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The Negro Digest: Race, Exceptionalism and the Second World War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 May 2018

NICHOLAS GRANT
NICHOLAS GRANT*
Affiliation:
Department of American Studies, University of East Anglia. Email: [email protected].
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Abstract

This article examines the border-crossing journalism of the Negro Digest, a leading African American periodical, published from 1942 to 1951. The first title produced by the Johnson Publishing Company, the Digest had an international focus that connected Jim Crow to racial oppression around the world. However, while the magazine challenged white supremacy on a local and global level, its patriotic tone and faith in American democracy occasionally restricted its global analysis of racism. Ultimately, the internationalism of the Negro Digest was quintessentially American – wedded to the exceptional status of American freedom and an overriding belief that the US could change the world for the better.

Type
Forum: The US South and the Black Atlantic
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 52 , Issue 2 , May 2018 , pp. 358 - 389
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and British Association for American Studies 2018 

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References

1 Hurston, Zora Neale, “Crazy for This Democracy,” Negro Digest, Dec. 1945, 45Google Scholar.

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid., 46. This is not to say that imperial Japan represented an enlightened alternative to the Allies. Nevertheless, the expansion of Japanese power provided a compelling counternarrative to the racial politics of European colonialism. In addition to this, Japan had consistently made appeals for racial solidarity with black Americans. See Horne, Gerald, Race War! White Supremacy and the Japanese Attack on the British Empire (New York: New York University Press, 2003)Google Scholar, esp chapters 2, 5 and 9.

4 “Introducing …,” Negro Digest, Nov. 1942, 2.

5 Plummer, Brenda Gayle, Rising Wind: Black Americans and U.S. Foreign Affairs, 1935–1960 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 103–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 For information on the rise of the black international press see Von Eschen, Penny M., Race against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937–1957 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997)Google Scholar, chapters 1 and 2.

7 For two excellent recent studies of the African American press during the Second World War see Alkebulan, Paul, The African American Press in World War II: Toward Victory at Home and Abroad (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014)Google Scholar; Michaeli, Ethan, The Defender: How the Legendary Black Newspaper Changed America (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2016)Google Scholar, chapter 15.

8 Johnson, John Harold and Bennett, Lerone, Succeeding against the Odds (New York: Warner Books, 1989), 2–3, 118Google Scholar.

9 Ibid., 120. While the Digest evolved over time in terms of design, the magazine's reprinting of articles alongside specially commissioned pieces essentially remained the same throughout its print run. On the consistency of the Digest’s editorial policy see John H. Johnson, “From the Editor,” Negro Digest, July 1943, back cover; “Editor's Note,” Negro Digest, Nov. 1947, inside front cover; “Editor's Notebook,” Negro Digest, March 1948, inside front cover; “Editor's Notebook” Negro Digest, May 1949, inside front cover.

10 The editorship of the Negro Digest is disputed. In his autobiography, Nitty Gritty: A White Editor in Black Journalism (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1996)Google Scholar, Burns claimed he was the de facto editor of the publication. Johnson's autobiography, Succeeding against the Odds, paints a very different picture where Burns effectively appears as an editorial assistant. Both men clearly played a key role in the development of the publication and it is safe to assume that the production of the Digest was a collaborative effort. As the historian Adam Green has commented, “it seems most appropriate to argue the magazine was, in essence, edited jointly.” Green, Adam, Selling the Race: Culture, Community, and Black Chicago, 1940–1955 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 138Google Scholar.

11 Ben Burns alludes to Johnson's skill at keeping production down costs, noting that the Digest paid between $10 and $15 to reprint articles and never more than $25 for original pieces. Burns, 33, 37.

12 Ibid., 128. The publication was the only black magazine on the War Department's approved publication list and read widely by American overseas servicemen. The Digest also received correspondence from readers in the Caribbean, South America, Europe and Africa who had bought the publication. See John H. Johnson, “Round the World,” Negro Digest, Oct. 1944, back cover; “Cheaper by the Dozen,” Negro Digest, July 1950), back cover.

13 Green, 138. As Penny Von Eschen, 8, has noted, the circulation of leading black publications the Chicago Defender and Pittsburgh Courier more than doubled between 1940 and 1946.

