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Solidarity in Three Acts: Narrating US black freedom movements in China, 1961–66

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 May 2019

RUODI DUAN
RUODI DUAN*
Affiliation:
Harvard University Email: rduan@g.harvard.edu
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Abstract

The political campaigns and events that comprised the US civil rights movement, as well as the urban race riots that coloured the 1960s, garnered widespread public attention and press coverage within the People's Republic of China (PRC). In the years between the Sino-Soviet Split in 1961 and the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, China strove to substantiate its commitment to US black liberation in three key respects: consistent news reporting, sentimental receptions of visiting black activists, and local gatherings that publicized up-to-date information on US anti-racist struggles and featured ordinary citizens sharing notes of empathy. This multidimensional Chinese engagement of US black freedom struggles helped to cement both intra-national and international solidarities. The party state, its mouthpieces, and everyday students and workers echoed Mao Zedong's dictum that racial discrimination was a matter of class struggle. Embedded within their observations was a critical analysis of African American history and social movements in relationship to US capitalism. Their narrations of black resistance and Afro-Asian solidarity, while intimately bound up with nation-state interests, shed light on the intricate nexus of race, revolution, and international class struggle that defined the global Cold War.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 53 , Issue 5 , September 2019 , pp. 1351 - 1380
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

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References

1 Mao Zedong, ‘Huyu shijie renmin lianhe qilai fandui meiguo diguozhiyi de zongzu qishi, zhichi meiguo heiren fandui zongzu qishi de douzheng de shengming [Statement Calling the World's People to Unite in Opposition to the Racial Discrimination of US Imperialism, in Support of the African American Struggle Against Racial Discrimination]’, Renmin ribao, 9 August, 1963. For the English-language translation, see Zedong, Mao, ‘Statement Supporting the American Negroes in Their Just Struggle Against Racial Discrimination by American Imperialism’, Peking Review, vol. 33, August 1963Google Scholar.

2 Follow-up articles lauded the enormous inspirational effects of the proclamation, asserting that Mao's words have galvanized Africans and African Americans alike. See ‘Maozhuxi shengming xiang huoju yiyang zhaoliang le heiren de xin [Like a Torch, Mao's Declaration Has Alighted Black People's Hearts]’, Renmin ribao, 22 August, 1963. Further newspaper reports of the unfolding US civil rights and Black Power movements frequently alluded to Mao's declaration, affirming the theoretical accuracy and predictive powers of Maoism. See, for example, ‘Meiguo heiren zhengqu ziyou douzheng jinru xinjieduan, zhongguo renmin jianjue fandui meidi de zongzu yapo zhengce [African American Freedom Struggles Enter New Phase, the Chinese People Resolutely Oppose American Imperialism's Policies of Racial Oppression]’, Renmin ribao, 18 August, 1965.

3 ‘Shoudu juxing zhichi heiren geshi langsonghui [Capital Hosts Poetry Recitation Conference in Support of Black Struggles]’, Renmin ribao, 26 August, 1963.

4 See Horne, Gerald, W.E.B. Du Bois and the Afro-American Response to the Cold War, 1944–1963, State University of New York Press, Albany, 1985Google Scholar; Eschen, Penny Von, Race against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937–1957, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1997Google Scholar; Dudziak, Mary, Cold War and Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2000Google Scholar; Borstelmann, Thomas, The Cold War and the Color Line: American Race Relations in the Global Arena, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 2001Google Scholar; Anderson, Carol, Bourgeois Radicals: The NAACP and the Struggle for Colonial Liberation, 1941–1960, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2014CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 The Sino-Soviet Split connotes the ideological and political chasm between the PRC and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics that formally opened up around 1960. As decolonization shifted the battleground of anti-capitalist revolt to the developing world, ‘race and nation’ became the heart of cleavage between the two countries. China, with its arsenal of anti-imperialist slogans and embrace of racial causes, mounted a significant challenge to Soviet influence in the developing world. See Friedman, Jeremy, Shadow Cold War: The Sino-Soviet Competition for the Third World, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 2015, pp. 1–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 See Kelley, Robin and Esch, Betsy, ‘Black Like Mao: Red China and Black Revolution’, Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Society, and Culture, vol. 1, June 1999, pp. 6–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gallicchio, Marc, The African American Encounter with Japan and China: Black Internationalism in Asia, 1895–1945, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 2000Google Scholar; Horne, Gerald, Race Woman: The Lives of Shirley Graham Du Bois, New York University Press, New York, 2000Google Scholar; Wu, Judy, Radicals on the Road: Internationalism, Orientalism, and Feminism During the Vietnam Era, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 2013Google Scholar; Malloy, Sean, ‘Uptight in Babylon: Eldridge Cleaver's Cold War’, Diplomatic History, vol. 37, April 2013, pp. 538–571CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Johnson, Matthew D., ‘From Peace to the Panthers: PRC Engagement with African American Transnational Networks, 1949–1979’, Past & Present, vol. 218, Supplement 8, 2013, pp. 233–257Google Scholar.

