1/The history of protests for racial equality is intertwined with global history from post-WWII decolonization and civil rights to national self-determination and black power. Then and now, these are global movements, not simply local or national. nytimes.com/2020/06/06/wor…
2/ In 1930s, US black newspapers covered anti colonial struggles in Ethiopia. In 1940s: India. They had correspondents in Berlin, London, Delhi.
3/ The great sociologist Horace Cayton reported from Chicago, where he was working on the landmark book, Black Metropolis, that he heard “India discussed in poolrooms on South State Street...”
4/ footnote: This quote comes from my book, Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North, which provides a lot of the backstory for the 2020 protests indiebound.org/book/978081297…
5/ In the 40s and 50s, advocates of civil rights grappled with the Cold War, which shaped and constrained activism at home. (On this, see @marydudziak, Penny von Eschen, @ProfCAnderson and more).
6/ and, as is well known, the Congress of Racial Equality, and the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. were deeply inspired by Gandhi.
7/ King and so many other activists also closely followed independence struggles in Asia and Africa.
8/ And early black power activists (later too) tied the US black freedom struggle to anti-imperialist movements in Africa and Asia.
9/ In the 60s and 70s, there was a circulation of ideas (and people) between places as far flung as Algeria, Kenya, the Congo, Quebec, Okinawa, and the US. (Props to Nico Slate, among others).
10/ In this context, black power and civil rights activists, for all of their differences, linked Vietnam and Harlem, the Mekong Delta and Mississippi.
11/ Protests in US—like today’s—inspired protests abroad and vice versa.
12/ Moving forward through time, after the death of Michael Brown at the hands of a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, and the rise of #BLM, activists in Paris took on racial profiling and held their hands up, like Brown and the BLM protestors who protested his death
13/ In other words, the globalization of the #Floyd protests is part of a long history. Fin.
14/ And their precursors, black internationalist women, discussed by @KeishaBlain and others.
15/ A quick snapshot of a very important history with credits to the above, plus Michael West, @GilmoreGlenda, Robin Kelley, CLR James, Tim Borstelmann, @PenielJoseph, Dayo Gore, and so, so many more.
