer, representing the Central African Students’ Union of America, Inc., complained about the scholarship programs many of the international students received. He argued plainly that many scholarship programs for African students were but examples of “economic imperialism,” as big business and private foundations underwrote many of the financial packages that students accepted. Financing international student education consisted of a complex web of government and corporate interests, he argued. “In this context, my argument points to the fact that a recipient of a scholarship receives financial aid from a business corporation which is posing for a Foundation,” he wrote as he recalled his own experience in such programs. “I have myself been on such a scholarship program, and it has only been recently that I have realized that I have been accepting economic imperialism through the back door,” he noted, calling attention through caution. Although he argued that students should keep their scholarships, they should at least know how they were funded.23 These examples importantly help to show Liberator’s attention to the nuances of U.S. educational interests, which tended to follow its political investments in western-friendly outcomes.

The funding of African students’ education in the United States continued to be a source of controversy. Editor Dan Watts penned a long article bemoaning the lack of adequate support offered to African students. Perhaps this was a dig at groups like ACOA and the African American Students Foundation (AASF), which boasted its support for a range of needs facing African petitioners and often students, but Watts took his chances nonetheless. It is interesting that he seemed to contradict the warning of economic imperialism through such funding programs, arguing that wherever it came from, African and African American students deserved financial support sufficient for long-term study. As an example, Watts recounted the experience of a Kenyan student who was placed on a “work scholarship” to attend Warren Wilson College, a small two-year college in North Carolina whose education model—reminiscent of Tuskegee—combined the development of skills through hands-on work, academics, and community service. According to Watts, the student had no inclination that “his work scholarship meant cleaning floors and toilets,” and was surprised that he was not at a leading American institution of higher learning. For Watts, such was indicative of the failure of the scholarship programs to properly educate prospective students about their educational choices. Though he encouraged improved funding opportunities, he ultimately rejected the approaches taken by government-funded organizations or private foundations even if it meant that his own work suffered as a result.24

Accompanying the critique of students’ financial aid entanglements, Beveridge reported on the formation of the Pan-African Students’ Union of the Americas. This newly formed organization was established at a meeting of African students in Chicago in December 1961. This collective had grown out of an earlier organization, the All-African Students Union of the Americas, which Beveridge noted “was smothered to death by aid from the U.S. State Department and businesses.”25 Judging by its resolutions, this new organization took cues from Nkrumah’s brand of pan-Africanism and explicitly aligned itself with the resolutions passed at the All-African People’s Conference of 1958. Except for including student-specific concerns, the resolution appeared to be a carbon copy of the historic Casablanca-led meeting, a significant yet contentious indicator of the many attempts at global African unity.

The efforts to revive pan-African ideals through close attention and support for African independence would continue throughout Liberator’s existence. Throughout its first few years of publication, it continued to describe the rapid, ever-shifting pace of independence to its readers. The Liberator emphasized the distinctions between those leaders who pushed for full autonomy and those who were content to work within the existing colonial model. In March and June 1961, Beveridge paid tribute to two African leaders who lost their lives in the struggle for liberation.

Felix Roland Moumie, president of Union of Populations of Cameroon (Union des populations du Cameroun or UPC), who was assassinated in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1960, was given tribute in March. The UPC was an active radical organization made up of trade unionists, intellectuals, impoverished farmers and workers, nationalists, and Marxists. Active since the 1950s under the leadership of Um Nyobe, it had long been a thorn in the side of French colonialists. In the end, it took five military battalions between 1960 and 1962 to defeat Moumie and his associates.26 The following month Beveridge eulogized Joao Baptista, head of military operations for the Angolan National Liberation Army, who had been killed in a battle against the Portuguese army in Bembe, Luanda Province, the previous year.27 Further revealing its solidarity, Liberator reprinted Elisio Figueiredo’s speech at the All-African Students Association meeting in Chicago the previous December, which appealed to readers for their support of the Angolan struggle against Portuguese colonialism.28

In May 1962 the LCA celebrated its one-year anniversary, though it had already surpassed this milestone. Its perspective in the ensuing years would be shaped by an expansive combination of left-wing radicals, Black Nationalists, artists, and community organizers. This commemorative issue listed the names of advisory and editorial board members for the first time. With critical assistance from their comrades, Watts and Beveridge had plans to grow both the organization and the magazine. An advisory board was established, whose members included Ossie Davis, Len Holt, Louis H. Michaux, Richard B. Moore, Willard Moore, Hugh Mulzac, George B. Murphy Jr., Uthman A. Salaam, Florence Shervington, Selma Sparks, and Paul Zuber. Editorial board members included Watts, Beveridge, Evelyn Battle, and Joan Stokes. Collectively, this group was poised to make a contribution to the liberation of African descendants around the world. “After one year,” Liberator had successfully established a foundation on which to expand its reach and sharpen its repertoire. “This issue of Liberator marks the beginning of its second year of regular monthly publication,” they stated, marking the significance of the feat. “This achievement in the face of increasing monopoly of the press and consequent decline of independent publications in this country gives us some pride and determination to keep going. It also gives us a sober awareness of the obstacles ahead if we are to grow in scope and influence,” they continued.29

The support they had received from concerned readers, college students, local activists, and sister publications such as Freedomways inspired the editors to keep up the fight. The community that began to form around the magazine was reason enough to try to do more with the little resources they possessed. “We attribute our success to date to three factors,” they wrote. “We are too poor to be sued; we are too small to be attacked; and too challenging to be ignored. During the next year we expect to remain too poor to be sued; we hope we become too big to be attacked; and pledge to expand and sharpen our challenge.” This declaration of struggle demonstrated the resilience of the small, eclectic group of individuals concerned with the plight and future of black people around the globe.

The anniversary issue was celebratory, but it kept to the business of social justice advocacy and awareness. Moving past the aplomb, several articles kept readers’ minds fixed on the task at hand: one detailed police brutality at Talladega College in Alabama, another recounted the police murder of Muslim member Ronald Stokes in Los Angeles, a third article protested the nuclear arms race, and a fourth, by attorney Len Holt, argued that the Freedom Rides were in part inspired by African independence movements across the Atlantic. Though these struggles would receive close attention in ensuing issues of the publication, the remaining contents were congratulatory and encouraging remarks from students and political luminaries. A letter of congratulations from Egyptian leader Gamal Adbel Nasser spoke of the need to stave off colonialism at all costs since “the colonial bag holds no end of devices,” and “therefore, prudence and experience suggest that, in the struggle for national development, African solidarity is a vital urgency, not only to increase development efforts, but also to safeguard African newly-won freedom.” Nasser’s endorsement of “African solidarity” reflects the political alliances shaped in this early period of African independence. As far as the LCA was concerned, his words of support (“wishing the Liberation Committee for Africa all success in every endeavor in the noble causes of humanity”) revealed the promising impact of this small organization though only two and a half years old, their way of showing what a little determined outfit could do.30

