The image of America and the Negro abroad; The Negro in America

I speaker is perhaps best known for his earlier works on race relations in the United States. He was the author along with her escape of one of the classics in such a logical research or from a course called black metropolis. He was also a contributor to the research culminating in the American dilemma and was the author of the American dream and the Negro in recent years he's turned his attention to America to African Affairs has published articles in Africa columns in many journals now allergies. He's a professor of sociology and head of the Department of African Affairs at Rosebud University in Chicago. From 1958 to 61 he served as head of the sociology department at the University of Caen every sleeper out of Francis and Clare Drake in addition to the history which is unwritten because scholars for very good reasons chose not to write it or when they did write the story did. There is also the history that is not yet written because it is only now

being made. The kind of history which I suspect her O Isaac spoke of at least the kind of history he is concerned with in his book the new world of Negro Americans in so far as the president is in effect. By the unwritten history of the past and in so far as the history of the future will be written from today's events these events today are relevant to our general theme. The sociology anthropology political science and journalism today provided the raw material which will be used by the historians of tomorrow. In most urban areas of the world today people have seen an American R have bumped into one even with the most and most peripheral sense and very often that one American with whom one has had personal contact provides

generalizations about Americans in general. I was coming across Nigeria some years ago and heard two people sitting behind me who had pronounced Southern accents discussing the new government in Nigeria very loudly and they were furious one of them was saying these Africans are throwing roadblocks in the extension of the Gospel and the other one agreed. Apparently whatever happened the government insists that the price for evangelizing Nigerians was to run at least one approved high school. And the feeling was that this is rare. Fair to be told that you can't preach at Nigerians if you don't bring your high school up to the approved level. Well they were very loudly denouncing the Nigerian government for having the nerve to insist that you couldn't preach the Assembly of God faith and in Nigeria pleasure had a high school. Well I was I was just thinking as I was writing if there had been somebody from remote

area in Nigeria who had never met any other Americans you go back to his village in America means to that village to missionaries to denounce Nigeria because Nigeria wants him to put up a school and people will tend to generalize from this one experience these limited personal experiences lead either to the confirming of stereotypes to the qualifying of them or to completely refashioning them. And all cultural contact tends to be peripheral when it never comes in contact with the whole nation. One comes in contact with soldiers missionaries entrepreneur tourist teachers technicians or even with arty facts. One may judge a country by its products and not by its people. The manipulators of public opinion are continuously trying to gain a deeper understanding of how to refashion stereotypes to make the most of varied forms of personal

contact and to coordinate mass images and sentiments which national policy whatever that national policy may be at the moment. We for instance are apparently in a period in which an effort is being made to refashion our attitudes toward Russians because they think national policy at this moment demands a somewhat softer and more tolerant attitude toward the USSR and we all remember the swings in which at one point the Japanese are the enemy. The point the friend so one needs to start by saying it national purposes. Vary from time to time and in understanding attitudes toward the USA. I think one ought to carry this in mind that to the purposes of the moment they demand one picture and another moment another. I happened to be open to train a team of peace corps teachers at the moment we're going out got to being trained over at Berkeley and last night I was being asked why Andy Samberg a mob gathered around

the embassy and gonna pull the flag down. American Negro ran out ran it back up the next day gonna press ahead of the editorial spineless asked Judas as a civil way gets kicked around in America why is he running out there running the flag that got away the white man right back up. Well within the Oh I think one sign said Peace Corps worms go home. I two weeks later gonna ask for anymore peace corps teachers. Obviously this is but one can only understand this in terms of what it is that the groom ahead as it buys or is wanted at that given moment by creating a hostile image of the USA since as a kid I'd been in Ghana one week before the epicenter have been able to get back so that I can answer that question. But one can state the problem that something we wanted and this particular demonstration was related to that.

However this was no attempt to kill the whole image of America the biggest sign Kerry front was that somebody had tried to assassinate a groom with the largest sign said you may have killed Kennedy but you won't kill Kwame CFC. But again this isn't an attack on all Americans it's an attack on whoever the Americans are supposed to kill Kennedy with the assumption that these same Americans are trying to kill the crewman. Well if this is this presents a puzzling situation and unless one knows all the facts one doesn't know what's going in any image making. There are two groups of Americans who have a tendency to under play The Importance of Being concerned about our image abroad at all. They stand at opposite ends of the socio political spectrum on one hand or the ultra conservatives and the outright defenders of racism. Lest the question why should American policy on race or anything else take into account the reactions of a bunch of foreigners. Why should Americans be concerned about the criticisms and moral appraisals of Europeans

Asians Africans and Latin Americans. They have their internal social problems. We have ours let them do their own business. I know you don't see comments like that on the West Coast but I come from Chicago and we have these kinds of comments. OK with that. Thing that interests me is that the people who say this usually are the first ones to want to tend to the other country's business even though they say that the other countries tend to its own at the opposite extreme of certain liberals who say we should reform ourselves because it's right not because so racial injustice injures our image abroad. We should change our racial policies because it is the right thing to do not because it hampers the implementation of our foreign policy. It's our souls which are at stake and not our national objectives. Incidentally I think personally that both views might quite well be rejected because there isn't conflict in between position which states that there are multiple reasons for doing

anything and that the images are important in relationship to our foreign policy and therefore we should be concerned about them I might give just two examples of why patterns of segregation and discrimination at home have hung like an albatross around the neck of American missionaries working in Asia in Africa at all the other burdens which they have to bear the the heat the recalcitrant heathen and so forth. It's very disconcerting you know where when Billy Graham comes to Guyana for him to face an editorial saying why don't you go back home and preach in Mississippi. We don't need you here. And I would have been an hour ago. When Billy Graham made his tour or it's very disconcerting and worthy missionary and I might hear a stroll in the schoolteacher because missions are usually tied up with schools. I have a student get up in the classroom you see and say all of what you tell me is well and good but I read in the newspaper this morning that they 6 and police dogs on some people in Birmingham.