14 Mrs. J. W. Haywood, “The Mailbag,” Negro Digest, Sept. 1951, 97.

15 Notable exceptions include Doreski, C. K., Writing America Black: Race Rhetoric and the Public Sphere (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999)Google Scholar, chapter 4; Green; Hall, James C., “On Sale at Your Favourite Newsstand: Negro Digest/Black World and the 1960s,” in Vogel, Todd, ed., The Black Press: New Literary and Historical Essays (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001), 188–206Google Scholar; Holloway, Jonathan Scott, Jim Crow Wisdom: Memory and Identity in Black America since 1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chapter 2.

16 Burns, 35.

17 This approach was generally welcomed in the black press. For example, see “New Negro Digest Answering Demand,” Pittsburgh Courier, 7 Nov. 1942, 3; S. I. Hayakawa, “Second Thoughts: Happy Birthday to Negro Digest,” Chicago Defender, 16 Oct. 1943, 15.

18 Articles by southern liberals such as John Temple Graves, warning against federal intervention in the region, were printed in the magazine. See John Temple Graves, “Should Negroes Demand Equality Now?”, Negro Digest, Nov. 1942, 49–51; Graves, “Through Southern Eyes,” condensed from “The Fighting South,” Negro Digest, July 1943, 16.

19 For more on the complex relationship between the black press and the American government during World War II, see Alkebulan, The African American Press in World War II, 143–45; Washburn, Patrick, The African American Newspaper: Voice of Freedom, 1st edn (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2006)Google Scholar, chapter 6.

20 The extent to which Digest articles featured in the leading black newspapers of the day hints at the important role the publication played in shaping debates about American race relations. For example, see “‘Opportunity in the South’ – Spaulding,” Pittsburgh Courier, 20 Feb. 1943, 3; “Leaders Plead Cause of Race in Negro Digest May Issue,” Philadelphia Tribune, 8 May 1943, 16; “About Mrs. Roosevelt's Article If I Were a Negro,” Atlanta Daily World, 15 Oct. 1943, 6. Eleanor Roosevelt, “If I Were Colored,” Afro-American, 30 Oct. 1943, 5; “Swedish Author's Race Analysis in Negro Digest,” Chicago Defender, 11 Dec. 1943, 4; “Jim Crow Must Be Jim Crowed, Says Orson Welles,” Chicago Defender, 5 Aug. 1944, 5; “Lists 4 Ways to Beat Bigotry,” Cleveland Call and Post, 30 Sept. 1944, 2; “Americans Feel Whites Are Superior,” Pittsburgh Courier, 6 Jan. 1945, 17; “North Fairer to Negro than Dixie, Magazine Poll Shows,” Chicago Defender, 15 Sept. 1945, 5; “Cayton Names ‘Best’ Cities,” Atlanta Daily World, 21 Sept. 1947, 1; J. A. Rogers, “ROGERS SAYS: Ottley's List of Negro Leaders Is Not Realistic,” Pittsburgh Courier, 22 May 1948, 6; “Columnist Claims Dixieland Must Have Jim Crow,” Atlanta Daily World, 28 Sept. 1948, 3; “KKK Being Laughed to Extinction,” Philadelphia Tribune, 9 Aug. 1949, 9.

21 Gilmore, Glenda Elizabeth, Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919–1950 (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2008)Google Scholar. Hall, Jacquelyn Dowd, “The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past,” Journal of American History, 91, 4 (March 2005), 1233–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Tuck, Stephen and Kruse, Kevin M., “Introduction,” in Tuck, and Kruse, , eds., Fog of War: The Second World War and the Civil Rights Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 3–14Google Scholar. For information on African anti-interventionism in the early years of the war see Aldridge, Daniel W., “A War for the Colored Races: Anti-interventionism and the African American Intelligentsia, 1939–1941,” Diplomatic History, 28, 3 (June, 2004), 321–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Gilmore, 359–69, 384–87; Lucander, David, Winning the War for Democracy: The March on Washington Movement, 1941–1946 (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Patricia Sullivan, “Movement Building during the World War II Era: The NAACP's Legal Insurgency in the South,” in Tuck and Kruse, Fog of War, 71–80; Sullivan, Patricia, Lift Every Voice: The NAACP and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement (New York: The New Press, 2009)Google Scholar, chapters 7 and 8.

25 Gellman, Erik S., Death Blow to Jim Crow: The National Negro Congress and the Rise of Militant Civil Rights, reprint edn (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2014)Google Scholar; Horne, Gerald, Communist Front? The Civil Rights Congress, 1946–1956 (Fairleigh, PA; Dickinson University Press, 1988)Google Scholar; Purnell, Brian, Fighting Jim Crow in the County of Kings: The Congress of Racial Equality in Brooklyn (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2013), 31–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 Plummer, Rising Wind, chapter 3; Von Eschen, Race against Empire, chapter 4.