Alpheaus Hunton, the longtime associate of W. E. B. Du Bois, welcomed the LCA’s contributions to anticolonialism and the promotion of African unity. In his view, the organization was making “a most valuable contribution to the fight for the final liquidation of racism, colonialism, and imperialism in all their manifold shapes and disguises.” Though he spoke favorably of trans-Atlantic solidarity, writing that the struggles of Africans and African Americans were “inseparably linked,” he sounded the alarm of neocolonialism, warning of, “Black men who can be bought off and used to help maintain old or new forms of domination and exploitation of black people.”31 Hunton, alongside his wife, Dorothy, spent a lifetime agitating and mentoring generations of young radicals, including Beveridge, who had encountered Hunton in the 1950s while working with Paul Robeson’s Freedom newsletter as well as the CAA publication, Spotlight on Africa.32

Further exploring the tensions emerging in independent Africa, Liberator published speeches of Ghanaian leader Kwame Nkrumah, reports on South African apartheid, and articles condemning South Africa’s domination of South West Africa. Like events in the Congo, Ghanaian independence loomed large in the minds and hearts of black activists of all stripes. For radicals in the United States, Ghana represented the first stage in the independence of the continent as a whole. At least one LCA associate had traveled to Ghana to witness the practice of independence. Selma Sparks, a Liberator advisory board member and labor rights activist, mailed a letter to the magazine from Accra detailing her attendance at “The World without the Bomb” conference convened under the direction of Nkrumah. For her, the conference signified “the awareness of the African people that they will have to take leadership in this struggle to keep man from blowing himself to kingdom come.” Sparks explained key agenda items discussed at the conference, including nuclear disarmament and building economies based on peace rather than on war, writing, “It seems such a waste to spend billions of dollars per year learning bigger and better ways to destroy man.” Quoting from Nkrumah’s plenary speech, Sparks noted that all humanity had a role to play in the creation of a peaceful world.33 The enthusiasm displayed in Sparks’s letter was shared by a number of African American expatriates, including Alphaeus and Dorothy Hunton, Julian Mayfield, St. Clair Drake, and others, who moved to Ghana, temporarily or permanently, under Nkrumah’s idealistic diaspora-wide invitation to assist in the development of the young nation.34

Correcting and countering mainstream press coverage of the African liberation struggle spurred Liberator’s intense interest in happenings on the continent. Stories and reports from radical journalists William Worthy and Julian Mayfield were often reprinted in the Liberator having been culled from other news sources, including the Baltimore Afro-American, where Worthy wrote; the Ghana Evening News, where many of Mayfield’s articles were published; and the Voice of Africa. Worthy noted that the U.S. press coverage of Africa was decidedly pro-western. Speaking at the Negro Newspaper Publisher’s annual conference, held in Baltimore on June 23, 1962, he argued that Americans were ignorant of the struggles being waged in Africa, Asia, and Latin America because of the press’s willingness to simply report the “quasi-official party line” of the U.S. government. Lock-step reportage unnerved Worthy, who commented, “Our daily papers, our giant weekly magazines, our radio and television networks, with notable exceptions, are not going to report the anguish of an Africa struggling to rid itself of American-supported colonial wars.”35 Worthy’s critique reflects an early effort at media integrity.

According to Worthy, the black press had a responsibility to fill this void and “rise to the great historic need,” of accurately reporting the global struggle against colonialism, even if it meant placing blame on the U.S. government. Good journalism required valuing truthful reporting over dinners with state department officials, he added. “The First Amendment does not say that the press is supposed to be an instrument of national policy,” he reminded his fellow journalists, before once again expressing their duty to speak truth to power: “Let’s keep in mind that if U.S. support of colonialism is to be brought to an end, we must relentlessly keep the news spotlight on the crucial decisions of the policymakers.”36 Worthy’s crusading journalism endeared him among radicals, and his personal entanglements with U.S. governmental policies were an indication that he was no mere objective observer, but rather an active participant in the struggle for justice.37

Liberator’s coverage of Africa seemed to heed Worthy’s advice. Providing an alternative to mainstream press coverage with comparably limited resources, however, forced it to rely on its informal networks. In addition to covering the independence movement, the periodical also reported on Du Bois and Hunton’s Encyclopedia Africana project, giving readers a glimpse of the massive study that would occupy Du Bois for the remaining days of his life in Ghana.38 Throughout the remainder of 1962, the magazine paid close attention to American and European activities in South Africa, Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, and the Congo, and continued coverage of Ghana, watchful of traceable evidence with which it could continue to indict western oppression. In Ghana’s case, Nkrumah’s bright glow began to dim amid reports of assassination attempts on his life, which Liberator interpreted as another neocolonialist weapon.39 Individuals such as Worthy, Mayfield, Selma Sparks, and others contributed to Liberator’s coverage of African affairs and added to the information Watts and Beveridge gathered through rigorous archival research, informal networks, and formal associations with African students and government ambassadors.

In addition to the journalism of a faithful few, the magazine also linked to African news dispatches for on-the-ground coverage of national news. The Voice of Africa, the Nigerian Information Service (NIS), and other outlets enhanced Liberator’s reportage. A press release from the NIS reported on Nnamdi Azikiwe’s response to negative press coverage in Britain.40 In a letter Azikiwe mailed to The Guardian editor H. A. Hetherington and published in Liberator, Azikiwe stated plainly that the western press was “dabbling too much in Nigerian problems about which you are so fundamentally ignorant and on which you are least qualified to pontificate.” Azikiwe’s letter inventoried news publications and magazines that were so enthralled with African independence, he argued, that it bordered on meddling. Accusing the West of “racial arrogance and social impertinence,” Azikiwe placed such news coverage in the context of a dying colonial project.

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Lumumba’s assassination and the gap it left in Congolese leadership remained a concern for the LCA. Antoine Gizenga’s brief stint as elected vice-premier to Lumumba’s government added but another dimension to the crisis. Gizenga’s incarceration late in 1962 gave Liberator an opportunity to revisit the Congo Crisis, offering a sobering account of the country’s struggle for independence.41 Jailed by the same forces that ensnared Lumumba, Gizenga had been imprisoned since January, according to Liberator, for holding “firm to the national and centralist principles of Patrice Lumumba and has the political following to make his opinions felt as if he were a free man.”42 Even before Lumumba was viciously and tragically removed from the political scene, the Congo had plunged into crisis. If anything, Lumumba’s assassination exacerbated the turmoil, leaving the mineral-rich country susceptible to the rapaciousness and militarism that ensued.