So insofar as one is in good in caring for a very of a wide range of humanitarian tasks overseas the image of the USA becomes an added burden which people have to bear as long as this image persists. I do not need to mention foreign policy because the images are obviously important variables their own national self respect also has demands. That people are not haters. And this particular seems to be an American one. Do we want to be like. And we get very disturbed and I did at this point come in to read briefly on some personal experiences I've had sensitized me to the whole problem of images. I myself have been interested in this matter of images since my first visit to England some 17 years ago. I went there to gather research material for a doctoral

dissertation on race relations in the British Isles and one of my first side interest involved the impact of Negro soldiers on Britain. I was in for some surprise I found that generally the British people could not understand why we brought two separate armies over instead of one very rarely. The black Yanks as they call them and the white yanks in some places they have actually witnessed white soldiers and Negro soldiers actually locked in armed combat with each other. I never forget a visit to the city of Bristol with Lord MARE assuring me to find stone lions which adorn the front of the City Hall whose ears had been chipped off and he was telling me that's where the Texas airborne eighth regiment and the nigger and the black Yanks had fought a battle in town for three days and counting bullets and knocked years off the line. There's a whole mass of one written history which perhaps will never be written about the battles between Negro and white soldiers around this globe during the war.

It has not been a picture which was a lovely one. It has either been consciously or unconsciously suppressed but it would make a very illuminating chapter in some really accurate history of the negro in the United States. Many English people were shocked at the attitudes which white soldiers had toward Negro soldiers and tended to take out some of their general resentments against the USA and against white soldiers by ostentatiously favoring Negro soldiers. For instance one of the favorite cracks of white soldiers was that their oversexed overpaid and over here. And the relatives that week ational pub which had a sign up Englishman and black young only a minute. White sectors of the British public were horrified when an occasional negro soldier received a death sentence for an alleged rape and tended to respond with petitions begging for clemency.

I think we can say with some assurance that the American image was not answered by what British people saw American race relations in action on their own soil. But I do not think that the Marquis image did any real damage to Anglo-American relations. It simply reinforced whatever tinge of moral and cultural superiority already colored British at. Toward their American cousins I noted on this trip however that the first stirrings of the African revolution were in the making and began to prepare myself for securing a deeper understanding of these events to come. During the next nine years I was rather closely associated with a large number of African students who had come to America to study. Almost none of them had any scholarships or of the financial resources of their name. They had come to work their way through college drawn by the widespread belief in Africa that Americans white and black were friendly to African students and their aspirations. This is 1948 253.

They believe that American education was more practical and relevant to their needs and British education and that the US was so to speak on the side of Africans in their fight against colonialism and that America stood for independence. They associated freely and without strain with friends of both races. Uganda made the first breakthrough toward independence in 1951 and we sent. And the event was generally spoken up with favor in the American press. The great struggle for civil rights had not yet begun nor had the great push in Africa for colonial freedom picked up steam. Therefore I think that this group in this. In these years prior to 1954 Kerry back a rather favorable image of the USA. Although they suffered an occasional blow to their self-esteem from a brush against the color line. As I mull over that period I think that the two factors with regard to Africa that began to reshape the image of America

and to introduce unfavorable elements in it were one the outbreak of the civil rights struggle in the USA and number two the fight the sharpened fight for independence in Africa which meant that America was expected to take a stand. And from there on out America was judged not by what the Declaration of Independence says but on how the votes go in the U.N. or how the US acts of torture members in the Congo and therefore the change in the image I'm quite impressed by the group of African students and who in those days who had a very relaxed attitude toward America and who probably took back by different image of America from that which the present generation of students take back in 1954 I took off from my first visit to Africa and spent six months in Liberia a country in which a small group of descendants of X American negro slaves formed a small ruling straight I'm in a supportive position to a vast

mass of African indigenous people. The Liberian nation was about 107 years old and I found a strong feeling that throughout the whole 170 years the contempt felt for Negroes in official American circles and among the American power elite had rubbed off on them. I think it was a general feeling in Liberia that the all of the attitudes of contempt and lack confidence in the abilities of American Negroes was reflected in attitudes toward Liberia Liberians felt Americans did not take them seriously and their tendency was to say it is because of the way they act toward you in your own country. They treat American businessmen of refusing to advance Africans to managerial positions. And the accusation was true of not training them for a highly valued technical posts in this was so they were very ambivalent toward American Negro diplomats proud of them on one hand. But feeling that the U.S. was using

the dumping ground for new growth in the road given the appointments and weight control I think it was a very dim bill and was very proud when we see that our black ambassador operating but then used to shift over to the point of view. Why is it that the only black ambassadors in Liberia when they have went to the Court of St. James librarians were aware always that the very existence of their nation began because there were white people who didn't want Negroes in America at all and therefore encouraging the emigrate to Africa. They were keenly aware that because there were there were also negroes who felt that life was unbearable that American had come to Liberia for refuge in a sense the country had the feeling of being America's unwanted stepchild the living proof that all was not well with race relations in the USA. I cannot report that the image of America with a very flattering one in Liberia.

