Council on African Affairs (1942-1955)

March 04, 2007 
/ Contributed By: Daren Salter

|

Council on African Affairs protest

Courtesy of Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

The Council on African Affairs (CAA) was founded in 1942 and quickly emerged as the leading voice of anti-colonialism and Pan-Africanism in the United States and abroad before becoming a casualty of Cold War liberalism and anti-communism in the early 1950s. Paul Robeson served as the CAA’s chairman for most of its existence while W.E.B. Du Bois served as vice-chair and head of the Africa Aid Committee. Alphaeus Hunton, Jr. was the group’s executive director, editor of its publication, New Africa, and the motive force behind much of its activity and vision. Despite its radical politics, in the early and mid 1940s the Council on African Affairs benefited from the support of a range of liberal activists and intellectuals, including E. Franklin Frazier, Mary McLeod Bethune, and Rayford Logan, indicating the widespread appeal of its program and message.

The Council on African Affairs articulated and promoted a fundamental linkage between the struggle of African Americans and the fate of colonized peoples in Africa, Asia, and elsewhere in the world. Among a host of other campaigns, it lobbied the federal government and the United Nations and lent material support on behalf of Indian independence, striking trade unionists in Nigeria, and African famine relief, all while publicizing the connections between these campaigns and its larger critique of colonialism and capitalism. The CAA’s most significant work involved South Africa, where it supported striking miners and helped direct worldwide attention to the African National Congress’s struggle against the Union of South Africa government and its implementation of racial apartheid.

The Council on African Affairs advocated an internationalization of domestic civil rights, support for African liberation groups, and a non-aligned stance on the part of developing nations toward the Cold War superpowers. Combined with many CAA leaders’ past and current associations with the Communist Party, this position had become politically untenable by the early 1950s. Liberal supporters abandoned the CAA and the federal government cracked down on its operations. In 1953 the CAA was charged with subversion under the McCarran Act. Its principle leaders, including Robeson, Du Bois, and Hunton, were subjected to harassment, indictments, and in the case of Hunton, imprisonment. Under the weight of internal disputes, government repression, and financial hardships, the Council on African Affairs disbanded in 1955.

About the Author

Author Profile

Daren Salter is a PhD candidate in American history at the University of Washington. He received a Masterโ€™s Degree in American History from San Francisco State University, where he was named the History Departmentโ€™s Distinguished Graduate Student for 2004. A student of race, labor, and radicalism, Salterโ€™s essay, โ€œLegacy of Paradox: The Communist Party, Civil Rights, and the Politics of Race in the Pacific Northwest, 1928-1945,โ€ was awarded the History Departmentโ€™s York-Mason Prize for outstanding graduate essay on African Americans in the West in 2006. He is a past Fellow at the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies and was a project coordinator and Associate Editor for the Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project from 2005-2009. He currently teaches Humanities at the Northwest School in Seattle.

CITE THIS ENTRY IN APA FORMAT:

Salter, D. (2007, March 04). Council on African Affairs (1942-1955). BlackPast.org. https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/council-african-affairs-1942-1955/

Source of the Author's Information:

Penny M. Von Eschen, Race Against Empire:ย  Black Americans and
Anticolonialism,
1937-1957 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997);
Hollis R. Lynch, Black American Radicals and the Liberation of Africa: The Council of African Affairs, 1937-1955 (Ithaca:ย  Africana Studies
and Research Center, Cornell University, 1978).

Further Reading