Though Lumumba’s death loomed large over the era, the Liberator struggled to provide thoroughgoing coverage of events on the continent. In 1963, Beveridge was able to place Nelson Mandela’s struggle against apartheid in the context of the domestic freedom struggle waged in America’s cities. In a similar manner to William Worthy who had his passport revoked due to his effort to write about subjects of which the United States did not approve, Beveridge argued, Mandela was trapped by policy protocols that made it illegal to travel without a passport. In addition to violating restrictions against organizing strikes, Mandela was sentenced to five years. For his supporters, this represented a heightened stage of struggle against apartheid; Beveridge quoted a member of Mandela’s group as saying, “The arrest of Nelson Mandela opens a new chapter in our struggle. It is a demand for new and untried methods in South Africa.”43

By 1963, the specter of neocolonialism haunted independent Africa. This reality forced many interested African Americans to come to grips with the limitations of national independence. Independence was but an important first step but was by no means the end of liberation struggle. In this year’s January issue, Liberator ran a short article that portended ensuing struggles throughout Africa. One of its reports covered the South West Africa National Union (SWANU) battle for independence and autonomy. SWANU’s statement on this struggle, issued by its publicity secretary, Gerson Veii, pointed to the limitations of the United Nations in supporting national liberation struggles. Petitioning the United Nations, however, was a critical first step in securing the rights of a sovereign nation, a strategic site of protest that Liberator writers would themselves exploit. Namibia (which had been known as South West Africa under colonialism) was a trustee territory of the United Nations, which nominally controlled the country after its long history as a German colony. Yet apartheid prevailed over Namibia, as it had in South Africa.44 Though Veii and others sought pressure from the international community, applying economic sanctions would only lead to African peoples’ further impoverishment, he argued. “The alternative is an armed conflict. This is now the only alternative facing the Africans.” However, the report stopped short of calling for an all-out war.45 Though it was Namibia’s first and oldest political organization, the South West Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO) would eclipse SWANU. Sam Nujoma, head of SWAPO, was the country’s first president by the time independence belatedly arrived in 1990.46

Throughout the 1960s, many people continued to view the United Nations as a platform on which oppressed communities (i.e., nations) could seek redress. Liberator writers, however, were skeptical about the degree to which this was an effective point of view. Even as a strategic site of open debate and newsgathering, many perceived the U.S. role at the United Nations as too large; although the United Nations stood for international governance, U.S. policymakers greatly influenced its decisions. Subsequently, many perceived the United Nations as ineffective in holding the U.S. government responsible for its treatment of African Americans and any other marginalized political constituency.

With Liberator’s assessment of African American progress since emancipation dominating the contents of its January issue, its editors still sought to depict black struggle in a global context. Dan Watts had attended the American Negro Leadership Conference on Africa (ANLCA), which was held at the end of the previous year, and his initial reactions were published in the January number. Though he did not present all his points of contention in the article, he did express his displeasure with the dearth of knowledge many middle-class, professional, and elite African Americans had concerning Africa.47 Watts was pleased, however, that the LCA’s efforts had attracted the attention of some African leaders, such as Eduardo Mondlane, leader of the armed struggle in Mozambique, who had studied in the United States and had been courted by ACOA. Mondlane, who presented a paper at the conference on African Americans’ involvement in African liberation struggles, distinguished the LCA as “about the only group who have managed to combine any active interest in the American Negro struggle for equality with an intense interest in African freedom.”48 With such comments, Mondlane observed a key distinction. Interests in global African liberation were at odds with support efforts that delinked ties throughout the black world. Watts used Mondlane’s comments as a springboard to pinpoint a general frustration with African American leadership. To Watts the conference was not genuinely concerned with African liberation, but rather with how Africa would maintain western political and economic ties. Watts argued, “If our brothers and sisters in Africa are waiting or depending on the American Negro Leadership Conference on Africa for aid and support, they might just as well make their peace with Verwoerd, Salazar and Welensky. We Americans of African descent have long ago given up on our ‘Negro Leaders.’ ”49 This portended the deepening of fractures to come. Watts followed up his critique of ANLCA with an article in the February issue.

“What is the significance of the American Negro Leadership Conference on Africa which convened last November?” Watts asked.50 Here, Watts again showed his disdain for the African American leaders who attended the conference, with few exceptions. Watts appreciated the paper presented by St. Clair Drake, entitled “Negro Americans, the African Interest, and Power Structures in Africa and America.”51 However, he took issue with the overall tone of the conference: “This conference … was called by and dominated by those who are ideologically committed to a non-revolutionary program of integration into the United States as it is presently constituted.”52 Watts had made a full turn away from the bourgeois lifestyle of a high-profile architect, shaping himself into an aggressive and bombastic documentarian of black liberation struggle. He, like many others, argued that the U.S. policy in Africa meant little more than the continuation of colonial policies and practices. By eschewing an open revolutionary program, the leadership conference, as far as Watts could see, was dangerously complicit in U.S. political and economic intrusion in Africa.

Watts, in tune with a growing sense of the political interdependence of these forces, coupled the program of integration at home with a neocolonial agenda abroad. He perceived a contradiction between African Americans’ attempts toward social integration in American society and the demands for African liberation. “How can Afro-Americans, on the one hand, say to their African brothers, ‘Let us fight together the battles for economic, political and cultural freedom,’ and on the other hand say to those who would deprive them of that freedom, ‘Let us work together to build a society of plenty here at home based on the blood and sweat of our African brothers’?” he asked.53 Watts argued that many African American leaders concerned with Africa simply wanted to change the rules of the game rather than change the game altogether. African Americans and Africans on the continent could not beat back colonialism, Watts charged, because “the rules are fixed, so they can’t win.” He and others realized that African independence, like the achievement of Civil Rights at home, was only the first step toward what they imagined as total liberation. Later in this issue, Liberator reprinted the conference resolutions, which seemed to provide the evidence for Watts’s assertions.54

In the spring of 1963, three years after the Sharpeville Massacre in South Africa, which left 72 people dead and 186 wounded, a group of South Africans led by Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu organized an underground group called Umkonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation). Naming South Africa a racist police state, Liberator reprinted an article from the Algerian-based magazine Révolution Africaine, the international periodical to which Richard Gibson was connected, was which told of this groups’ formation and its efforts to overthrow the regime of white supremacy in the country.55 Though this organization was raided this same year, leading to the imprisonment of Mandela, Sisulu, and others, it was an indication that white supremacist South Africa would rather enhance its violent police state than face extinction.56 As a periodical charged with confronting the forces of colonialism head on, journals such as Liberator effectively demonstrated their worth early on. The space Liberator created and the voices it represented reveal the critical concern of everyday citizens for the political, economic, and cultural spatial and power relationships remapping the world. Moreover, these everyday agitators revealed a deep and principled investment in the future of western power and the fate of those who stood in its way.

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Liberator’s expertise covering Africa continued throughout the early 1960s, offering columns that struck hard at the rhetoric and behavior of colonialism, but it was not necessarily through ideological convictions. Through the journalism of Richard Gibson and Charles P. Howard, Liberator’s coverage of Africa was more than an ideological defense of African independence, as it might have been expected following the Lumumba action. Howard, a longtime UN correspondent and top-notch journalist for the Baltimore Afro-American, had established a news syndicate named after himself (Howard News Syndicate), which fed the black press. He was also responsible for Liberator staff writer Ossie Sykes gaining access to the UN press gallery. Howard had long covered the project of independence in Ghana, interpreting the challenges of nation building plainly for a devoted audience. In the early 1960s Howard published articles in Freedomways. By the end of the decade his would be the words that much of black America read, as he carefully and critically reported on the coup that toppled Nkrumah and what it meant for the rest of the African world. This was as close to mainstream journalism that Liberator had come. Yet it was a view from the mainstream that it had long respected.