I left my period then and went on to that Guyana for nine months. And then ran up on a very different picture here in Ghana soon after I arrived the first all African Parliament met and our Congress sent over some greetings. And I remember when the greetings were debated that the minister finally got up and stated that he was very pleased to get greetings from the USA. He said that it was the USA that gave us our real spur to fight for independence he said before American soldiers came to Guyana. I was in the Gold Coast. We had never seen white men get their hands dirty. The Englishman always stood on the side of the road and said Boys get that lorry out of the ditch. But when the Yanks came they jumped down in the mud and said let's all get out together. So he said first the Americans help to destroy our image of white supremacy. And secondly they set a model on how one should work if one wants to develop a country and then he ended by saying that I have to put a note of sadness

here because despite the fact that we admire and love America they do not treat our brothers right there. And we hope that they will correct this blemish in the days to come. One get this kind of general attitude. They then went up to England right after this and got another view of British attitudes. I went up to England for the summer of 1955 and was trying to find some accommodations in London and was having a very rough time of it. And in discussing this with my West Indian friends I found certain perspectives West Indians have America. Most of my West Indian friends would say oh you can't trust this Englishman I like the United States. Why. Because when you know you're in the United States you always know where you stand. You know the white man doesn't like you and therefore you know how to deal with him.

We don't know how to deal with the Englishman. I know what he was referring to. Typical pattern was I would go with my wife and two children to look for a house that I'd seen advertised and we would be invited to come in for tea. We would be shown through the whole house and occasionally the landlady would say no I just had this room redecorated I think your little girl really love this when you see the pictures on the wall then you'll be told we will call you when my husband comes home at six now you'll be sure to have a call at six point you just never get to call again. And do you know this is a polite way of saying it's all off. I found many of my West Indian friends if not most of the position we don't like this. We would prefer the American way I like living in America because then you know where you stand the white man is on that sack you're on and you know how to deal with. In Britain it always slips out of your fingers. Having come up on this night it was always arguing that I preferred the polite brush off this new nothing.

Finally you know every janitor one day after much looking around finally said Professor you have three strikes against you and he beamed with pride because it showed he knew baseball where the three strikes. Number one your you have two children. Nobody in London wants to rent to people with children. Number two you're caller Number three you're an American and being an American it's worse to know that the mini. Going to Delhi I felt very good for my two children to hear them live. Realize you good day. He looked out of fun for other reasons either the big colored you know what was a problem three or four this was years after the war and now three or four air bases in the vicinity and the general feeling that large war to the American airman were a burden that was not borne likely by the middle class British public.

I finally got a house paying a rent one third more than I should have with a woman showing me how the latest group of the American airman she had rented to had ruined her wall to wall carpeting and found out that being an American was the handicapped parking in that you had to pay more for what you got. If you were going into housing wherever soldiers are and I think this ought to be emphasized. I go back to my point that the kinds of interpersonal relations go into the making of the image because wherever soldiers are one is likely to get one kind of scary and take the rice and compared for instance with where other groups of people are. I've been back to Africa several times since then to England several times but I won't buy up episodes. The race relations situation as important as it is is not always the preeminent factor in determining whether or not the American image is good or bad. I mentioned the case in Ghana where people were very much concerned with American Negro the very thing at that point

people were interested in was the fact that Americans work hard. They are not standoffish and the American Negro Anglos brought in really back in 1954 as a side thing a little sadness that our friends the Americans don't act right. I say today that kind of situation is a completely different image today is American Negro Americans who shove progressive Africans around who drop bombs in the Congo and because Africans are angry with Americans about their general policy. They now in Guyana at least are using the race question to really hammer with. I've just been running over some Ghana newspapers and was interested that in March early in March as Harriman cashews clay and Malcolm X all arriving in

Guyana during the same week. Ninny Gayle legit just read a few headlines. No I mean this isn't me. May the 12th editorial anonymous men and women not the maxim cashews clay editorial on May the 12th call toward better understanding dealt with men and William's arrival that day and said it hoped the Americans would take more understanding attitude toward the aspiration of Africans Malcolm X's arrival recorded in a small note. Next day nothing on men and Williams but a large report of a speech by Malcolm X civil rights issue in the US mislabeled human rights issues. Next day headline of the world's visit is certain clay due here tomorrow with the report of a speech by Malcolm X African states must force the U.S. to give negroes racial equality next day headline. Mohammed now it will be

was this for months. That's Cassius Clay with the net. On the comments on Malcolm X A very large picture of Malcolm X addressing parliament in Ghana next day an attack on Malcolm X by a white liberal in the country that he's a racist. Three headlines that day cash is without his lip. Clegg is now climbing our way. Malcolm X Speaks of the forming the Krooman Institute next day Julian Mayfield expatriate American Negro novel this replies to the charge of Malcolm X as a racist defending him with Dr W E B Dubois widow who lives in Guyana backing up Julian Mayfield and defending Now the next item on the sports page Mohammed alley may train down his boxers in the future. This must have been quite an image making. We're getting out at this now at this moment I think to Donna's advantage to hammer the USA and we have left in so far as

we have a civil rights situation we supply the ammunition for it. But at not at all periods is the race relations question the most important number to what we think trivial others may think important in the image making and vice versa. Grandma made a visit to this country in one thousand fifty eight. Our information services made a picture of his visit and he was in Ghana studying press film and radio and I attended the movies very frequently to see what the reactions were when the picture of McComas visit was shown. The interesting thing was that all the cheers came around to things. And an outsider would not have known what the two things were that were strengthening our image and a groom laid a wreath on Lincoln's mind you met one day and it was raining and then an American Army officer stepped out and took an umbrella and held it over him as he walked up the monument steps in every theater the whole audience would rise and cheer