27 Singh, Nikhil Pal, Black Is a Country: Race and the Unfinished Struggle for Democracy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 109Google Scholar.

28 Melamed, Jodi, Represent and Destroy: Rationalizing Violence in the New Racial Capitalism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, x.

29 Jodi Melamed, “The Spirit of Neoliberalism: From Racial Liberalism to Neoliberal Multiculturalism,” Social Text, 24, 4 (21 Dec. 2006), 1–24, 6; Melamed, Jodi, “W. E. B. Du Bois's UnAmerican End,” African American Review, 40, 3 (2006), 533–50Google Scholar, 536–7.

30 For more on Lerone Bennett and the Johnson Publishing Company see E. James West, “Ebony Magazine and the Making and Selling of Modern Black History,” PhD thesis, University of Manchester, 2016; West, “Lerone Bennett, Jr.: A Life in Popular Black History,” Black Scholar, 47, 4 (2 Oct. 2017), 3–17.

31 Johnson and Bennett, Succeeding against the Odds, 118–19.

32 For Johnson's moderating influence on the Negro Digest see Burns, Nitty Gritty, 34.

33 Ibid, 123.

34 Articles that debated racial disturbances in the North included Thomas Sancton, “North and South,” condensed from American Scholar, Negro Digest, Feb. 1943, 17–18; Frank Hughes, “Why Race Riots?”, condensed from Chicago Tribune, Negro Digest, Aug. 1943; Roundtable, “Is The Negro Problem a Southern Problem?,” Negro Digest, Feb. 1944, 26–28.

35 “Is the Negro Problem Primarily a Southern Problem?”, 25–29, original emphasis. Responses were divided, with US Attorney General Francis Biddle weighing into with the argument that race intolerance “is no longer a matter merely of domestic concern. For it undermines our moral authority as a nation which apparently can profess but cannot practice democracy.”

36 Webb, Clive and Brown, David, Race in the American South: From Slavery to Civil Rights (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), 253Google Scholar.

37 This issue was debated in the August 1945 issue of the Digest. See “Is the North or South Fairer to the Negro?’” Negro Digest, Aug. 1945, 47–55. Also articles such as William J. Norton, “After the Riots – What?” condensed from Survey Graphic, Negro Digest, Oct. 1943, 80.

38 Horace Cayton, “Will Race Riots Go West?,” Negro Digest, Dec. 1943, 63–65.

39 For the effect on the war industry of migration to the North and West see Kryder, Daniel, Divided Arsenal: Race and the American State during World War II (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001)Google Scholar, chapter 4.

40 Cayton, 63–64.

41 Picking up on a similar theme in the 1970s, the journalist John Egerton referred to this process as “the Americanization of Dixie.” Egerton, John, The Americanization of Dixie: The Southernization of America (New York: Harper's Magazine Press, 1974)Google Scholar.

42 Cayton, 64.

43 Other articles in the Digest reinforced this view. For example, an article reprinted from the Chicago Tribune, “Why Race Riots?”, noted that race riots in cities like Detroit were not simply a result of African American migration north, but were also caused by “the simultaneous arrival of southern whites in the city,” as “a strong Ku Klux Klan movement arose.” The article quoted Walter White, who asserted, “The number of Klansmen in Detroit may be small, but the hate they have fanned in the southern white population is immense.” Frank Hughes, “Why Race Riots?”, condensed from Chicago Tribune, Negro Digest, Aug. 1943, 60. Writing in the Pittsburgh Courier, J. A. Rogers came to much the same conclusion when he noted, “Southern Jim Crow is America's greatest evil; the great enemy, the great poisoner of American democracy.” J. A. Rogers, “Rogers Says: Race Trouble Originates in the South and Seeps like Poison into the North,” Pittsburgh Courier, 3 July 1943, 7.

44 Ben Burns claims that the name was changed at Johnson's behest as he thought that southern liberals might be offended. Burns, Nitty Gritty, 34.

45 Rep. James Morrison of Louisiana, “Dixie Drivel,” Negro Digest, March 1943, 60.

46 Ellis Arnall, “Dixie Drivel,” Negro Digest, Nov. 1942, 32; John E. Rankin, “Dixie Drivel,” Negro Digest, Dec. 1942, 44.