In the spring of 1963 the periodical published Howard’s coverage of the assassination of Togolese president, Silvanus Olympio.57 Olympio was shot outside of the U.S. Embassy in Togo in mid-January after three years in office. While the LCA may have taken exception with Olympio’s ties to the West—he was one of the few to rise to the position of director at western soap giant Unilever and had studied at the London School of Economics—another political assassination painted an overall bleak picture for African independence movements, according to Howard. “The pattern of the killing of African leaders is beginning to cause alarm that borders on panic among African leaders,” he reported.58 Togo had been one of the countries that took a Monrovia-inspired pro-independence stance, which placed Olympio at odds with Nkrumah, who had been pushing for a united continent. This may help explain the lukewarm reception Olympio’s death received in the Liberator. In contrast to the slaying of Lumumba, the champion of revolutionary independence, Olympio’s assassination was not placed in a larger context of progressive African liberation. Howard reported that much had been made of the disagreements between the Togo leader and Nkrumah. However, as Ghana’s immediate neighbor, there was more to consider between the two leaders than simply ideological disputes. Aside from sharing a border, Togo was also said to have been harboring dissidents in opposition to Nkrumah, though Howard noted that this was never proven.

Each month Liberator highlighted a different country’s political struggle on the continent. In the April 1963 issue, the periodical published Richard Gibson’s lengthy article on Ben Bella and the Algerian revolution.59 Like Lumumba and Nkrumah, Ahmed Ben Bella was a highly regarded revolutionary leader. A photograph of the Algerian president was featured on the front page of this month’s issue. While Carlos Russell reported on a Pan-African Student Union vigil in honor of Lumumba,60 Gibson recounted the colonial background of the country and its anticolonial successes. The article spoke approvingly of Algerian independence and highlighted the plans set in motion by Ben Bella under his “Program of Tripoli,” a program that essentially put Algeria on the path to Castro-style socialism.61 Gibson’s role as English-language editor of Révolution Africaine, based in Algeria, put him in close proximity to the Algerian struggle. Gibson left New York in 1962, arriving in Algeria just as it declared independence following nearly a decade of armed struggle, which left 1 million Muslim Arabs dead.62 As already mentioned, Gibson’s contacts and travels varied. In Algiers, he and his wife, Sarah, worked for Révolution Africaine, an organ of the Algerian National Liberation Front. As he recalled, he subsequently moved to Lausanne, Switzerland, to print the English-language version of the periodical.63 While traveling, Gibson periodically sent articles to Watts for publication.

Also in the April 1963 issue, the magazine reprinted a statement by South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC) leader, Oliver Tambo, denouncing apartheid in the region. The reprinted report was originally published in January in South African Freedom News, a London-based ANC publication; however, as that group was officially banned, it surfaced outside ANC ranks several months later. The report detailed the Bantustan policy of white apartheid rule and the struggles of freedom-seeking black South Africans. It recounted the atrocities of apartheid, UN moderation, and mounting resistance to the doctrine of white supremacy. “The Bantustan scheme involves the most ruthless intensification of all objectionable aspects of apartheid,” argued Tambo. Encouraging the resistance against this action, Tambo argued that a form of guerilla warfare was a necessary outgrowth of that policy. “Bantustan in fact has the seeds for intensified resistance not only in the areas regarded as Bantustan,” he argued, “but it can link both urban and rural people to attack apartheid and white domination from different angles and possibly using different methods.” Tambo argued the timeless maxim that violence begets violence. He argued that the time had come for black South Africans to take their destiny into their own hands and that this might entail sacrificing one’s life if necessary. In words that would become synonymous with the fiery rhetoric of Malcolm X, Tambo called for “the determination to meet the situation created by white domination on the basis of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”64

“The Plight of the Black Man Is Universal”

If total liberation was becoming a fading dream, small victories would have to suffice. Therefore, when Uganda’s prime minister, Milton Obote, denied entry to racist segregationist senator Allen J. Ellender of Louisiana, Liberator writers cheered.65 Obote was the first prime minister of newly independent Uganda. During the closing months of 1962, A. J. Ellender, a member of the U.S. Congress Appropriations Committee, planned a tour of Africa to see the continent for himself in hopes of influencing President Kennedy’s Africa policy. Kennedy had shown avid interest in independent Africa. He had spoken favorably of Ghanaian independence and was pivotal in establishing the Kenyan Airlift, which brought eighty-one East African students to the United States. But he proved too liberal for the bullish Ellender. Ellender arranged travel to Mali, Zambia (then Northern Rhodesia) and Zimbabwe (then Southern Rhodesia) and was headed for Uganda when statements he made to the press during his travels reached the public. An arrogant southern segregationist, he stated that in none of the countries he visited were Africans prepared for self-rule. Black press outlets took note. The Chicago Defender reported that Ellender considered the transfer of power in Africa and western support to be “free handouts” and felt that “the average African is incapable of leadership without the help of Europeans.”66 Regarding Obote’s snub of Ellender, Liberator writer Ernest Kalibala wrote, “Even peaceful integrationists hailed the move as guaranteed to show the segregationists the new order of things.” For his part, the Afro-Panamanian writer Carlos Russell thought that Ellender’s demonizing of Africans was demonstrative of his thinking about African descendants the world over. Therefore, Russell proclaimed, “The plight of the black man is universal.… The black man in Africa, the black man in Cuba, and the black man in Harlem are products of the same black stock, victims of the same white oppressors,” he continued.67 SWANU president Jariretundu Kozonguizi had the dubious distinction of sharing a panel with Ellender for a program sponsored by the Collegiate Council for the United Nations at the University of Maryland. There, Ellender commenced to once again discredit African independence. Defending the rights to self-determination, and calling Ellender’s slanderous comments “nonsense,” Kozonguizi pointed to Ghana, Guinea, and Nigeria of examples of the achievements of self-rule.68 Indeed, Liberator writers perceived at least two less-than-favorable faces of American government attitudes—one that favored independence contingent on protection of American interests (Kennedy) and another that had no faith in self-rule at all (Ellender)—toward African independence.69

In this same issue, the Liberator printed one of its most forthright defenses of pan-African ideals. African history scholar W. Ofuatey-Kodjoe wrote of the political and ancestral ties between African Americans and Africans.70 As much as small formations such as the LCA and similar organizations sought to evaluate and develop linkages between Africans and African Americans, a body of scholarship developed simultaneously that spoke against such connections, emphasizing the Americanness of black life in the United States. Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Harold Issacs was but one of the many American writers who was skeptical about African Americans’ relationship to Africa.

