African-Americans' analysis of, and interest in, foreign affairs represents a rich and dynamic legacy, and this work provides a cutting edge insight into this neglected aspect of US foreign affairs. In addition to extending the parameters of US foreign policy literature to include race and ethnicity, the book documents case-specific analyses of the evolutionary development of the African American foreign affairs network (AAFAN). Whilst the examination of race in regard to the construction of US foreign policy is significant, this book also provides a cross disciplinary approach which utilises historical and political science methods to paint a more realistic appraisal of US foreign policy. Including analysis of original archival evidence, this theoretically informed work seeks to transcend the standard mono-disciplinary approach which overestimates the separation between domestic and foreign affairs. The unique approach of this work will add an important dimension to a newly emerging field and will be of interest to scholars in ethnic and racial studies, American politics, US foreign policy and US history.
African Americans have a long history of active involvement and interest in international affairs, but their efforts have been largely ignored by scholars of American foreign policy. Gayle Plummer brings a new perspective to the study of twentieth-century American history with her analysis of black Americans' engagement with international issues, from the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 through the wave of African independence movements of the early 1960s. Plummer first examines how collective definitions of ethnic identity, race, and racism have influenced African American views on foreign affairs. She then probes specific developments in the international arena that galvanized the black community, including the rise of fascism, World War II, the emergence of human rights as a factor in international law, the Cold War, and the American civil rights movement, which had important foreign policy implications. However, she demonstrates that not all African Americans held the same views on particular issues and that a variety of considerations helped shape foreign affairs agendas within the black community just as in American society at large.
A fascinating look at a previously ignored piece of our nation's history, Black Diplomacy covers integration of the State Department after 1945 and the subsequent appointments of Black ambassadors to Third World and African nations. In seven illuminating chapters, Krenn covers the efforts to integrate the State Department; the setbacks during the Eisenhower years; and the gains achieved during the administrations of JFK and LBJ. Not content with simply using traditional sources (federal and other governmental agency records), he gained fresh insights from the papers of the NAACP, African American newspapers, and journals of the period. He also conducted original interviews with Edward Dudley (America's first black ambassador), Richard Fox, Horace Dawson, Ronald Palmer, and Terrence Todman (never before interviewed--ambassador to six nations beginning in 1952, and an assistant secretary of state). This unique look at the period will be of interest to anyone attempting to understand both the history of the civil rights movement in the U.S. and America's Cold War relations with underdeveloped nations during the quarter century after World War II.
This volume traces the modern critical and performance history of this play, one of Shakespeare's most-loved and most-performed comedies. The essay focus on such modern concerns as feminism, deconstruction, textual theory, and queer theory.
Revealing the central yet intentionally obliterated role of Africa in the creation of modernity, Born in Blackness vitally reframes our understanding of world history. Traditional accounts of the making of the modern world afford a place of primacy to European history. Some credit the fifteenth-century Age of Discovery and the maritime connection it established between West and East; others the accidental unearthing of the “New World.” Still others point to the development of the scientific method, or the spread of Judeo-Christian beliefs; and so on, ad infinitum. The history of Africa, by contrast, has long been relegated to the remote outskirts of our global story. What if, instead, we put Africa and Africans at the very center of our thinking about the origins of modernity? In a sweeping narrative spanning more than six centuries, Howard W. French does just that, for Born in Blackness vitally reframes the story of medieval and emerging Africa, demonstrating how the economic ascendancy of Europe, the anchoring of democracy in the West, and the fulfillment of so-called Enlightenment ideals all grew out of Europe’s dehumanizing engagement with the “dark” continent. In fact, French reveals, the first impetus for the Age of Discovery was not—as we are so often told, even today—Europe’s yearning for ties with Asia, but rather its centuries-old desire to forge a trade in gold with legendarily rich Black societies sequestered away in the heart of West Africa. Creating a historical narrative that begins with the commencement of commercial relations between Portugal and Africa in the fifteenth century and ends with the onset of World War II, Born in Blackness interweaves precise historical detail with poignant, personal reportage. In so doing, it dramatically retrieves the lives of major African historical figures, from the unimaginably rich medieval emperors who traded with the Near East and beyond, to the Kongo sovereigns who heroically battled seventeenth-century European powers, to the ex-slaves who liberated Haitians from bondage and profoundly altered the course of American history. While French cogently demonstrates the centrality of Africa to the rise of the modern world, Born in Blackness becomes, at the same time, a far more significant narrative, one that reveals a long-concealed history of trivialization and, more often, elision in depictions of African history throughout the last five hundred years. As French shows, the achievements of sovereign African nations and their now-far-flung peoples have time and again been etiolated and deliberately erased from modern history. As the West ascended, their stories—siloed and piecemeal—were swept into secluded corners, thus setting the stage for the hagiographic “rise of the West” theories that have endured to this day. “Capacious and compelling” (Laurent Dubois), Born in Blackness is epic history on the grand scale. In the lofty tradition of bold, revisionist narratives, it reframes the story of gold and tobacco, sugar and cotton—and of the greatest “commodity” of them all, the twelve million people who were brought in chains from Africa to the “New World,” whose reclaimed lives shed a harsh light on our present world.