because this had nothing to do in their minds with the rain. What happens in Guyana years that a chief will always has an umbrella bearer who cares and umbrella. These were white American army. The office is carrying the umbrella over duck and the groom. This went over big. Now you see if you are really a huge maker and you knew how to do it you would have set it up that way we just give that back nothing the other thing that really went over very big was every time a long sleek American automobile pulled out to ensure that the technology which was like so that these things might be considered trivial. But that one is always a monk one should always be alert to what are the specific items in a given culture which may be important to people there and to us. We share a ring a bell so to speak. Third in the areas where image is most highly relevant such as Africa we're perhaps least able

to control the image making process. In countries where there are high levels of illiteracy where the media are controlled tightly by government what Voice of America says and what we deliberately try to put over in the image probably doesn't go very far in the final analysis one is at the mercy of the internal media. So where the image is most highly relevant in the so-called uncommitted areas of the world these are places where probably were least able to control what the image will be. We can control it much more highly in England where you have a highly literate population reading widely a wide range of publications where you are dealing with a large number of illiterates control of the image is less clear. The next point was that I had the impression that individual negro heroes may be far more effective in forming the image both in Europe and in Africa

than the official information agencies of the USA and these heroes often symbolize things which Americans may not think they symbolize by all odds the most popular figure. I have felt among Negroes any time I have been in Britain or in Africa as Paul ropes. If one goes to a back country in Wales and people very familiarly will ask you when they see your Negro house Paul you have to ask Paul who knew the ropes and of course neither Robeson emerged as the figure representing the persecuted American Negro. Now we might say that he was clobbered because he was a communist but a dark Communist oriented but I don't think anybody on the scene believes as they believe he was treated the way he was treated because it was grassy spokesman for Negro rights and the general tendency is that the communist charge was an excuse. The same thing would be to about Dr. Dubois who had to be be do boy eventually left this country

became a citizen was given a state funeral. When last year when he died in Guyana in this very near the historic Christiansburg castle. These are the heroes not Devon. I think the great american their image of the successful negro we would like to project for instance is Ralph Bunche. I would wager that it's if you pitted corruption against bunch either in Europe or in Africa that the folk made hero probably becomes a much more important and he officially went. So I think individual negroes who for one reason or another symbolize things with people over seas feel is relevant. There are more important than the official agencies. The next point was that the race relations situation in America is viewed not against our own ideals but against the cross-cultural reality really doesn't show up too badly as compared with India and Latin America. I think although the

MH may be a very derogatory one that if one were to look at the reality we're always doing with images and realities. I would suspect that the American reality is not stacked up too badly as compared with India. The Caribbean and Latin America. I throw this out as a provocative one and hope that in the question period somebody attack my next point that whatever the real effect of the images may be as I said there are people who would say black box that whatever their effect may be abroad. I think the fear of a bad image in every country has a useful effect on getting constructive changes in that country and this is true even of the USSR. We may be captive of our own midsts about images but the fear that a nation is going to have a bad image has a positive effect on trying to

make people change the reality inside the country. I fear of the bad image to some extent operates to strengthen the civil rights movement. Finally too much concern with our image may seduces into the intrinsically immoral behavior of trying hardest to change the image instead of changing the reality. I feel over and over that this is a great danger when you focus on the images that you may focus on trying to do a job of painting the desirable picture instead of focusing on the fundamental job of correcting the reality that has given rise to the stereotypes. There are some comments based on reflection on my own personal experiences of moving around that during the last decade. I should like to drop these personal experiences which simply sensitizes to the fact that there are images that they vary that they're used for different purposes.

That there's only a limited amount of control over them that whether they really are effective whether the image directing is effective on the outside or not may not be too important. But if we feel we need to correct the image we may correct our behavior leaving at least personal comments and the few generalizations of which I've abstracted from them. I would like to talk there briefly for a few moments on what perhaps this closer to our theme historical overview. How the American him each and abroad has been in Iraq when the British react they carry with them a certain stereotype which they have derives from their own training and schooling and their own experiences. The existence of the Negro in America has been a facet of the overseas IMAGE OF THE NATION.

Ever since the birth of America a revolution fought under a declaration of independence which proclaimed as a self-evident truth that all men are created equal was bound to elicit a question from some quarters. What about the negro. There is considerable evidence to indicate that men like Franklin Jefferson and perhaps George Washington certainly believe that Negroes like other men had an equal right to freedom and they were therefore opposed on principle to the continuation of either the slave trade or slavery. These founding fathers felt that freedom for the slaves should be one outcome of the revolution to establish the union however met a compromise between those slave holders who were by no means humanitarian and people who wished to see slavery disappear. The result was a constitution which outlawed the slave trade after Eighteen Eight but which sanction slavery itself as a means to teach. Various

French intellectuals from the outset expressed their displeasure and there is a letter on the record of laughter yet rebuking Thomas Jefferson saying that when he fought the revolution it wasn't his intention to free only the white people in this country and Laffey had also left a part of his personal fortune for the education of the American Negro Freedman. He felt that the continuation of Negro slavery was betrayal of the ideals that had brought him overseas for a continuous pressure was exerted by British and French humanitarians and religious sectarians upon their counterparts in America to free displays between 18:00 1833. We were under continuous pressure from the British and the French side to free the slaves and particularly to stop to cease and desist from slave the slave smuggling business. After 1880 I think we had a very bad image brought between 18 underneath the 33 because by international convention slavery the slave trade

had been abolished and the Yankee Clipper's were able to turn a welcome dollar by buying slaves on the Zanzibar coast in East Africa and then running them across the southern Atlantic into Brazil Cuba and disbanding all much to the discomfiture of the British who were trying to police the Atlantic against slave trade. And I might add cynically they were mainly interested in shutting off slaves among their Spanish and French competitors in the West Indies. The image in those days was an America which certainly did not include negroes in the concept of all man in the Declaration of Independence and was not disposed to let ideals interfere with economic interests. And so far as slavery was concerned that small intellectual and religious group which oppose slavery in the US is not by any means except the belief that Negroes were the potentially intellectual equals of white men.

