Through Our Eyes: African American Men's Experiences of Race, Gender, and Violence

2. The Souls of Black Boys

Chapter 2 The Souls of Black Boys A Declaration of Human Rights In the aftermath of World War II, the genocidal atrocities that shocked the world led the Allied Powers of Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States to form the United Nations (UN), a new organization dedicated to international freedom, justice, and peace. To represent U.S. interests, the Truman administration appointed Eleanor Roosevelt as UN delegate. Lending moral and political credibility to the position, she served as the first chairperson of the UN Commission on Human Rights, a body responsible for drafting an international declaration that affirmed basic human rights and fundamental freedoms. This declaration established moral principles that placed the value of life above all else. After considerable debate among member states, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in 1948. For the first time and unlike any other international agreement in existence, the Declaration recognized the inherent dignity and inalienable rights of all humanity. Roosevelt’s commitment, guidance , and persistence were critical to bring this Declaration before a world body for approval. Her unquestionable leadership in this endeavor helped to position the United States as the moral leader of the “free” world. Yet hypocrisy cast a shadow over this well-meaning and unprecedented effort. Again, the ugliness of unbridled racism challenged the veracity of a U.S. claim to moral leadership. While Eleanor Roosevelt was preparing the Declaration for consideration by member states, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), under the crafty guidance of W.E.B. Du Bois, was busy preparing a petition for submission to the Commission on Human Rights. Du Bois meticulously documented the egregious abuses and injustices blacks were experiencing in the United States. Entitled “An Appeal to the World,” the NAACP’s petition was submitted for consideration to the Commission in 1947. It charged the United States with gross human rights abuses against Negroes and requested that the UN investigate its claims. As argued by Du Bois the petition noted: “There is a general agreement that the fundamental human rights which members of the United Nations are pledged 59 to promote without distinction to race include education, employment, housing and health. And it is clear that the Negro in the United States is the victim of wide deprivation of each of these rights” (Anderson, 2006, Transcript of keynote address, p. 3). Because chairperson Eleanor Roosevelt, a “friend of Negroes” and a member of the NAACP board of directors, feared that the United States would succumb to international scrutiny and ridicule, she refused to allow the petition to be placed on the Commission’s agenda for deliberation and action. Excluding the NAACP’s petition denied African Americans, at that time, an important opportunity “to articulate the struggle for black equality as a human rights issue” (Anderson, 2003, p. 276). In an international forum, the United States had once again actively intervened to marginalize the legitimacy of black grievances, and through this omission the country sent a message to the world that black life in America was insignificant. During this postwar period, racial segregation, discrimination, terrorism, and disfranchisement— accompanied by physical and personal violence—were taking an enormous toll on black life, as documented in the NAACP’s petition. Even as the world was preparing to repudiate the “barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind,” racism for many blacks continued to be a seemingly intractable yoke that shaped their daily existence. “African Americans were flogged by Jim Crow and lynching; disfranchised by poll taxes and white primaries; suffocated by ‘goodwill and a white God;’ and impoverished by ‘charity,’ when all they wanted was equality—social, political, religious, and economic equality (Anderson, 2003, pp. 8–9). Eleanor Roosevelt used her moral and political prestige to get the United Nation to affirm the “dignity and worth” of all human beings, as inscribed in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights. And she used that same power to protect U.S. social and cultural interests in maintaining the rigid structures of racial polarization and inequality. But the world was changing: no longer reliant on the largess of friends, African Americans entered the dawn of the modern civil rights movement. Self-determined, they asserted their own right to dignity and worth, as they demanded “freedom, justice, and peace” in America. As boys, the ensuing civil rights struggles set into motion a chain of events that influenced the trajectory of the lives of the men I...