The African American Encounter with Japan and China

The African American Encounter with Japan and China PDF Author: Marc Gallicchio
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807860689
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
In the first book to focus on African American attitudes toward Japan and China, Marc Gallicchio examines the rise and fall of black internationalism in the first half of the twentieth century. This daring new approach to world politics failed in its effort to seek solidarity with the two Asian countries, but it succeeded in rallying black Americans in the struggle for civil rights. Black internationalism emphasized the role of race or color in world politics and linked the domestic struggle of African Americans with the freedom struggle of emerging nations "of color," such as India and much of Africa. In the early twentieth century, black internationalists, including W. E. B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey, embraced Japan as a potential champion of the darker races, despite Japan's imperialism in China. After Pearl Harbor, black internationalists reversed their position and identified Nationalist China as an ally in the war against racism. In the end, black internationalism was unsuccessful as an interpretation of international affairs. The failed quest for alliances with Japan and China, Gallicchio argues, foreshadowed the difficulty black Americans would encounter in seeking redress for American racism in the international arena.

The African American Encounter with Japan and China

The African American Encounter with Japan and China PDF Author: Marc Gallicchio
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807860689
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 280

Get Book

Book Description
In the first book to focus on African American attitudes toward Japan and China, Marc Gallicchio examines the rise and fall of black internationalism in the first half of the twentieth century. This daring new approach to world politics failed in its effort to seek solidarity with the two Asian countries, but it succeeded in rallying black Americans in the struggle for civil rights. Black internationalism emphasized the role of race or color in world politics and linked the domestic struggle of African Americans with the freedom struggle of emerging nations "of color," such as India and much of Africa. In the early twentieth century, black internationalists, including W. E. B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey, embraced Japan as a potential champion of the darker races, despite Japan's imperialism in China. After Pearl Harbor, black internationalists reversed their position and identified Nationalist China as an ally in the war against racism. In the end, black internationalism was unsuccessful as an interpretation of international affairs. The failed quest for alliances with Japan and China, Gallicchio argues, foreshadowed the difficulty black Americans would encounter in seeking redress for American racism in the international arena.

African American Views of the Japanese

African American Views of the Japanese PDF Author: Reginald Kearney
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438408544
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
African American Views of the Japanese reveals a page of history long ignored. In black America, Japanese were not always known for racist remarks, Sambo images, and discriminatory hiring practices. Once, thousands of African Americans thought of the Japanese as "champions of the darker races." Ordinary urban ghetto dwellers, share-croppers, and tenant farmers looked to the Land of the Rising Sun for salvation. Some of the greatest leaders in the fight for equal rights and greater freedoms—such as W. E. B. Du Bois, Monroe Trotter, Mary Church Terrell, Ida Wells Barnett, George Schuyler, A. Philip Randolph, and James Weldon Johnson—saw allies in the struggle for equality. The Afro-centric Marcus Garvey shared his stage with the Japanese. In his teachings, Elijah Muhammad taught that the original black man was Asian and acknowledged Japan's role as leader. Here Reginald Kearney examines the role played by Japan and its people in the dreams of prosperity for many African Americans. He also uncovers the shock many blacks felt upon learning that this high regard for the Japanese had been betrayed by discriminatory remarks and actions. But overall Kearney remains optimistic that the African American-Japanese rift can be mended.

Facing the Rising Sun

Facing the Rising Sun PDF Author: Gerald Horne
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 147985493X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
The surprising alliance between Japan and pro-Tokyo African Americans during World War II In November 1942 in East St. Louis, Illinois a group of African Americans engaged in military drills were eagerly awaiting a Japanese invasion of the U.S.— an invasion that they planned to join. Since the rise of Japan as a superpower less than a century earlier, African Americans across class and ideological lines had saluted the Asian nation, not least because they thought its very existence undermined the pervasive notion of “white supremacy.” The list of supporters included Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey, and particularly W.E.B. Du Bois. Facing the Rising Sun tells the story of the widespread pro-Tokyo sentiment among African Americans during World War II, arguing that the solidarity between the two groups was significantly corrosive to the U.S. war effort. Gerald Horne demonstrates that Black Nationalists of various stripes were the vanguard of this trend—including followers of Garvey and the precursor of the Nation of Islam. Indeed, many of them called themselves “Asiatic”, not African. Following World War II, Japanese-influenced “Afro-Asian” solidarity did not die, but rather foreshadowed Dr. Martin Luther King’s tie to Gandhi’s India and Black Nationalists’ post-1970s fascination with Maoist China and Ho’s Vietnam. Based upon exhaustive research, including the trial transcripts of the pro-Tokyo African Americans who were tried during the war, congressional archives and records of the Negro press, this book also provides essential background for what many analysts consider the coming “Asian Century.” An insightful glimpse into the Black Nationalists’ struggle for global leverage and new allies, Facing the Rising Sun provides a complex, holistic perspective on a painful period in African American history, and a unique glimpse into the meaning of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