And certainly the anti-slavery people in general didn't feel that Negroes were fit material for citizenship. The attitude of the European intellectuals toward American Southern intellectuals in those days was similar to that which they now have a white settler apologists in South Africa and Southern Rhodesia the French and the British intellectuals looked upon America very much the way liberals now look at South Africa for instance Abbe Gregoire in France corresponded with Thomas Jefferson in a vain attempt to convince him that Negroes an equal potentialities to those of other races. Thomas Jefferson was not convinced. And like many among his contemporaries he worked very diligently to remove all freed negroes from America to either the West Indies or Africa. He did not believe that an integrated United States was either possible or desirable nor get many American liberals in those days between 800 833 everybody was against slavery but the free to slave and get them out of here and the French and British intellectual position was LOOK AT THE NATION which is what it is

to a practical invention the cotton gin gave slavery in the US a new lease on life. Just when it was being rendered its deathblow in the cane fields of the West Indies and thus the US became the center for the production of a flood of racist literature. One of the earliest books in sociology was a book called physiology for the South which was attempting to defend the slave system and America became the citadel of racist propaganda. The USA probably acquired the worst image in its entire history between 1833 in 1860 and I would blame it on one book Uncle Tom's Cabin. The sign of early grief stereotype became the general European stereotype. Whatever the ex post facto historians may say about the real causes or the true cause of civil war the fact remains that at the time that at that time the world considered the civil war a fight between those who opposed slavery and those who defended of those who were against the negro and those who were for him.

And therefore one has a general impression that they're well up into the 1860s. The image of the USA particularly in Britain and France was not a very favorable one and had political implications. This is that this image the sign of the green image may be one of the things that help to keep Britain from intervening on the side of the South. Because even the British working class was aroused about we must not defend the Simon Legree over it. On the other side from the end of the Civil War until the advent of the depression the image of America as the land of the lynch mob and the race riot was the dominant image. The rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the south with its use of terror to intimidate and the rising curve of lynchings up to the outbreak of World War 1 all helped fix an image which persisted during the 20s even after the reality began to slowly change. Since so much of the violence was defended by perpetrators on the grounds that it was

necessary to protect white womanhood The View became fairly general abroad even though white people in America were obsessed with the sexual aspects of race relations or the Negro males were in fact sexually uncontrolled and so far as the women of the white race were concerned. The fact of rape was really not the cause of most mentions was lost to view. I think the stereotype that persisted well up into the late 20s and I think that it was reinforced probably an early 30s. Another thing as the First World War certainly did not help our image in France at all because we made official attempts to try to get the French people to discriminate against American Negro soldiers. The decade between the outbreak of the Depression and the beginning of World War Two was one in which race relations in the US again became an issue of international importance. And I think if one takes a period between the outbreak of the Depression and the

beginning of World War Two one has to say that our image. It was at the mercy of the International Communist movement. This story has been told in detail by the speaker who preceded me Dr. Wilson record and his carefully documented book The negro and the Communist Party. Some of us in this room may remember those stormy days but it is difficult to recapture the aura of excitement and even the hope which surrounded the first impact of the Communist movement. Negro Americans not very many of them ever became Marxists or even knew what the philosophy of not very many of them never joined the Communist Party. Most of them are too smart for that. But the totally new experience of seeing white men and women in American white men and women doing what none of them have done sense abolition days did not leave them one move that is fighting their battles and treating them the social evils. Amid all the many small cases that might be cited of Communist activity during the thirties one case stands out massive in an important world shaking in

significance now almost forgotten except as a footnote in the history books. I refer to the famous Scottsburg case as some of you may recall the case of the nine boys. Who were arrested on a train on the charge of having raped two great girls and I this case I think caught on because for the previous decades the image overseas was that American in their race relations were upset with the idea of Negro sexuality were willing to use this to crush negroes and here's a case of nine boys accused of raping two girls on a train and they were sentenced to death immediately once the international labor defense took this case. There were days during this guy's Barry episodes in which marks of as many as 100000 were in front of the American Embassy in Hamburg breaking out windows and saying free to Scottsboro Boys. I think this is if you're talking about unwritten history I think this is one of the little cases that's been dropped out of general history was probably one of the most important ones in helping the

former image overseas. Plus a number of other cases there where the initiative was in the hands of the Communist movement until the Second World War I recur. I have referred a bit to what our wartime experiences overseas. Good force. It is difficult to assess the extent to which the wartime contacts with Negro Americans and the emotions and actions exhibited at the time became a part of the condensed image which older adults still carry in Europe as a part of their personality. It would be adept at difficult research problem in any event but has been made almost irrelevant by the eventual reaction which the American government exhibited to the wartime experience. I think our experience of the Second World War became ultimately the crucial variable in the image change. The communist initiative in the 30s then comes the war in which there's a very unlovely image spread because of a segregated Army