Liberator reviewed Issacs’s book, The New World of the Negro, in the June issue of the periodical and warned readers of his dogged integrationist perspective toward African American citizenship in spite of the treatment African Americans faced when they sought to exercise and defend that citizenship. Worse, he spoke condescendingly of most African American efforts of self-determination from Garvey to the contemporary pan-Africanism of the 1960s, although he could admit that the world was changing and that outright, highly visible white supremacy was waning. Ofuatey-Kodjoe criticized such thinking as evidence of the enduring residue of white supremacy even in Issacs’s liberal packaging. “It is therefore in the interest of the American white man to discourage any connection between the American Negro and the African,” he wrote. Ofuatey-Kodjoe’s article was written in response to an African American U.S. emissary who had recently returned from the Congo saying that he never felt more American in his life. Moreover, he is quoted as saying that the tribalism he witnessed in Africa far outstripped the racism found in America. Ofuatey-Kodjoe perceived an eager defense of American political interests in the emissary’s report from his travel to Africa, and went on to highlight that the tribalism he lamented was the result of European and Euro-American political and financial interests in warring tribes. Appealing to a sense of brotherhood (and ostensibly sisterhood), he wrote as if speaking directly to the black community: “You see in spite of what they tell you, they recognize the fact that you and I have a great deal in common: that we stand or fall together.”71 Despite these efforts, Liberator readers also heard about African ambassadors who, drawn to the American political elite, shunned pan-African ties.72

If Harold Issacs needed confirmation of African influences on African American life and culture, he needed to look no further than Harlem. John Henrik Clarke, Langston Hughes, and Richard B. Moore, among numerous other writers, had for years identified a heightened African consciousness and celebration of African culture as salient aspects of Harlem life. Issacs had even interviewed Watts for his book.73 Of the many formations concerned with African liberation that emerged in this period, Liberator noted the efforts of a small group that called themselves the Harlem Anti-Colonial Committee. Led by Bill Jones and Selma Sparks, the group also included writer and Clarke associate Sylvester Leaks, William Worthy, and local activist Pernella Wattley, who had been active in both the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC) and the Freedom Now Party. Following the example set by the 1961 UN protest, the Harlem Anti-Colonial Committee marched to the United Nations after a public meeting in Harlem Square. Located at 125th street and Seventh Avenue, this Harlem Square rally featured speeches by Conrad Lynn, Worthy, and Moore, who gave Harlemites the latest information on the fight of Robert F. Williams associate Mae Mallory fight against the Monroe frame-up, Worthy’s passport case, and the police attack on the Nation of Islam in Los Angeles.74 Pointing to the contradictions in American rhetorical support for African independence while keeping blacks in the United States colonized, they marched with pickets that read “Freedom Now” and “To Be Partly Free Is to Be Mostly Enslaved.” The march culminated in delivering a wreath on the UN steps that included a note addressed to the U.S. government. The note read: “To the United States Government—For all black Americans who have died protecting the country which does not protect them.”75

As apartheid raged in South Africa, that nation was increasingly viewed as the primary site for anticolonial agitation. Liberator ran a reprint of an ANC document presented to the United Nations in July 1963 that spoke of the U.S. role in upholding the apartheid regime. Presented to the UN Special Committee on the Policies of Apartheid of the Government of the Republic of South Africa, the document spoke to the financial collusion and military support provided by the United States and Great Britain. Moreover, the statement called for the release of political prisoners, a “blacklisting” of companies with business ties to South Africa, including trade, and finally, that the South African apartheid government be banned from the United Nations.76 As ANC representatives Duma Nokwe, Tennysen Makiwane, and Robert Resha delivered the antiapartheid statement, members of the Harlem Anti-Colonial Committee, this time led by William Worthy, staged a small demonstration at the United States Mission to the United Nations. Including Pernella Wattley, Ora Mobley, Progressive Labor Party leader Bill Epton, and local activists Robert Fletcher and Jocelyn Jerome, the group numbered no more than seven total protesters. Yet, as Worthy noted, the group didn’t “need numbers or big names, but passion.” Worthy, who had suspected that his phone had been tapped, was confirmed in his suspicion when he witnessed police and undercover federal agents hop into formation upon seeing the small group approach the building. Upon entering, the group faced questioning authorities. There to meet with Adlai Stevenson, the group was forced to wait close to a half hour before they could be heard. After nearly two hours had passed, the group displayed a large banner that read in bold letters, “Expel South Africa from the U.N.,” much to the dismay of Stevenson, who had hoped the group would quell dissenting Harlemites from similar or further protests. Worthy could not guarantee this was possible even if it was in his control. This small act of protest, Worthy intimated, effectively demonstrated the capacity of collective action.77

By 1964, Liberator coverage of Africa trailed off but had by no means ended.78 Liberator reflected that the Lumumba protest was a beginning, but not the conclusion, of the challenges facing African independence. In May, the magazine returned to the coverage of Central African liberation struggles. The Burundi Mission to the United Nations sought to correct misinformation that had been reported about the country.79 In July, two articles appeared that spoke to the role of the United Nations in supporting African and Third World sovereignty and the image of the United States in Ghana. Amid debate over the role of the United Nations in supporting antiapartheid efforts was also the continuing concern for the use of nuclear weaponry, specifically the use of the atomic bomb. Dan Watts, using his network of associates to gain access to the UN press gallery, reported that secretary general U Thant, who served for the entire decade of the 1960s, spoke out against the use of the atomic bomb, especially on populations of color. Speaking to reporters in Canada, Thant stated the glaring contradiction between the refusal to use atomic weapons on European nations such as Nazi Germany and the decision to employ such methods on nations of color such as Japan during World War II. He argued that there was a racially motivated use of nuclear weapons that should not be ignored. Watts also reported that the United States, France, and Great Britain continued to abstain from openly condemning South African apartheid, thereby continuing their complicity.80 It is likely that Charles Howard also arranged for Watts to attend the UN meetings. The previous year, Watts was informed that his UN pass, which had been recovered after the Lumumba protests, had expired. When he requested Jacques Verges, editor of Révolution Africaine, to write on his behalf, UN press representatives balked.81 Once again it seemed the U.S. government’s containment tactics persisted uninterrupted. Other writers, such as T. D. Baffoe, editor of the Ghanaian Times, argued that in addition to perceiving it as a colonialist enabler, many people abroad soberly viewed the United States as a police state.82

In addition to its indictments of American government positions on Africa, Liberator also performed an educational function. Most often, this would be in the form of publishing histories that provided critical background information on a newly independent nation. In addition to its spotlight on Ghana, Nigeria, and Guinea, Liberator also covered Mali’s importance to world history and its contemporary political moment. Tracing the rich history of Mali was hardly new for many Harlemites who read the magazine. Many had been introduced to the history of the great leader Sundiata and fourteenth-century Mali through the vibrant street-corner speaker tradition that had developed throughout Harlem. This historic background provided in Liberator was written as a political history of the rise of Modibo Keita, independent Mali’s first president, who served from 1960 to 1968. Keita, along with Nkrumah and Toure, helped form the Ghana-Guinea-Mali union, with the hopes of sparking a greater continental union. Liberator, part of the contingent of U.S.-based radicals who supported independent Africa’s push toward socialism, viewed Mali’s pan-Africanism in a favorable light. Beveridge’s immersion in African history and his active participation in the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH) lent consistency to Liberator’s educational function.