7 Frazier, Robeson Taj, The East Is Black: Cold War China in the Black Radical Imagination, University of North Carolina Press, Durham, 2014, p. 212Google Scholar.

8 See Onishi, Yuichiro, Transpacific Antiracism: Afro-Asian Solidarity in 20th-Century Black America, Japan, and Okinawa, New York University Press, New York, 2013CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Zachary Scarlett, ‘China After the Sino-Soviet Split: Maoist Politics, Global Narratives, and the Imagination of the World’ (PhD diss., Northeastern University, 2013), p. 28.

10 Ibid., p. 44.

11 Dikötter, Frank, The Discourse of Race in Modern China, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1992, p. 191Google Scholar.

12 Karl, Rebecca, Staging the World: Chinese Nationalism at the Turn of the Twentieth Century, University of North Carolina Press, Durham, 2002, p. 16CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 See Dower, John, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War, Pantheon, New York, 1986Google Scholar; Slate, Nico, Colored Cosmopolitanism: The Shared Struggle for Freedom in the United States and India, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 2012CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Baldwin, Kate, Beyond the Color Line and the Iron Curtain: Reading Encounters Between Black and Red, 1922–1963, University of North Carolina Press, Durham, 2002CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Odd Arne Westad identifies the critical moment in the early 1960s in which an ardently socialist or Marxist generation of developing-world activists succeeded the ‘original Bandung elite’. Paul Chamberlin, in a similar vein, argues that ‘the Bandung generation … had lost much of its energy by the mid-1960s. Meanwhile, rising on the Third World political scene was a younger set of postcolonial leaders who were less enamored with the vision of state-based development and non-aligned foreign policy than their predecessors’. See Westad, Odd Arne, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Makings of Our Times, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2007, p. 106Google Scholar; Chamberlin, Paul, The Global Offensive: The United States, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, and the Making of the Post-Cold War Order, Oxford University Press, New York, p. 19Google Scholar.

15 This upsurge in factual and analytical command of African American experiences corresponds to the establishment of African American history as a field of study in China. In 1964, African American history was first institutionalized at Nankai University. This took place within the context of state-led academy that strove to challenge the fundamentals of Western imperial-capitalism—a project for which race became a crucial angle of attack. At Nankai's Institute of American History and Culture, African American history comprised one of the three major areas of focus, alongside American diplomatic history and American labour-movement history. Though initial fruits of research were interrupted by the Cultural Revolution, these first years of labour paved the groundwork for the 1977 capstone text, A Brief History of African American Liberation Movements, which represented the culmination of early research in African American history. See Xuegong, Zhao, ‘Nankai meiguoshi wushi nian zai huigui’, in The Institute of American History and Culture (ed.), Nankai meiguoshixue wushi nian/American History at Nankai, a Fifty-year Retrospect, 1964–2014, Nankai University, Tianjin, ChinaGoogle Scholar.

16 Li Zepei, ‘Meiguo yeman de zongzu qishi he zongzu yapo [America's Brutal Racial Discrimination and Racial Oppression]’, Guangming ribao, 15 June, 1963.