conflict between Negroes and whites. What did the wartime experience do to this country reflective officials were quite well aware of the fact that negro ex-soldiers would never tolerate the more overt forms of discrimination and segregation when they came home. The emergence of the Cold War in the 50s made possible unlikely. A renewed attempt on the part of the International Communist movement to make the negro issue an international issue. And when negro recruits within the USA and trying to give factories which I think it entered into the change of the American reality and therefore its impact on changing the image number one the war taught has made us aware that American soldiers were not going to put up with discrimination of the old model. We had a renewed fear particularly time after the Korean War came that the communist might be able to repeat what they did in the 30s the ranks of independent African Asian states between 1947 58 neutralise in many cases

uncommitted to either east or west made racism at home a liability in trying to carry out an effective foreign policy. If we're going to try to deal with Asia in Africa if we want to keep them out of communist orbit we were going to have to change the reality at home. And so the atmosphere was created in which the civil rights movement became possible. And therefore today we have a situation in which images overseas are being formed primarily I think in terms of the changes going on in this country. If one wants. If I would conclude with some observations about the present situation that the Emmy which is being formulated reformulated in relationship to changes going on in the American reality and may conclude with these remarks. There are only two spots on Earth where racism is still sanctioned by law and where it is a

spouse as a virtue by responsible governmental officials. One of these is on the African continent in the Republic of South Africa. The other is on a North American continent and that group of southern states which still have Jim Crow laws and into northern states Indiana and Nevada which still insult the Negro people by retaining laws on their books which make it a primitive offense for Negroes to marry whites. Our personal feelings about in America side are not the point. Rather the legal implications of such entities moving statutes Indiana Nevada and the effect they have on the American image I think overseas people when they hear this just cannot understand what kind of a country this is this is a crime for people to marry whom they want. Twenty nine states 25 states in the union still make it. African opinion leaders judge the USA today primarily in terms of how the national government stands on three issues no matter how much U.S. I hate propaganda put out. No matter how much we try to correct the image in

Africa there are three things upon which we are judged. Number one that we have refused to sign the conventions in the UN which it buttress racial equality. Number two were judged by how much action we take to destroy the citadel of race prejudice in the US. And number three we're judged by how much action we are taking to destroy racial prejudice in South Africa. I think these three things become the things which is it into the current image making over on Africa with respect to the first issue the USA means nothing to cynicism to its refusal to ratify conventions before the UN outlawing racial discrimination. Africans are quite open in their charts that we're afraid that the UN might someday. They want to investigate Philadelphia Mississippi and we are willing to run that risk. And none of our arguments ever seem quite convincing.

There is also. All those universal tendency in Africa to credit President Kennedy was sincere a dick to ease up on attacks upon the U.S. administration so far as its racial policy was concerned. Give Jack a chance seemed to be the official pan-African line. The Jack is dead and LBJ is still the most African leaders an unknown quantity and is handicapped by being a native of Texas. There are still a skeptical let's wait and see attitude coupled with the kind of encouragement to militant black nationalists unknown during the Kennedy regime. If we can accept this truth Malcolm X's apparent indiscretion when he was interviewed upon his return from Africa the number of African leaders have advised him to haul the U.S. before the UN on the civil rights issue and they promise that their countries will back him up should the civil rights bill turn out to be an ineffective scrap of paper. I would not be surprised at all to see pressures subtle and not so subtle emanating from African states upon the American race relations situation.

The actual role of images in international relations is not yet something which sociologists and political scientists can talk about with persuasion. It is clear however that practical politicians take no chances upon images not being important. All national stage tried to create a favorable image of themselves among those whom they're trying to influence to mar the image of their enemies and to blur that of their friendly competitors. The US too must play the image making an image correct again and insofar as this process goes on and the status of the negro in the US is crucial to the operation. The USSA deliberately chosen not to play the game of peddling life nor by trying to answer every line or to correct every distortion its enemies and sometimes its friends may deliberately con con or unwittingly accept US has chosen rather to develop an image of the ongoing never completed process of an ever expanding progressive democracy

with admitted flaws and hurt from the past with embarrassing gaps between precept and practice. We're stubborn sectors of entrenched liberal or vested interests intransigence as well as the prevalence of mild prejudice and unresolved fears of change. This is the image we can project not the perfect nation but the developing one. But always in our image we say there is a saving remembered in the population of people with a conscience. And there's also a large group that is willing to subordinate personal prejudices to the national welfare like the reputed gentleman in South in Kentucky who rebuke one of his white friends who didn't want to integrated schools by saying oh why are you being so stubborn about it I paid the supreme sacrifice of letting my little blonde daughter sit by Negra in order to defeat communism. So I think this is a part of the image we were to be rejected a

lot of people who don't like it but are willing to make dream sacrifices for the national welfare. Captive in this image we say that at the crucial center of this dynamic process is a national government which is set as it as its goal the elimination of discrimination and segregation based on race. And this is what marks it off from South Africa. This is not a contract and it is a statement of a living reality. The problem of the propagandists using that term in a non pejorative sense becomes one of how to put this in the due process in those sectors of the world where other people's national interests may be served by not having this image but which is a real image of a reality put across in addition to using the mass media which is subject to the screening process in varying degrees by those countries. The U.S. government tries to encourage a two way flow of travelers with visitors from abroad coming to see for themselves and hear for themselves and with integrated American groups traveling and working abroad.