47 Other articles that emphasized this point include Graves, “Should Negroes Demand Equality Now?”; Tom Powers, “Shadow of the South,” condensed from Tomorrow, Negro Digest, Aug. 1943, 3–5; Thomas Scanton, “Go North, Black Man!”, condensed from New Republic, Negro Digest, Aug. 1943, 38–39; “Dixie Justice,” Negro Digest, Dec. 1943, 6; David L. Cohn, “Dead-End for the Negro,” condensed from Atlantic Monthly, Negro Digest, March 1944, 33–36; Horace Cayton and George S. Schuyler, roundtable responses, “Should Negroes in the South Migrate North?”, Negro Digest, June 1944, 39–41, 44–45; Stanley Frank, “Jingo John,” condensed from Liberty, Negro Digest, Dec. 1945, 61–63; Odell Griffith, “Back Home in Dixie,” Negro Digest, Sept. 1946, 16–17; Ira De A. Reid, “How the Same Old South Stays That Way,” condensed from Survey Graphic, Negro Digest, April 1947, 13–18; Eugene Griffin, “Report on the South,” condensed from Chicago Tribune, Negro Digest, Aug. 1947, 71–73; Harold J. Laski, “The Tragedy of the South,” condensed from the book The American Democracy, Negro Digest, Sept. 1948, 19–31.

48 The argument that southern segregationists were “un-American” and actively hindering the war effort was reinforced throughout the African American press. See Frank E. Bolden, “‘White Supremacists Are a Nuisance to the Nation's War Effort’ – Bolden,” Pittsburgh Courier, 21 Feb. 1942, 12; “South's ‘Leaders’ Reject Pleas Asking Democracy,” Chicago Defender, 1 Aug. 1942, 15; “Refighting the Civil War,” New York Amsterdam News, 15 Aug. 1942, 6; Earl Brown, “Timely Topics: The Southerners Attack,” New York Amsterdam News, 25 Dec. 1943, 10.

49 Walter White, “Decline of Southern Liberals,” condensed from Chicago Defender, Negro Digest, Jan. 1943, 43; Langston Hughes, “The Case against Segregation,” condensed from Chicago Defender, Negro Digest, July 1943, 46; George S. Schuyler, “What the Negro Thinks of the South,” Negro Digest, May 1945, 54; Richard Wright, “How Jim Crow Feels,” condensed from True, Negro Digest, Jan. 1947, 48.

50 Lassiter, Matthew D. and Crespino, Joseph, ‘Introduction’, in Lassiter and Crespino, eds., The Myth of Southern Exceptionalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 3–24, 7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

51 Matthew D. Lassiter, “De Jure/De Facto Segregation: The Long Shadow of a National Myth,” in Lassiter and Crespino, The Myth of Southern Exceptionalism, 25–48, 29. See also chapters in Theoharis, Jeanne F. and Woodard, Komozi, eds., Freedom North: Black Freedom Struggles Outside the South, 1940–1980 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

52 Melamed, Represent and Destroy, 21.

53 Roi Ottley had also been the editor of the New York Amsterdam News, 1931–37.

54 David R. Jansson, “American National Identity and the Progress of the New South in ‘National Geographic Magazine’,” Geographical Review, 93, 3 (2003), 350–69. Other Digest articles that had a more optimistic view of the South include Virginius Dabney, “Is the South That Bad?,” Negro Digest, July 1946, 53; Hodding Carter, “A Southerner Looks at the South,” Negro Digest, Oct. 1946, 45–50.

55 Roi Ottley, “There's New Hope for the South,” Negro Digest, Aug. 1949, 14.

56 Carlton, David L., “How American Is the American South?”, in Griffin, Larry J. and Doyle, Don Harrison, eds., The South as an American Problem (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995), 33–56, 37Google Scholar.

57 Ibid.

58 Thomas Sugrue demonstrates how black activists in the North used the language of antifascism to draw connections between totalitarianism overseas and racist practices in the United States. See Thomas Sugrue, “Hillburn, Hattiesburg, and Hitler: Wartime Activists Think Globally and Act Locally,” in Tuck and Kruse, Fog of War, 87–102.