17 Ibid.

18 ‘Luobote weilian shuo meiguo heiren yiba ziji tong shijie jiefang douzheng jihe, mao zhuxi shengming ba meiguo heiren douzheng tidao guoji shuiping, shanghai deng shichengshi gezugejie renmin lianxu jihui zhichi meiguo heiren douzheng [Robert Williams Says African Americans Have Already Linked Themselves to the World People's Liberation Struggles; Chairman Mao's Declaration Lifts African American Struggle to Global Scale, Multiethnic Gatherings in Ten Cities Including Shanghai Successively Gather to Support the African American Struggle]’, Renmin ribao, 13 August, 1964.

19 Scarlett, ‘China After the Sino-Soviet Split’, pp. 28–29.

20 The Maoist theories and Chinese experience of revolution held particular appeal for a succession of revolutionary African American organizations in the 1960s, such as the Revolutionary Action Movement and the Black Panther Party, that explicitly linked African American struggles to a global anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist front. These young activists drew from the labours and writings of an older generation of Marxist-inspired diasporic black leftists, while actively consuming the symbols and literature of developing-world leaders including Mao, Che Guevara, Frantz Fanon, and Fidel Castro. The Little Red Book, for example, became a key text assigned to new cadres in the Black Panther Party. See Bloom, Joshua and Martin, Waldo, Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party, Berkeley, CA, University of California Press, 2014Google Scholar; Brown, Elaine, A Taste of Power: A Black Woman's Story, New York, Pantheon, 1992Google Scholar; Newton, Huey P., Revolutionary Suicide, San Diego, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973Google Scholar; Maxwell Stanford, ‘Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM): A Case Study of an Urban Revolutionary Movement in Western Capitalist Society’ (M.A. thesis, Atlanta University, 1986).

21 ‘Meiguo heiren zhengyi douzheng yiding yao shengli—jinian maojuxi zhichi meiguo heiren fandui zongzu qisystshi douzheng de shengming fabiao yizhounian [The African American Just Struggle Must Triumph—Commemorating the One-Year Anniversary of Chairman Mao's Statement in Support of the African American Struggle Against Discrimination]’, Renmin ribao, 8 August, 1964.

22 Ibid.

23 ‘Heda sheyan huanyin Luobote Weilian fufu binzhuhuanju yitang gongzhu meiguo heiren de zhengyi douzheng buduan qude xinshengli, Guo Moruo reqing zanyang Weilian xiansheng xianshen heiren jiefang shiye de geming jingshen, Weilian xiansheng ganxie Mao zhuxi he zhongguo renmin dui meiguo heiren douzheng de zhichi [Large Banquet Welcomes Mr and Mrs Robert Williams, Guests Together Wish the African American Just Struggle Continues to Achieve Victories, Guo Moruo Enthusiastically Praises Mr. Williams’ Revolutionary Spirit and Dedication to Black Liberation, Mr Williams Expresses Appreciation that Chairman Mao and the Chinese People Support the African American Struggle]’, Renmin ribao, 27 September, 1963.

24 Ibid.

25 ‘Fandui meidiguo zhuyi, zhichi meiguo heiren zhengyi douzheng [Oppose American Imperialism, Support the African American Just Struggle]’, Renmin ribao, 11 October, 1963.

26 ‘Luobote weilian xiang zhongwai jizhe toulu meiguo zongzu qishi zuixing, huhuan shijie renmin zhichi meiguo heiren de zhengyi douzheng, zhichu bulun kennaidi yiji naxie jia makesi zhiyizhe he jia zuopai zenyang de xuanchuan heping zhuyi, youdao heiren yao rang renjia ‘dalezuolian zaidayoulian’, dan heiren de douzheng yao jixu xiaqu [Robert Williams Exposes US Racist Crimes to Foreign and Chinese Journalists, Exhorting the World's People to Support the African American Struggle, Pointing Out that Regardless of Kennedy and Revisionist Marxists and Revisionist Leftists Calling for Pacifism, Asking for Blacks to Endure Slaps on Their Left Face Then Their Right Face, the African American Struggle Will Proceed]’, Guangming ribao, 2 November, 1963.

27 Ibid.

28 Ibid.

29 Jian, Chen, Mao's China and the Cold War, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 2001, p. 12Google Scholar.

