The National Council of Negro Women and South Africa: Black Internationalism, Motherhood, and the Cold War

Introduction

Founded in 1945, the African Children’s Feeding Scheme (ACFS) was established with the aim of providing black children in Johannesburg with at least one full meal a day.¹ Set up by the white English missionary Father Trevor Huddleston, this initiative was a direct response to the efforts of the apartheid government to slash state-subsidized school meals for nonwhite children.² Relying on voluntary contributions and often “on the brink of financial disaster,” the charitable organization came to represent a small practical challenge to policies designed to dismantle black educational provisions during the early years of apartheid.³

In desperate need of funds and operating in a hostile political environment, by the 1950s representatives of the ACFS began to reach out to overseas organizations that they hoped would be able to offer financial assistance. As part of these efforts, Feeding Scheme officials approached the Washington, D.C.–based National Council of Negro Women (NCNW). In a letter to the African American women’s organization written on July 4, 1955, ACFS organizer Pat Sutten asserted that, “it is our heartfelt wish that your association give our cause your sympathetic consideration, and help us to combat one of the worst evils—Hunger Amongst Children.” Detailing their work in assisting more than five thousand children a day, the letter concluded, “Happily we all know that wherever there are women of goodwill, suffering and misery can be lessened.”⁴ The NCNW responded to this gendered appeal with enthusiasm. Over the next year, the organization dedicated a significant amount of time to the Feeding Scheme, making it the annual cause of its Junior Councils in 1955.⁵ Its members circulated pamphlets, initiated letter-writing campaigns, and held regular meetings to raise funds for the scheme, while in March 1956 the local Manhattan Council hosted Trevor Huddleston at a fundraising event held at the 137^th Street YWCA.⁶

The NCNW’s work with the ACFS is historically significant for a number of reasons, all of which shed light on the changing nature of black internationalism during the early cold war. First, the Council’s efforts on behalf of black South African children serve as an important reminder of the organization’s international outlook. Although historians have noted the NCNW’s global vision, they have generally failed to analyze the race and gender concerns that shaped the Council’s black international agenda.⁷ This has meant that the motivations that led NCNW leaders to forge connections with black women in Africa and throughout the black diaspora have largely been overlooked in accounts of African American anticolonialism following the Second World War.⁸

The Council’s ties with the ACFS are also significant in that they illustrate how the repressive politics of the early cold war shaped transnational black activism. As a moderate anticommunist civil rights organization, the NCNW aligned itself with the United States government when seeking to expand its overseas activities. The Council’s charitable contributions to the Feeding Scheme therefore seems to fit within what historians such as Penny Von Eschen and Gerald Horne have viewed as the general decline of radical anticolonial activism among African Americans following the Second World War.⁹

Responding to the efforts of the U.S. government to limit overseas criticism of its racial record, the NCNW rarely drew explicit links between race discrimination in the United States and South Africa when discussing the Feeding Scheme. In addition to this, their work lacked any specific critique of the U.S. government’s cold war extensive diplomatic, economic, and strategic connections with the National Party that many in the State Department believed represented an important bulwark against the potential spread of communism in southern Africa.¹⁰ While the black internationalism of the NCNW was far from radical, these efforts on behalf of the ACFS nevertheless provide an important insight into how African Americans continued to promote an anticolonial agenda during the most repressive phases of the cold war. The recent traumas of World War II, America’s expanding global influence, and the spread of...