Watts’s UN reports most often focused on events in Africa, though they often incorporated other international news. In January 1965, Watts reprinted portions of the speech given by the Ghanaian representative to the United Nations, Alex Quaison-Sackey, who had been elected as president of the Nineteenth Session of the General Assembly. Appointed by Nkrumah, Quaison-Sackey was an impressive and lively international diplomat. In his address, he spoke of the tremendous potential of the United Nations in protecting the sovereignty of newly independent countries such as Ghana. “Ghana has an unshakable faith in the United Nations, and has consistently supported the purposes and principles of the charter,” he announced. An energetic figure with a large, bright smile, Quaison-Sackey was equal parts charmer and cunning politician. Following Nkrumah, he proclaimed the arrival of the African Personality on the UN stage and the role of the Organization for African Unity (OAU) in supporting continental unity. As if reading directly from the notebook of his country’s top official, he emphasized that Africa’s “future is now indissolubly linked up with the destiny of Asia, Latin America and the rest of the world.” Liberator welcomed this new voice in the international arena, picturing him dressed in Kente cloth on the cover of the New Year’s first issue, though the periodical had been one of the first to cover the significance of his UN role back in 1962.83 Pictures of Quaison-Sackey seated next to secretary general U Thant and Ghanaian foreign minister Kojo Batsio, accompanied the text of his speech. Liberator also ran a series of photos of UN delegations from Malawi, Kenya, and Nigeria.84 Though he had only recently been elected to the presidency, political turmoil in his home country tested his loyalty to Nkrumah. After the overthrow of Nkrumah the next year, 1966, Richard Gibson quipped derisively that Quaison-Sackey “was next heard of in Accra, loudly denouncing the ‘tyranny’ of his former master and, like the vast majority of Ghana’s never-too-revolutionary diplomats, begging to keep his job.”85 Later in 1965, Liberator paid tribute to African women leaders at the United Nations. Though full reports on their participation were not provided, those pictured included Nancy Kajumbula of Uganda, Julienne Keutcha of Cameroon, Florence Addison of Ghana, Margaret Aguta of Nigeria, and Regine Gbedey of Togo.86

In June, Liberator staff writer Ossie Sykes penned a criticism of African Americans who represented government interests on the African continent, which was one of the magazine’s penchants. African American leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., Roy Wilkins, Whitney Young, James Farmer, and other, lesser-known figures, such as Arkansas attorney Wiley Branton of the Voter Education Project, were recruited as emissaries to African countries to convey the message that, although slow, racial progress was being achieved in the United States. Both the Kennedy and Johnson presidential administrations regularly recruited black leaders in the hopes of influencing international perceptions of racial progress. As Sykes pointed out, it was more than mere coincidence that Farmer’s visit to Africa was scheduled just after Malcolm X’s return from his long tour, which had effectively impacted African Americans’ political consciousness. Though moderate to conservative African Americans were recruited to placate international concerns of American racism, Sykes was confident that Africans on the continent could see the true face of “United States business interest[s] and the milking of African wealth.”87 Internationally, it was clear to many people that America’s image suffered. Donald Jackson, writing of the logic of anti–Vietnam War attitudes in the black community, spoke to American government efforts to protect its image: “A move to call America to question in the United Nations on the issue of domestic racism [via sympathetic African delegations] would be more embarrassing to America if the spillover of the racism into America’s international affairs were also brought to light.”88

Throughout the year, Liberator would continue its coverage of Africa through the pen of Gibson, who was following events from London while making occasional trips to the continent. In December he published an article on the struggle for liberation in Zimbabwe, which was then known by its colonial name, Southern Rhodesia. Gibson wrote of the meaning of this struggle for Britain, which had supported Rhodesia’s white minority rule when it recognized settler self-government in 1923. Gibson wondered what this would portend for Britain’s racial climate, and he wondered if Britons and Africans in Britain were on a collision course, as white settlers and Zimbabweans seemed to be in Southern Africa. Though he was convinced that Africans on the continent would decide the direction to take, his concern for the international reverberations of these conflicts pointed once more to the global impact of African independence.89

The overthrow of Nkrumah’s government in 1966 was one of several signs of the instability African independence. African American activists interpreted the coup d’état as an American or western plot to stem the tide of left-leaning charismatic internationalism being embraced by many newly independent countries. Shirley Graham Du Bois, who had arranged for Nkrumah to meet with African American militant Malcolm X, tapped the reservoir of pan-African pride and resilience when writing to John Henrik Clarke after her expulsion from Ghana: “Many black heads are now bloody, [but] WE ARE UNBOWED and we are STILL ALIVE! Don’t write us off.”90 Writing in Liberator, Gibson, who was now listed as editor of news on Africa, Asia, and Europe, considered the Ghana debacle as the first step in an updated western battle for Africa. In his own letter to Clarke, Gibson struck a more cynical tone than he had earlier expressed, perhaps disgruntled with evaporating hopes of a triumphant era of independence. “The situation in so-called ‘independent’ Africa is hardly very encouraging at present,” he wrote to Clarke after updating him on a book project on Africa for which he had been compiling material in Tanzania. Gibson intimated to Clarke what the latter already knew: that the chief issue facing African leaders was to “liberate their country’s economy from the neo-colonialist stranglehold.” Yet, using Ghana as an example, Gibson interestingly expressed that Nkrumah and his followers were to blame, not the machinations of global capitalism. Gibson wrote: “In Ghana, there were many persons who understood what was wrong, but, once comfortably settled in various sinecures, they seem to have lost their vision and used their breath merely to add to the praises of Osaygefo. It was very sad, but only to be expected. And I don’t think many people were really surprised by what happened on 24 February, except Nkrumah himself—which is the price you pay for listening to syncophants [sic] and Russian ‘advisers.’ ”91 It is not clear if and how Clarke, who had been compiling material for a book on Ghana, responded to Gibson’s letter, but it is plausible that he would not have been too pleased with Gibson’s dismissive attitude toward the coup. Yet Nkrumah’s toppling and Ghana’s transition typified a new phase in postindependence history. As Fitch and Oppenheimer observed following the coup: “The era of postwar colonial independence movements is over now. The political elites who mediated their way to power are giving way to new military/bureaucratic elites who function in the name of austerity and efficiency. But it must not be thought that, simply by acting in favor of the old colonial power, the new rulers have put an end to the contradictions which faced and defeated the departing political elites.”92

If 1960 was dubbed the year of African independence, 1965–66 marked the coup in Africa. Following Gibson’s report on Ghana and the assessments of a range of political observers, Liberator included an “African Scorecard,” which listed the country, date, and name of each of the governments that had been undemocratically and violently overthrown. With five such coups occurring over the second half of 1965 and five more in the first two months of 1966, it seemed that wherever one looked, the more or less triumphant vision of African independence held by many had been shattered, compelling those who were interested to determine the next political vision.93