30 ‘Shengyuan meiguo heiren douzheng langchao bianji quan shijie [A Wave of Support for Black American Struggle Spreads Around the World]’, Renmin ribao, 31 August, 1963.

31 Ibid.

32 Ibid.

33 Frazier, The East Is Black, p. 132.

34 Beyond Du Bois and Williams, noteworthy sojourners in this vein included educator and black feminist Vicki Garvin, journalist William Worthy, and Black Panther leaders Elaine Brown, Huey Newton, and Eldridge Cleaver. All in all, the Black Panthers organized three separate delegations to visit China in 1969, 1971, and 1972. The Panthers partially attribute their turn to community service programming in the early 1970s to Mao Zedong's call to ‘serve the people’, as well as the models of grassroots medical service that they gleaned on visits to the PRC. See Nelson, Alondra, Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight against Medical Discrimination, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2011, pp. 69–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 It is important to note that the PRC handpicked its roster of African American visitors. Before Williams travelled to China, for example, his friend William Worthy, an African American journalist known for his legal battles against the international travel restrictions of the US Department of State, had recruited Williams's help in securing himself and two cinematographers visas to China. Since Worthy's initial travels to China in 1957, all of his subsequent requests for visas had been denied. When Williams brought this issue to the attention of Chinese officials, they ambiguously explained that the PRC's relationship with Worthy was complicated, that Worthy's politics still left much to be desired. See ‘Jiedai meiguo heiren lingxiu luobote weilian quanjia de jihua [Plan for Receiving American Black Leader Robert Williams and His Family]’, October 1964. Original files are from C-36-2-215, Shanghai Municipal Archives.

36 ‘Meiguo heiren lingxiu luobote weilian jiedai gongzuo xiaozu tanlun tiyao [Discussion Notes from Working Group for Receiving American Black Leader Robert Williams]’, September 1963. Original files are from C36-2-175-195, Shanghai Municipal Archives.

37 ‘Jiedai meiguo heiren lingxiu luobote weilian quanjia de jihua [Plan for Receiving American Black Leader Robert Williams and His Family].’

38 Prashad, Vijay, The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World, The New Press, New York, 2007, p. xvGoogle Scholar.

39 Ibid.

40 Founded in 1963 as a clandestine collective, the RAM aimed to train a vanguard for black nationalist revolution—one that would employ guerrilla warfare to liberate blacks from the bonds of colonialism and imperialist capitalism. The RAM drew its membership primarily from the ranks of students and urban intellectuals. See Stanford, ‘Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM)’.

41 ‘Jiedai meiguo heiren lingxiu luobote weilian quanjia de jihua [Plan for Receiving American Black Leader Robert Williams and His Family].’

42 Ibid.

43 Ibid.

44 Ibid.

45 Jeffrey Wasserstrom and Robert Bickers cast into doubt the rigidity of rules barring Chinese entrance into Huangpu Park, the homogeneity of Western attitudes in Old Shanghai, and the existence of the sign itself. However, that has not hindered the proliferation of myths and stories surrounding it. Williams's encounter with the sign did not mark the first time that its symbolism had been deployed to suggest China's historically rooted empathy for black liberation worldwide. In a 1959 speech delivered to a Chinese audience at Peking University, W. E. B. Du Bois, the noted African American communist activist and writer, had drawn resonant analogies between China's semi-colonial past and Africa present: ‘Speak, China, and tell your truth to Africa and the world. What people have been despised as you have? Who more than you have been rejected of men? Recall when lordly Britishers threw the rickshaw money on the ground to avoid touching a filthy hand. Forget not, the time when in Shanghai no Chinaman dare set foot in a park which he paid for.’ See Du Bois, W. E. B., ‘China and Africa’, Peking Review, vol. 2, March 1959, p. 12Google Scholar; Bickers, Robert and Wasserstrom, Jeffrey, ‘Shanghai's “Dogs and Chinese Not Admitted” Sign: Legend, History and Contemporary Symbol’, The China Quarterly, no. 142, June 1995, pp. 244–266CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46 ‘Jiedai meiguo heiren lingxiu luobote weilian quanjia de jihua [Plan for Receiving American Black Leader Robert Williams and His Family].’