Since the dawn of the 21st century, transnational terrorism has compelled increased American strategic engagement with Africa. Further, with the 2008 election of President Barack Obama, America's first black president and one with an African heritage, there was greater African expectation that a drastic new course in the United States' African policy would emerge. Washington was now expected to engage Africa in a more robust manner than in the past. In nine well-researched essays authored by contributors from a range of disciplines, this book articulates some of the dynamic forces driving contemporary relationships between the United States and Africa. The volume offers a fresh perspective to salient issues defining US-African relations in the twenty-first century such as health, trade, sustainable development, counter-terrorism, military and strategic partnership, conflict resolution, and democratization and good governance. Scholars, foreign policy analysts and policymakers, students, and the general reader interested in diplomatic history and international relations would find this work indispensable. This book is part of the African World Series, edited by Toyin Falola, Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities, University of Texas at Austin. "The question of what Africa should mean to the United States and vice-versa has again come to the fore of critical discussion, especially since President Barack Obama became the President of the United States. Often at the centre of the debate is what should be the extent (or intent) of the relationship. The chapters in this book take a bold attempt at addressing some of these issues and provide a compelling study for which we should be grateful." -- Abiodun Alao, King's College London "A particular strength of the work is its multi-disciplinary approach...[the book] is a useful addition to an understanding of the many opportunities and challenges vis-à-vis the United States and Africa. Students, scholars, and general readers alike should benefit from its detailed exploration of the relationship between US foreign policy in Africa and the contributors' cogent suggestions for improving upon that important relationship in the future." -- William A. Taylor, Angelo State University
Andrew Young: Civil Rights Ambassador explores the rising influence of race in foreign relations as it examines the contributions of this African American activist, politician, and diplomat to U.S. foreign policy. Young used his positions as a member of the United States House of Representatives (1973D77), U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations (1977D79), and mayor of Atlanta during the 1980s to further the cause of race in diplomatic affairs and to bring an emphasis to United States relations with Africa. Author Andrew DeRoche begins his study of Young by looking at his formative years as a top assistant to Martin Luther King in the 1960s. It was during this period that Young developed his philosophy and his tactics. Young was committed to working for racial justice around the globe and he was willing to meet with all sides in any conflict. One of the few books that focuses on the influence of race in U.S. foreign policy, Andrew Young: Civil Rights Ambassador is informative reading for those interested in diplomatic history and African American history.
Thurgood Marshall became a living icon of civil rights when he argued Brown v. Board of Education before the Supreme Court in 1954. Six years later, he was at a crossroads. A rising generation of activists were making sit-ins and demonstrations rather than lawsuits the hallmark of the civil rights movement. What role, he wondered, could he now play? When in 1960 Kenyan independence leaders asked him to help write their constitution, Marshall threw himself into their cause. Here was a new arena in which law might serve as the tool with which to forge a just society. In Exporting American Dreams , Mary Dudziak recounts with poignancy and power the untold story of Marshall's journey to Africa. African Americans were enslaved when the U.S. constitution was written. In Kenya, Marshall could become something that had not existed in his own country: a black man helping to found a nation. He became friends with Kenyan leaders Tom Mboya and Jomo Kenyatta, serving as advisor to the Kenyans, who needed to demonstrate to Great Britain and to the world that they would treat minority races (whites and Asians) fairly once Africans took power. He crafted a bill of rights, aiding constitutional negotiations that helped enable peaceful regime change, rather than violent resistance. Marshall's involvement with Kenya's foundation affirmed his faith in law, while also forcing him to understand how the struggle for justice could be compromised by the imperatives of sovereignty. Marshall's beliefs were most sorely tested later in the decade when he became a Supreme Court Justice, even as American cities erupted in flames and civil rights progress stalled. Kenya's first attempt at democracy faltered, but Marshall's African journey remained a cherished memory of a time and a place when all things seemed possible.