Charles P. Howard argued that the explosion of coups was not necessarily ideologically driven but rather was based on economic exploitation. In terms that recall Du Bois’s “African Roots of War,” written in the context of World War I, Howard argued that the West’s belief that Africa’s resources were open for plundering buttressed the support for coups d’état. Moreover, the West’s political interests and hands-on influence bore as much responsibility for the coups as had local conditions. As had William Worthy, Howard castigated the American and British press for failing to investigate the role of the CIA and British Intelligence in these coups. Basing his analysis on the “sphere of influence” theory, which held that the world was in split into Western (capitalist) and Eastern (communist) spheres, Howard stated directly where he thought the blame should be placed. “There can no longer be any doubt that the rash of overthrows of governments in Africa, which are dedicated to the masses of African people, and opposed to the sphere of influence theory, and the continued exploitation of African countries, have been master-minded, financed, and directed, even though the hands that carried out the dastardly acts were black, by the American CIA and British Intelligence.”94 Howard was determined to provide his readers as clear a view of the issues as he could. Throughout 1966, Howard’s News Syndicate was almost entirely concerned with Ghana. On a weekly basis Howard sought to expose the corporate, neocolonialist, and U.S.-complicit agitation stirring the pot of African independence. One of his series put the matter squarely: “There is no longer any doubt that the overthrow of President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana was engineered from outside Ghana, by and for the benefit of people who are not Ghanaians, not even Africans,” he told his Afro-American readers. Commencing, he wanted to leave no doubt as to the certainty of the claim: “The wonder is that Nkrumah survived as long as he did. Of all the African leaders, past or present, he is the most hated and most feared by the former colonial power, the neo-colonialists and the present controllers of Africa’s wealth who do not want to give it up.”95 Howard’s writing, at once dutiful, opinionated, and direct, put in print what many African American activists felt was happening—African independence was being strategically, and tragically undermined. Howard, working to beat back the onslaught of western press accounts, used the space of the newspaper column as counterweight even if it was perceived as an open defense of Nkrumah.96

In July, Gibson’s attention moved across the continent, writing ominously of the independence movement on the Horn of Africa. “No other part of Africa today is wracked by as many explosive tensions as East Africa,” he began. Gibson’s reportage showed Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda in the midst of political tug-of-wars between competing factions pushing for their own brand of nationalism and economic independence.97 This was a far cry from the critical yet glowing reports of African independence that Liberator readers had come to expect. Nor did Gibson place blame for these political pressures on western shoulders. Perhaps Gibson was cynical about the future of African independence. It is not clear if Gibson saw himself as simply the bearer of bad news and therefore a teller of hard truths or if he was merely stating the obvious. In any case, around this time his credentials came into question after Révolution Africaine, the publication for which he had been the English-language editor, published a communiqué in one of its last issues to the effect of outing Gibson as “counter-revolutionary” for “disruptive activities.”98

Though his reputation took a considerable hit, he continued to write and report on Africa. Liberator also suffered blows as a result of accusations against Gibson. Soulbook, published out of the Bay Area, openly challenged the magazine’s connection to Gibson, who was listed on the editorial board. If Liberator consorted with such a questionable figure as Gibson, it could not claim to represent the best interests of the liberation movement, Soulbook editors wrote.99 The conflict over Gibson’s credibility may explain the departure of Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) activists from Liberator. Larry Neal’s August report on the Detroit Black Arts Convention would be his last Liberator writing. It was also the last time Neal was listed on the editorial staff. Neal’s two-year run (1964–66) as arts editor had ended, yet the impact he had made by this point could not be ignored. Muhammad Ahmad had never fully immersed himself in the Liberator because of Watts’s interracial marriage, and Askia Touré left after the RAM analysis of Malcolm’s assassination was published in 1966. It is not clear if Watts ever responded to the accusations against Gibson or if there was ever an official response to Soulbook. Their friendship appeared to have been more important to Watts than the charges being leveled against Gibson.

Charles P. Howard ended 1966 highlighting the assassination of South African racist apartheid architect Hendrik Verwoerd, who was stabbed to death in September. He reminded readers that the death of the chief engineer of apartheid did not mean the death of the system. Africans and African Americans still had a responsibility, he wrote, to undo the regime. Howard placed Verwoerd in the company of George Wallace of Alabama, Orval Faubus of Arkansas, Barry Goldwater, and others who practiced hatred toward blacks as official policy; in other words, he was a man who did not deserve public sympathy. Howard argued that much of the disunity throughout Africa could be traced to the practices institutionalized under Verwoerd and his ilk. As such, “Afro-Americans and Africans must identify, isolate and move against those whose only stock in trade is hatred of the Black man,” he wrote.100 The struggle to liberate South Africa would consume much of the Liberator reporting on Africa in this period. Alongside tracing the aftermath of a number of military coups, the dismantling of apartheid emerged as a central issue for radicals nationwide.

On November 6, Liberator cosponsored a lecture on the South African liberation struggle at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem that featured exiled activist Franz J. T. Lee. His trip to New York also featured an appearance on New York City radio station WBAI the morning of his Harlem speech. A number of Harlem-based organizations, including the Harlem Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the Harlem Parents Committee, the Harlem People’s Parliament, and the New York Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), along with individuals such as Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Yuri Kochiyama, Lewis Michaux, James Forman, Floyd McKissick, and others, collaborated to bring Lee to Harlem.101

The following year, Gibson, who remained listed on the editorial staff although he was overseas, wrote of Israel’s impact on African independence as a result of the previous month’s Six-Day Arab-Israeli war. Gibson considered Israeli aggression against Arabs an extension of neocolonialism and white supremacy.102 For many, the parallels were striking. As one writer put it, “By [a] strange twist of destiny, Israel and the apartheid regime of the National Party of South Africa were born in the same year—1948. As the Zionist state was coming into being in the Middle East, the Afrikaners were taking over power in South Africa. The historical interaction between these two troubled regions of the world would be long-lasting and sustained.”103 Gibson feared that Africa was considered open territory for Israel, writing, “All of Africa lies open, vulnerable to the political and economic penetration of Israel and the European powers.”104 Tracking a variety of incursions over the past ten years, Gibson’s final tally pointed toward Israeli dominance over Africa. The only reaction to Gibson’s article came several months later in the form of a letter to the editor written by a member of the Israeli Socialist Organization, though it did not reference Liberator’s coverage of Israel. Writing from Jerusalem, the author reported the case of Khalil Toame, a law student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a leader on the Arab Students Committee there. Toame, who was known for his outspokenness against Zionism, was arrested in January 1968, following a solidarity protest with Israeli students who also opposed Israeli occupation. This letter may have been sent to Watts directly and not necessarily intended for publication in Liberator. However, publishing this letter may have been Watts’s way of lending support to the cause of the jailed student. Although he was fond of adding editorial comments for issues he deemed of utmost importance, none appeared for this issue.

Gibson, Watts, Charles Howard, and Yahne Sangare would continue to string together news and analysis on Africa, but as events on the continent became more complicated, the magazine refocused its attention on the home front. In one of his last analyses, Gibson spoke to what he perceived as African Americans’ distance from the complex realities unfolding in Africa. “Some Afro-Americans would rather avoid the necessary task of studying Africa’s complex history and examining the Black Continent’s political, economic, and social situation in the contemporary world,” he wrote, “instead they prefer to sink into easy fantasies about the homeland of their ancestors.” Gibson’s critique of African Americans’ waning pan-African political sensibility appears harsh when one considers the shattered hopes of many in the immediate aftermath of Lumumba, Malcolm, Du Bois, and Nkrumah’s government, parties that had long been viewed as avatars and standard-bearers of pan-African ideals. Still, he believed that African Americans were out of touch with Africa’s impoverished reality. By contrast, he thought, Africans were on the move. Gibson expressed hope in the five-year-old OAU to lead Africa to political prominence, though earlier he had seemed not at all disturbed by the flurry of military coups engulfing the continent. Although he makes no suggestions for how African Americans were to support the efforts of the OAU, he maintained that viewing “Africa through foggy, tattered myths,” was of no use at all.105 Though Gibson urged greater political solidarity with Africa, others clung to an idea of Africa as refuge from America.106 Still others believed that solidarity between African Americans and Africans who embraced Black Power ideals meant very little without a clear program. Vernon Boggs, who taught at City University of New York’s York College, argued that “being black is not enough” to build a program, though like many critics, Boggs, of course, did not offer a program. He did, however, identify the Los Angeles chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the African American students who led the Columbia University protests against gentrification as signs of real movement.107 Boggs’s particular cynicism toward African American leadership is perhaps indicative of a growing impatience with the rhetoric of independence, despite its galvanizing appeal. Though solidarity with Africa was initially a core aspect of the Liberator’s activity, owing in part to the complexity and pace of events on the continent, and dissolving contacts, its attention on the continent dissipated toward the last years of the magazine.