47 This Chinese staging of African American protest music to cultivate inter-cultural intimacy illuminates the communist foil to Penny Von Eschen's astute examination of another Cold War tradition: the US Department of State charging black jazz musicians with global travel, as ambassadors for a ‘self-conscious campaign against worldwide criticism of U.S. racism, striving to build cordial relations with new African and Asian states’. See Von Eschen, Penny, Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 2004, p. 3Google Scholar.

48 ‘Jiedai meiguo heiren lingxiu luobote weilian quanjia de jihua [Plan for Receiving American Black Leader Robert Williams and His Family].’

49 Ibid.

50 Williams's positive reflections on the curbside enthusiasm generated by his presence did not take into account evidence that the sort of energy he witnessed was not so much spontaneous as it was choreographed, nor as casual as it was staged. In October of 1956, the propaganda committee of the Shanghai Commission for Receiving Foreign Guests issued a citywide notice entitled ‘To Pay Attention to Black Visitors’. It took note that, even though ‘Our government and our people extend our deepest respect to blacks, because they experience the same oppression under imperialism as we once did, and carry on the same brave, long-term struggle against imperialism. But we also have some individuals who, because they have never interacted with blacks, lack understanding, or out of curiosity, instigated various incidents in Shanghai in which they did not treat blacks with respect or politeness. This includes onlookers laughing at them, shrieking loudly, and even housewives not wanting to shake hands with them, or attempting to keep children away from them’. Original files are from B255-2-90-91, Shanghai Municipal Archives. See also Liu, Philip Hsiaopong, ‘Petty Annoyances? Revisiting John Emmanuel Hevi's An African Student in China After 50 Years’, China: An International Journal, vol. 11, April 2013, pp. 131–145Google Scholar.

51 Ibid.

52 ‘Zhichi meiguo heiren douzheng jinian maozhuxi zhichi meiguo heiren fandui zhongzuqishi douzheng de shengming fabiao yizhounian zuotanhui ji zhichi yuenan renmin fanmeidizhuyi douzheng, Zhang Qi zhuxi he gongren daibiao zai huiyi de fayangao [Speaking Notes for Symposium Supporting the American Black Struggle, Commemorating the One-Year Anniversary of Chairman Mao's Statement in Support of the American Blacks’ Struggle against Racial Discrimination, and Supporting the Vietnamese People's Struggle against American Imperialism]’, Shanghai Municipal All-Workers’ Union, 8 August, 1964. Original files are from C1-2-4392, Shanghai Municipal Archives.

53 During these years, the PRC frequently inferred and cited William Foster as an utmost authority on African American protest and politics. Foster's book, The Negro People in American History (International Publishers, New York, 1954)Google Scholar, though relatively unknown within the United States of America, was translated into Chinese and provided the theoretical foundation for subsequent PRC scholars who pursued research in African American history.

54 Ibid.

55 ‘Shanghai qilun chechang wuhao jiganbing Liu Kunlin de fayan [Speaking Notes of Shanghai Turbine Factory Five-Best Employee Liu Kunlin]’, Shanghai Municipal All-Workers’ Union, 8 August, 1964. Original files are from C1-2-4392, Shanghai Municipal Archives.

56 ‘Tianxia dashi baogaohui qing shi zhengxie fumishizhang Liu Liangmo tongzhi jiang zhichi meiguo heiren fandui zhongzu qishi de zhengyi douzheng [Report Meeting of World Events Invites Deputy Secretary of the Municipal People's Political Consultative Conference Liu Liangmo to Discuss Support for American Blacks’ Just Struggle Against Racial Discrimination]’, 8 August, 1964. Original files are from C26-2-84-152, Shanghai Municipal Archives.

57 Ibid.

58 Ibid.

59 ‘Tianxia dashi baogaohui: meiguo heiren geming xin fengbao [Reporting Meeting of World Events: The New Storm of Black Revolution in America]’, 24 September, 1965. Original files are from C26-2-148-86, Shanghai Municipal Archives.

60 Chao, Ye, Shengdanjie de liwu [Gift of Christmas], Shaonian ertong chubanshe [Youth and Children's Publishers], Shanghai, 1963Google Scholar.

61 Ibid.