Except for the countries within the orbit of the USSR and China. Simon Legree ball and chain image of Negro right relations in the U.S. is gradually giving way to a few more in accord with the facts. The face to face approach has been somewhat less successful. I cast patterns are still deep too deeply entrenched in American life for any foreigners to be really impressed with the status of Negro Americans a full century after emancipation. I don't think that they're trying to correct the image by bringing Africans to visit the U.S. really gets anywhere because they're what you can say of look the banana under here and this is where you just are. I don't think one or two negro ambassadors and a caron are very often interpreted as anything else other than propaganda gestures and hoping that particularly in Africa there's a great deal of cynicism we can load up an embassy with a high powered negro information specialists and the happy shade of the white man still lambast and they're just doing what he tells them to do.

In our attempt to refashion the image abroad the U.S. government has made an earnest attempt to break up patterns of overseas rep representation which once relegated Negroes to the role of doorkeeper and minor clerks in the consulates and the embassy. But I don't think this has really been convincing if. I conclude on a note of what would be convincing. I would say that the negro someday sits in the cabinet or on the Supreme Court and then you can expect Frenchmen to be impressed because any Frenchman will boast to you today that after all the president of the French senators guessed on minor bill a black man and he's been president of the French Senate for years and every time the government collapses miner bill runs free of ceremony only until they get a new prime minister. So you can't just you know impress the French with bob and weave everything that is there. Let's have a good now ski or let's have a sell a breeze E and then maybe we might take notice a present to president of Senate Gallas in the French capital and so

the little things that we often think are important would not impress the French. When Hollywood releases its first film in which the Negro hero actually kisses the white heroine instead of getting all of it is Harry Belafonte. Didn't I. While in the sun I think that the masses in your love think that there has been a breakthrough despite our great gains and our evident upsurge of goodwill and good intentions I still suspect that most people overseas still think that the US is engaged in the great Madison Avenue gray flannel suit propaganda jag we may be convince of the reality is changing and not just our image making process is changing. Again I think really that others are fully convinced. I think the general attitude everywhere is not what your image appears as you've corrected but what the reality actually is here and I would like to conclude with two little incidents I'm gonna have to go to darken approvers office on business one day and

notice the white gentleman coming out and he said you know that was and I said no and he said it was the Israeli ambassador who has been castigating me because I went to a conference in Casablanca and Nasser and several of us handed out a communique saying that dead guy that Israel is an imperialist agent in Africa as well as in the Middle East and he said we have 200 Israeli technicians in Ghana and the ambassador is very disturbed. I said well what did you tell him. He said all I just told you what you do in your case. Look at what Donna does and what Donna says and I say. You know we've got Africa where words and images are handled like deliberately. This will be the general forgetting to look at what they do not what they say. Finally I think the African press has a rather crude press written very largely for people who've just finished grade school and the press is very interesting in

that respect in that the way that Fox is not the way if you York Times in the Christian Science Monitor and therefore I think a big headline that I saw one day after Kennedy had suggested that the civil rights bill go through was a big headline in the kind of press that said Good Jack but not enough room for. Why do you think he can find us. I think that as far as the South African situation is concerned within the next two years as it comes to a crisis and perhaps becomes an actual battlefield out there who will consider that America's image will probably be battered up very badly by the Africans who are in South Africa an issue are judging everybody by only one thing these days. Are you well in

line to stop selling arms to south that this we've done we shut out virtually everything last he said. Number two are you willing to vote for economic sanctions and a blockade of South Africa. America refuses to do that. Are you willing to sell arms to Africans for the guerrilla warfare that will break out eventually. Are you willing to support the U.N. and to help pay for an operation to attack the UNICEF. And so far as the US is not willing to support measures of that sort I think the image will in the African eyes temporarily will be tarnished and that the whole African press and everybody will hammer the U.S. neo colonialist imperialists who backed racist South Africa. I was in Kenya in December a lot of South African nationalist leaders happen to be of Kenya independence

ceremony. However they don't feel that the image will be tarnished because their position is that they can't conceive of the U.S. letting Russia and China finance the revolution in South Africa and our own national interest given our investments there and so forth will mean that in the long run will come around and run the South African revolution. One young man said I won't be surprised to see the CIA doing something useful for oneself in the real world working the desk up so I can think to answer your question bluntly I've been trying to say this all you want about Africa I think that any of this country can. Sense you have image making power in the hands of the press. Depends a great deal on what a given moment and Africans have as a priority operation you see I didn't say what the man what goes on in the masses mind I talk about the the mass situation. This can go on without any real hostility toward American individuals.

This is most striking with respect to peace corps not just there mistake the Panama case when the big fight about the flag broke out Panama nobody bothered the Peace Corps. I think people draw distinctions between the images relating to a nation operating politically and how they deal with individuals whom they like the individual schoolteachers the individual Peace Corps and so forth so that even if Africa turns as Ed to toward America at the official level this doesn't necessarily mean the ordinary African in the street will kick the next American I don't think the word has anything happening on another point regarding the image of the Soviet Union as a result of against the past two years. Let's draw distinction between their constructs of African states. There would be one set. Gonna Guinea Mali and the USA are which are sometimes referred to as the group of

radical states that are interested in socialism not communists. I put in with the call African socialism who take an aggressive view on ending colonialism in Africa were militantly neutralise their position is that you don't side with the the east or west but you get everything you can get are both if you look at them as opinion formers in Africa. One can say that in all the other states a large proportion of the graduates from the colleges and the school boys follow the Gonna get a mile a policy and not their own leaders policy they have a great tendency to call our own leaders equivalent of what we call Long Tom. So these five states probably represent a much wider range of articulate African opinion. I think the general position there from my POV from talking with people last December in Africa about this and from reading the press is that

