African American Anti-Colonial Thought 1917-1937 ed. by Cathy Bergin (review)

"[We] would not for a moment hesitate to ally ourselves with any group, if by such an alliance we could compass the liberation of our race and redemption of our fatherland. A man pressed to earth by another with murderous intent is not under any obligation to choose his weapons. He would be a fool if he did not use any or whatever weapon was within his reach. Self preservation is the first law of human nature."

-The Crusader, 1919

Cathy Bergin's collection of reports and editorials that were published in US-based black periodicals during the interwar period offers readers an overview of this unique time in transatlantic solidarity. Black activists in the US found numerous sources of inspiration for their struggles against institutionalized racism. Domestically, communist and socialist organizations promised, at least in theory, freedom from exploitation and discrimination. The Bolshevist revolution in Russia inspired these appeals, a movement that challenged white supremacy in the US as well as European imperialism in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. The most radical among these activists saw promise of a unified black internationalism that would resist this oppression. Many advocated for forceful responses to racial segregation in the US, juxtaposing the inspirational "New Negro" figure against a conservative politics that favored assimilation. Even the more cautious writers included in this collection saw clear analogies between their fight against racism at home and anti-colonial and anti-fascist campaigns around the world, such as the Irish War of Independence, the Spanish Civil War, opposition to the American occupation of Haiti, and international resistance against the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, a country of great symbolic significance to the African diaspora.

Bergin explains the purview of the collection in its introduction: "It is not my intention to provide a detailed and exhaustive account of the events which shaped these writings. Rather, in identifying key moments which inform and enable these texts, the aim is create a coherent narrative against which to understand their impetus and their power" (2). Given the sheer variety not only of subject matters found in these documents, but also the rhetoric used to articulate race and class consciousness, any editor will face challenges in accomplishing this goal. Readers seeking "a coherent narrative" may need to consult detailed studies of this complex historical period, such as Minkah Makalani's In the Cause of Freedom: Radical Black Internationalism from Harlem to London, 1917-1939 (2011) or Roderick Bush's theoretical analysis in The End of White World Supremacy: Black Internationalism and the Problem of the Color Line (2009). Bergin suggests other critical works as well in her introductory essay. The strength of this collection is that it provides a representative sample of radical black thought during a seemingly unparalleled period of international collaboration. Some of the texts are difficult to categorize because they cover so many topics. To aid our understanding of them, Bergin divides the collection chronologically into two sections, 1917-29 and 1929-37, and then subdivides them by the historical events or movements they address. These sections are useful, though it is not always evident why, for example, some documents have been arranged into the section titled "Transnational Anti-Racism" rather than "Anti-Colonialism and Anti-Fascism." That said, any alternative organization would suffer from similar deficiencies, and Bergin's choices here do not detract from the primary materials; rather, they demonstrate the diversity of topics under consideration.

Bergin's collection is valuable for another reason: it gives readers the chance to survey the diversity of black internationalist thought in the writers' own words. What these documents show is that while black activists were united against anti-black racism, they interpreted and portrayed struggles abroad quite differently. An exchange between Claude McKay and W.E.B. Du Bois in The Crisis demonstrates the tensions between those who viewed the oppression of black Americans as primarily a matter of racism or classism (41-44). The documents collected in Chapter Two clearly show that...