Facing the Rising Sun

Facing the Rising Sun PDF Author: Gerald Horne
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 147984859X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
The surprising alliance between Japan and pro-Tokyo African Americans during World War II In November 1942 in East St. Louis, Illinois a group of African Americans engaged in military drills were eagerly awaiting a Japanese invasion of the U.S.— an invasion that they planned to join. Since the rise of Japan as a superpower less than a century earlier, African Americans across class and ideological lines had saluted the Asian nation, not least because they thought its very existence undermined the pervasive notion of “white supremacy.” The list of supporters included Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey, and particularly W.E.B. Du Bois. Facing the Rising Sun tells the story of the widespread pro-Tokyo sentiment among African Americans during World War II, arguing that the solidarity between the two groups was significantly corrosive to the U.S. war effort. Gerald Horne demonstrates that Black Nationalists of various stripes were the vanguard of this trend—including followers of Garvey and the precursor of the Nation of Islam. Indeed, many of them called themselves “Asiatic”, not African. Following World War II, Japanese-influenced “Afro-Asian” solidarity did not die, but rather foreshadowed Dr. Martin Luther King’s tie to Gandhi’s India and Black Nationalists’ post-1970s fascination with Maoist China and Ho’s Vietnam. Based upon exhaustive research, including the trial transcripts of the pro-Tokyo African Americans who were tried during the war, congressional archives and records of the Negro press, this book also provides essential background for what many analysts consider the coming “Asian Century.” An insightful glimpse into the Black Nationalists’ struggle for global leverage and new allies, Facing the Rising Sun provides a complex, holistic perspective on a painful period in African American history, and a unique glimpse into the meaning of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

Arise Africa, Roar China

Arise Africa, Roar China PDF Author: Yunxiang Gao
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469664615
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 407

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Book Description
This book explores the close relationships between three of the most famous twentieth-century African Americans, W. E. B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, and Langston Hughes, and their little-known Chinese allies during World War II and the Cold War—journalist, musician, and Christian activist Liu Liangmo, and Sino-Caribbean dancer-choreographer Sylvia Si-lan Chen. Charting a new path in the study of Sino-American relations, Gao Yunxiang foregrounds African Americans, combining the study of Black internationalism and the experiences of Chinese Americans with a transpacific narrative and an understanding of the global remaking of China's modern popular culture and politics. Gao reveals earlier and more widespread interactions between Chinese and African American leftists than accounts of the familiar alliance between the Black radicals and the Maoist Chinese would have us believe. The book's multilingual approach draws from massive yet rarely used archival streams in China and in Chinatowns and elsewhere in the United States. These materials allow Gao to retell the well-known stories of Du Bois, Robeson, and Hughes alongside the sagas of Liu and Chen in a work that will transform and redefine Afro-Asia studies.

The Blacks of Premodern China

The Blacks of Premodern China PDF Author: Don J. Wyatt
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812203585
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
Premodern Chinese described a great variety of the peoples they encountered as "black." The earliest and most frequent of these encounters were with their Southeast Asian neighbors, specifically the Malayans. But by the midimperial times of the seventh through seventeenth centuries C.E., exposure to peoples from Africa, chiefly slaves arriving from the area of modern Somalia, Kenya, and Tanzania, gradually displaced the original Asian "blacks" in Chinese consciousness. In The Blacks of Premodern China, Don J. Wyatt presents the previously unexamined story of the earliest Chinese encounters with this succession of peoples they have historically regarded as black. A series of maritime expeditions along the East African coastline during the early fifteenth century is by far the best known and most documented episode in the story of China's premodern interaction with African blacks. Just as their Western contemporaries had, the Chinese aboard the ships that made landfall in Africa encountered peoples whom they frequently classified as savages. Yet their perceptions of the blacks they met there differed markedly from those of earlier observers at home in that there was little choice but to regard the peoples encountered as free. The premodern saga of dealings between Chinese and blacks concludes with the arrival in China of Portuguese and Spanish traders and Italian clerics with their black slaves in tow. In Chinese writings of the time, the presence of the slaves of the Europeans becomes known only through sketchy mentions of black bondservants. Nevertheless, Wyatt argues that the story of these late premodern blacks, laboring anonymously in China under their European masters, is but a more familiar extension of the previously untold story of their ancestors who toiled in Chinese servitude perhaps in excess of a millennium earlier.