Liberator readers were alerted to this trend in the spring of 1969, when Tom Mboya, then minister of economic planning and development in Kenya, visited the Countee Cullen Library in Harlem as part of the Morningside Lecture Series on Modern Africa, on March 18. Mboya’s visit caused at least two separate but related disturbances in the black community. On one hand, Mboya expressed to the African Americans in attendance that their fight was in the United States, not in Africa, striking a markedly different tone than could be heard earlier. On the other, Selwyn Cudjoe’s account of the incident has it that some audience members were forewarned of Mboya’s position in a lecture given by then–Columbia University professor Immanuel Wallerstein earlier in the lecture series. Worse, according to Cudjoe, Wallerstein announced that Mboya’s Kenya was heading into a financial relationship with apartheid South Africa, which was later denied by Kenya’s UN Mission representative. Upon hearing Mboya’s position, some members of the audience hurled eggs at him for what sounded like an anti-pan-Africanist position, though Liberator did not clarify what exactly they were angry about.108 Later it was revealed that the black activists in the audience chafed at Mboya’s support for the Kenyan government’s rejection of the idea of guaranteeing automatic citizenship to African Americans who desired expatriation.109

In any case, Cudjoe’s article sparked a less-than-productive debate. Over a month later, three articles appeared in response to his depiction of events at the Cullen Library. The first response came from Wallerstein, who sought to clarify his remarks during the lecture series, saying that Cudjoe had misinterpreted what was said. To say that Kenya was an economic target was clearly different from presuming that Kenya was about to engage in trade with the apartheid government, he responded. The second response came from a Kenyan student living in Harlem who deplored the treatment Mboya received, though he seemed generally aware of the pan-African proclivities many of his uptown neighbors held dear. Yet he questioned whether those who hurled eggs at Mboya had treated white officials similarly. “The treatment to which Mr. Mboya was subjected has never been experienced by [Mayor John] Lindsay or [former Mayor Robert] Wagner, or indeed, [Vice President Hubert] Humphrey, on the many occasions they visited Harlem. Perhaps Harlemites simply wanted to prove that brothers from the other side of the Atlantic must accept worse treatment than an American whitey,” he wrote. Moreover, he challenged African Americans’ “love” for Africa, emphasizing that only “2000–3000 Afro-Americans have become citizens” of African countries and most of those had occurred in Ghana at a time when dual citizenship was a realistic possibility for an educated or technologically elite group of trans-patriots. “All that is required is the will and spirit to accept rather than romanticize Africa,” he stressed. Reflecting on the Harlem egg-throwing incident, Mboya struck a diplomatic note that urged similarities over sameness, underscoring that distinction did not mean disconnection, while holding out that “our struggle and goal[s] are the same, and we need a common understanding on strategy so as not to cancel each other out.”110 However, Mboya went on to pinpoint concerns and challenges that militated against an uncritical merging of political aspirations. Most of all, Mboya urged African Americans to assert American citizenship as leverage for racial justice struggle: “The black American should look to Africa for guidance—and for a chance to give guidance—but not for escape. He must merge his blackness with his citizenship as an American, and the result will be dignity and liberation.”111

The third response in the debate took issue with two points in Cudjoe’s telling of the story. Pointing to evidence of cultural continuity, the author argued that Cudjoe’s argument that Africans in the Caribbean and the United States were Americans and not Africans was incorrect. Second, he questioned whether Wallerstein’s comments were the reason for egging Mboya. He described Kenyan students’ protest of Mboya’s visit to Howard University on this same tour as an example of political astuteness that followed Mboya to Harlem. Howard students of Kenyan descent feared that Mboya, who was an advocate of American interests in Kenya, would give a distorted view of Africa. The writer concluded by stating, “We should not assume that the actions of Black people are always based on what the last white person said.”112 On July 5, 1969, as this issue of Liberator went to press, Tom Mboya was assassinated. Those in the debate could not have known that Mboya’s visit to Harlem would be his last trek to the United States. The emotion of the debate had temporarily blinded some people to the stakes of African independence. Writers, activists, artists, and protesters alike would continue to be reminded just how tenuous were the circumstances, as assassinations seemed only slightly less common than claims to independence.

This debate highlights how frayed, and often petty, the discussion of African and African American political and cultural connections had become by the close of the decade. Between 1969 and 1971, a paltry ten articles with African politics as the subject appeared. Yahne Sangare’s correspondence from the United Nations ended in 1969 with an overview of Zambia’s struggles to throw off economic colonialism.113

Conclusion

Richard Gibson’s monthly “Africa Report,” Edith Sanders’s historical overview and analysis of the importance of African history, and a review of an opportunistic, Italian-made Afric-sploitation114 film entitled, Africa Blood and Guts, were the final three articles that dealt directly with African themes published in Liberator. Though it appeared that the magazine abandoned African themes and issues after its first few years of publication, there is ample evidence that considerable energy and attention to the subject continued throughout the entire decade. Although its coverage was at times inconsistent and certain issues required fuller and more detailed attention than it was able to provide, Liberator was one of the only radical, grassroots publishing vehicles that covered African issues in a newsworthy fashion.

Liberator writers chronicled African issues, reviewed books, highlighted official and otherwise notable political figures, and at the same time discussed African art and fashion. In this way the magazine offered a view of Africa that was at once critical in the political sense while it simultaneously embraced African aesthetics and political vision. Nonetheless, approaching the close of the decade, its original intentions of documenting and actively supporting African liberation had faded, the casualties of political turmoil, vastly complex issues, and needs too large for Watts and his committed bunch to effectively depict, much less organize around. Nonetheless, the explication of the contours of anticolonial black activism makes clearer the range of African American interests and attitudes. As we have seen, there was considerable debate among a host of concerned people, including deep awareness of monthly readers. It is important that Liberator’s journalistic activism centered on Africa yet reveals a diaspora consciousness that was contingent on, and contested through, political debate rather than simplistic assertions of African cultural unity or depoliticized notions of blackness. The community spokespersons and advocates of black liberation would include radical activists, UN petitioners, and liberal scholars. The black liberation struggle in the United States swelled just as the “unevenness”115 and uncertain futures of Africa-centered black internationalism were revealed. Chief among those who continued the fight toward a new day at home and abroad were African American and African women intellectual-activists who demonstrated their radical commitments throughout the decade and long after.