59 Singh, Black Is a Country, 103.

60 Gunnar Myrdal, “Book Section: ‘An American Dilemma’,” Negro Digest, March 1944, 91.

61 Mrydal's earlier piece in the Digest attracted attention from other African American news publications. See “Swedish Author's Race Analysis in Negro Digest,” Chicago Defender, 11 Dec. 1943, 4.

62 Gunnar Myrdal, “America's Uneasy Conscience,” condensed from Free World, Negro Digest, Dec. 1943, 37.

63 Carlton, 36.

64 Johnson, Kimberley S., “Jim Crow Reform and the Democratization of the South,” in Lowndes, Joseph E., Novkov, Julie and Warren, Dorian T., eds., Race and American Political Development (New York: Routledge, 2012), 155–79, 167Google Scholar.

65 Myrdal, “America’s Uneasy Conscience,” 38.

66 Melamed, “The Spirit of Neoliberalism,” 6.

67 Fousek, John, To Lead the Free World: American Nationalism and the Cultural Roots of the Cold War (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 9–11Google Scholar; Griffin, Larry J. and McFarland, Katherine, “‘In My Heart, I'm an American’: Regional Attitudes and American Identity,” Southern Cultures, 13, 4 (Nov. 2007), 122–24Google Scholar; Singh, 38–40, 108–9.

68 Beth Bates, “‘Double V for Victory’ Mobilizes Black Detroit, 1941–1946,” in Theoharis and Woodard, Freedom North, 17–40; Rolland-Diamond, Caroline, “‘A Double Victory?’ Revisiting the Black Struggle for Equality during World War Two,” Revue française d’études américaines, 137, 3 (April, 2014), 94–107CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Patricia Sullivan, “Movement Building during the World War II Era: The NAACP's Legal Insurgency in the South,” in Tuck and Kruse, Fog of War, 70–86, 71, 74–80; Sullivan, Lift Every Voice, Chapters 7 and 8.

69 Jason Morgan Ward, “‘A War for States’ Rights’: The White Supremacist Vision of Double Victory,” in Tuck and Kruse, Fog of War, 126–44, 137–38. Langston Hughes's poem “Total War” (1943), circulated through the Associated Negro Press, clearly demonstrates how antifascist politics were harnessed to challenge white supremacy in the South. Langston Hughes, “Total War,” Afro-American, 13 Feb. 1943, 4.

70 J. Saunders Redding, “Southern Awakening”, condensed from Atlantic Monthly, Negro Digest, April 1943, 41.

71 Ibid., 44–45.

72 Ibid., 45.

73 This viewpoint was repeated throughout the black press in this era. See, for example, Langston Hughes, “Klan or Gestapo? Why Take Either: Foremost Negro Author Writes of Devils, Hams, Dixie Drawls and Axis Dictators,” Chicago Defender, 26 Sept. 1942, 4; “Sudetenland in Mississippi,” Chicago Defender, 17 April 1943, 13; Langston Hughes, “Here to Yonder: If Dixie Invades Europe,” Chicago Defender, 24 July 1943, 14.

74 Langston Hughes, “The Future of Black America,” condensed from New World, Negro Digest, Aug. 1943, 3–4, 3.

75 Ibid., 3–4.

76 Benjamin E. Mays, “Eyes on America,” condensed from Missions, Negro Digest, April 1944, 17.

77 Benjamin E. Mays, “How America Exports Race Hate,” Negro Digest, Aug. 1949, 65.

78 Horace Cayton, “Should Negroes in the South Migrate North?,” Negro Digest, June 1944, 41.

79 As Johnson declared in an editorial note in 1943 that reaffirmed the political message of the Negro Digest, “essentially we stand where we started out: ‘Unqualifiedly for the winning of the war and the integration of all citizens into the democratic process.’” John H. Johnson, “From The Editor,” Negro Digest, July 1943, back cover.

80 Corbould, Clare, Becoming African Americans: Black Public Life in Harlem, 1919–1939 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chapter 6; Kelley, Robin D. G., Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class (New York: Free Press, 1996)Google Scholar, chapter 6; Meriwether, James H., Proudly We Can Be Africans: Black Americans and Africa, 1935–1961 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Prologue and chapter 1; Putnam, Aric, The Insistent Call: Rhetorical Moments in Black Anticolonialism, 1929–1937 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2012)Google Scholar, chapter 5.