The African American Experience during World War II

The African American Experience during World War II PDF Author: Neil A. Wynn
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 1442200170
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
Drawing on more than thirty years of teaching and research, Neil A. Wynn combines narrative history and primary sources as he locates the World War II years within the long-term struggle for African Americans' equal rights. It is now widely accepted that these years were crucial in the development of the emerging Civil Rights movement through the economic and social impact of the war, as well as the military service itself. Wynn examines the period within the broader context of the New Deal era of the 1930s and the Cold War of the 1950s, concluding that the war years were neither simply a continuation of earlier developments nor a prelude to later change. Rather, this period was characterized by an intense transformation of black hopes and expectations, encouraged by real socio-economic shifts and departures in federal policy. Black self consciousness at a national level found powerful expression in new movements, from the demand for equality in the military service to changes in the shop floor to the "Double V" campaign that linked the fight for democracy at home for the fight for democracy abroad. As the nation played a new world role in the developing Cold War, the tensions between America's stated beliefs and actual practices emphasized these issues and brought new forces into play. More than a half century later, this book presents a much-needed up-to-date, short and readable interpretation of existing scholarship. Accessible to general and student readers, it tells the story without jargon or theory while including the historiography and debate on particular issues.

W.E.B. Du Bois on Asia

W.E.B. Du Bois on Asia PDF Author: William Edward Burghardt Du Bois
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1604737085
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
A selection of the best of Du Bois's vision on the global battle for equality

Beyond The Chinese Connection

Beyond The Chinese Connection PDF Author: Crystal S. Anderson
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1628467495
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
In Beyond “The Chinese Connection,” Crystal S. Anderson explores the cultural and political exchanges between African Americans, Asian Americans, and Asians over the last four decades. To do so, Anderson examines such cultural productions as novels (Frank Chin’s Gunga Din Highway [1999], Ishmael Reed’s Japanese By Spring [1992], and Paul Beatty’s The White Boy Shuffle [1996]); films (Rush Hour 2 [2001], Unleashed [2005], and The Matrix trilogy [1999-2003],) and Japanese animation (Samurai Champloo [2004]), all of which feature cross-cultural conversations. In exploring the ways in which writers and artists use this transferal, Anderson traces and tests the limits of how Afro-Asian cultural production interrogates conceptions of race, ethnic identity, politics, and transnational exchange. Ultimately, this book reads contemporary black/Asian cultural fusions through the recurrent themes established by the films of Bruce Lee, which were among the first—and certainly most popular—works to use this exchange explicitly. As a result of such films as Enter the Dragon (1973), The Chinese Connection (1972), and The Big Boss (1971), Lee emerges as both a cross-cultural hero and global cultural icon who resonates with the experiences of African American, Asian American and Asian youth in the 1970s. Lee’s films and iconic imagery prefigure themes that reflect cross-cultural negotiations with global culture in post-1990 Afro-Asian cultural production.

The Unpredictability of the Past

The Unpredictability of the Past PDF Author: Marc Gallicchio
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822390523
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
In The Unpredictability of the Past, an international group of historians examines how collective memories of the Asia-Pacific War continue to affect relations among China, Japan, and the United States. The contributors are primarily concerned with the history of international relations broadly conceived to encompass not only governments but also nongovernmental groups and organizations that influence the interactions of peoples across the Pacific. Taken together, the essays provide a rich, multifaceted analysis of how the dynamic interplay between past and present is manifest in policymaking, popular culture, public commemorations, and other arenas. The contributors interpret mass media sources, museum displays, monuments, film, and literature, as well as the archival sources traditionally used by historians. They explore how American ideas about Japanese history shaped U.S. occupation policy following Japan’s surrender in 1945, and how memories of the Asia-Pacific War influenced Washington and Tokyo policymakers’ reactions to the postwar rise of Soviet power. They investigate topics from the resurgence of Pearl Harbor images in the U.S. media in the decade before September 11, 2001, to the role of Chinese war museums both within China and in Chinese-Japanese relations, and from the controversy over the Smithsonian Institution’s Enola Gay exhibit to Japanese tourists’ reactions to the USS Arizona memorial at Pearl Harbor. One contributor traces how a narrative commemorating African Americans’ military service during World War II eclipsed the history of their significant early-twentieth-century appreciation of Japan as an ally in the fight against white supremacy. Another looks at the growing recognition and acknowledgment in both the United States and Japan of the Chinese dimension of World War II. By focusing on how memories of the Asia-Pacific War have been contested, imposed, resisted, distorted, and revised, The Unpredictability of the Past demonstrates the crucial role that interpretations of the past play in the present. Contributors. Marc Gallicchio, Waldo Heinrichs, Haruo Iguchi, Xiaohua Ma, Frank Ninkovich, Emily S. Rosenberg, Takuya Sasaki, Yujin Yaguchi, Daqing Yang