this is the way you expect white people act that the fact that they're Russians doesn't alter anything. White people went in this way for colored people and therefore this was to be expected at some time along the line this would be what you get from everybody privately with a little waiting to see how the Red Chinese and the Red Chinese know this and they're playing that point in Africa you see that where the colored communist like you trust to shove their way they've had to shove good you know really screaming bloody murder why do you bring racism in the world. I mean this book but they read Chinese know that from the standpoint of the Africans. Russia is another white nation and you just expect so much out of the U.S. Now this is not what I want to get out press in the press there would be much more of a tendency to take the position that this is an unfortunate blemish on our socialists run. I suspicion which the Americans are trying to use to turn us against

our Russian friends and to be the general official press position that the Americans have blown this up into more than it is in order to try to play this as against the Soviet Union and that therefore we resent over doing it. I think there might be a slight tendency at the official level to make excuses for also to say that the students are behaving themselves when they're over there and capable of the students who make years and are about to get thrown out who are the ones who get in trouble in the city. Anger has been a little less tendency in the press to pound the USSR on the stand to pound the USA in private. People will get very furious about it because occasionally there are attempts to protect the rest of the image by publishing pictures. Long before this stuff came out the press about the Russians about the trouble in my scout a group of Canadians were beaten up one night and I told Gary in the

restaurant did some the book European boys resented their fooling with the girls and finally came back to Ghana with their heads all swathed in bandages. It didn't appear at the time in the end I think it was sold out later after the must balance dance so that you will get this manipulation by the press in Africa that feels that it wants to go like you know somebody who can over emphasize American race prejudice in the 100 percent got prejudice. Yet you hear the song. What will you see to prove he will raise the issue. For that I would feel that the emergence of the African States has given a very great stimulus to the

whatever black nationalist feeling there were within the American Negro community as it's given here for the first time a group of people have emerged who are obviously negroid who were competently handling themselves at the U.N. and in various other places. And given the fact that we have television now and that there's been a good and good publicity on Africans undoubtedly this must have had an effect on white sectors of American Negro population. I know more about something else which is what the effect of the civil rights movement has had on Africans. And there's a great tendency to feel that to do two things One is to ask yourself why is it that American Negroes are fighting so hard to get integrated. The general position is why don't you fight for your rights and instead of getting integrated build solidarity within

your communities as one African said to me in Chicago you've got a million negroes in Chicago and you're running around buying to be integrated thing to do is do. Get yourself together and pool your money and debt. Put up the businesses and then buy some downtown places and in the meanwhile are hard against the surrounding white community so they often leave births and then you'll be running Chicago and they're running up to the lake and way out and then those white people who want to integrate with you can come on back and live in Chicago and they're going wow I ran into this guy to take you over and over and my back was very and said there's a bit of lost dignity and looking about at the great me that thing to do if this is going to get it right you can have and get all the power you can get and then the argument is if you start a few export import enterprises in Harlem maybe we can give you an assistant. Now the second thing is a tendency to

say that the epoch of nonviolence is past this may be a little bit behind the fading of Malcolm X. After all nothing makes it right. And I think at this epoch as opposed to five years ago in Africa there's a general tendency to say why do you people still let people keep you around. I think Birmingham change the impact of the pictures got all over Africa. As I said our policy is not to live by them but to tell the truth. There for us I talk about Birmingham attempted to explain it. I think that dog dead dog biting at the young people of birth death as much as anything to heighten the literate Africans position on all these matters is to say that the POINT is coming which you should you know it does policeman then fight back. I did notice a change within the last year and a half. I go back to feeling that the stages come maybe when American negro should drop in nonviolence and fight it out so that one has been able to see where

say a year and a half ago there was a great glorification of the Freedom Riders. I think there's somewhat less of that. I don't know how long he was on a plane. Mississippi St. Augustine Florida got the first place to say we are not perfect. No country is that ever since the beginning. Ever since we fought a civil war we've been trying to widen the areas of debate and therefore that the freedom Riney and all the rest becomes a part of the process that typically American process of petition protest and pressure. Sometimes they'll get a little piece on the suffragette movement for him and would just say the women use these methods after all women didn't get the right to vote the USA in 1920 and they had to push for it the same way the freedom writers are doing it now. You admit that there are flaws and hurt from the past. You admit embarrassing gaps between precept and practice and then you always say. However

the federal government of the USA stand silently against these blemishes on the national care and you can always end up a broadcast for Africa by saying this is not true in South Africa where the federal government is responsible for trying to tighten up the pressure. I would say this is our general line that the federal government is trying as hard as it can to loosen up. I would say yeah the Little Rock gets referred to a great deal because from the African point of view this was it. You know the American government sending the soldiers in I would be willing to wager you that today the presence of the 200 sailors in Philadelphia Mississippi will be the big item which will be played in not only the African press but the European press that Lyndon Johnson was willing to despite the fact that full water would say this is interference in local welfare has sent in federal force. And we may not play this up on the side that maybe this is why Congress has a law

that you aren't supposed to show any pictures in the U.S. which have been made for showing overseas you know the USA isn't allowed to show its products on the site because we manage to emphasize different things over there I think what gets emphasized in the federal government is willing to send in federal force if necessary and if you do it this is the key to the American propaganda I think abroad on the right track is willing if necessary to throw the whole weight of military power and everything else in the final analysis here and trying to practice a veil of race prejudice in the south. This is not something which share it's politic to say to the American public that strongly and I'm not sure whether your reality will ultimately or whether it will not.