ABSTRACT
This chapter identifies the 1950s as a pivotal decade which redefined the character of America’s foreign and domestic policies. It is viewed through the lens of AAFAN’s rise and fall. It identifies how sections of the African-American leadership cadre where co-opted or neutralised due to a state campaign to align America’s domestic and foreign policies to Cold War requirements. The chapter demonstrates the similarities between AfricanAmericans’ struggle to attain their human rights and the global assault on Western hegemony in its colonial guise. It also reveals how identity politics, historical amnesia and state power impacted the politics of AAFAN and the liberal wing of the African-American leadership cadre, to the extent that AAFAN tempered its support for de-colonisation in Africa and select African-American leaders’ activities were neutralised by the state whilst moderates were granted access to establishment circles. Ultimately, it establishes the link between the tactical objectives pursued by the emerging Civil Rights Movement and the reluctance to support the global struggle for racial equality, and indicates why the Truman administration and successive administrations were compelled by historical circumstances to dismantle the state-sanctioned racial apartheid practised in the Southern states. The chapter addresses diverse issues including the Cold War, the UN, apartheid in South Africa, the Mau Mau revolt in Kenya, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, desegregation in Little Rock Arkansas and the events related to Ghanaian independence. The initial section addresses the role of identity in determining the scope of
AAFAN’s foreign affairs activities at the dawn of the American century. The post-war context stimulated intense introspection and debate within
the African-American population. The key socio-political and ideological questions concerned the political status of the American Negroes relationship to Africa and the black world.1 Irrespective of propaganda and the varied identity modification techniques utilised on African-Americans, they are the descendants of captive Africans. Still, the contention that slavery neutered their African identity is plausible; indeed American history indicates that white America’s rejection of the Negro was predicated on their African origins and their colour.