81 Finkle, Lee, “The Conservative Aims of Militant Rhetoric: Black Protest during World War II,” Journal of American History, 60, 3 (1973), 692–713CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Plummer, Rising Wind, chapters 2 and 3; Slate, Nico, Colored Cosmopolitanism: The Shared Struggle for Freedom in the United States and India (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012)Google Scholar, chapters 5 and 6; Von Eschen, Race against Empire, chapters 1 and 2; Washburn, Patrick, The African American Newspaper: Voice Of Freedom (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2006)Google Scholar, chapter 6; Wynn, Neil A., The African American Experience during World War II (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2010)Google Scholar, especially chapters 2 and 3.

82 Lawrence Martin, “Uncle Sam's Black Caribbean,” condensed from Tomorrow, Negro Digest, March 1943, 53–56; John Beecher, “War Report from Dixie,” condensed from Science and Society, Negro Digest, March 1943, 57–60; Morton Eustice, “Double Bill in North Africa,” condensed from Theatre Arts Monthly, Negro Digest, Dec. 1943, 3–5; “Dixie Justice,” Negro Digest, Dec. 1943, 6.

83 Roundtable, “Is the Negro Problem Primarily a Southern Problem?,” Negro Digest, Feb. 1944, 25–29; Edgar Snow, “Road to Tokio,” Negro Digest, Feb. 1944, 3–4; Alvin Johnson, “Race in the World to Come,” Negro Digest, Feb. 1944, 7–11; “Return of the Natives,” Negro Digest, Feb. 1944, 41–43; Harold Preece, “South of the Southland,” Negro Digest Feb, 1944, 63–66. Henrietta Buckmaster, “The World Watches America,” Negro Digest, Feb. 1944, 67–70.

84 Eboue was regularly heralded in the African American press. See Aldridge, “A War for the Colored Races”, 346.

85 Egon Kaskeline, “Felix Eboue: Free Frenchman,” condensed from Survey Graphic, Negro Digest, Jan. 1943, 39–42; “Dixie Drivel,” Negro Digest, Jan. 1943, 42; Mercer Cook, “World's No. 1 Negro,” condensed from Chicago Defender, Negro Digest, Sept. 1943, 47–49; Walter Anderson, “African Saga,” Negro Digest, Nov. 1944, 64.

86 For more on how Eboue's role in the Second World War was interpreted by African American commentators see Thyra Edwards, “A New Deal for French Africa,” The Crisis, Jan. 1945, 10–12, 29. The NAACP's Walter White wrote to President Roosevelt to try and secure Eboue an invitation to the White House to consult on the war effort in Africa. Walter White to President Roosevelt, 2 Jan. 1943, Records of the NAACP, 1940–55, Part II, Box A3, General Office File, Africa, Eboue, Felix, 1941–1944.

87 For work that explores the interconnected racial histories of the United States, Latin America and the Caribbean see Brock, Lisa, Between Race and Empire: African-Americans and Cubans before the Cuban Revolution (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Horne, Gerald, The Deepest South: The United States, Brazil, and the African Slave Trade (New York: NYU Press, 2007)Google Scholar; Guridy, Frank Andre, Forging Diaspora: Afro-Cubans and African Americans in a World of Empire and Jim Crow (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Luis-Brown, David, Waves of Decolonization: Discourses of Race and Hemispheric Citizenship in Cuba, Mexico, and the United States (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008)Google Scholar.

88 Luis Alberto Sanchez y Sanchez, “Latin America Looks at the Negro,” condensed from Antioch Review, Negro Digest, Dec. 1942, 14–18; James Paul Stokes, “Race Hate Is Greek to Latins,” condensed from Esquire, Negro Digest, May 1945, 41–42.

89 Stokes.

90 Some Digest articles also expressed concern that America was exporting Jim Crow overseas. For example, as the white author Carey McWilliams noted in a piece about Puerto Rico, “Where the color line has been drawn, we have drawn it.” Carey McWilliams, “No Color Line in Puerto Rico,” reprinted from Brothers under the Skin, Negro Digest, June 1943, 35. For other articles that made similar observations see Joseph Julian, “Jim Crow Goes Abroad,” condensed from The Nation, Negro Digest, Jan. 1943, 49–50; Joseph Dynan, “Jim Crow for Export?”, condensed from the Associated Press, Negro Digest, Sept. 1943, 69–70; Ollie Stewart, “My Most Humiliating Jim Crow Experience,” Negro Digest, July 1944, 10; Roi Ottley, “Dixie Invades Britain,” Negro Digest, Nov. 1944, 3–7; Gene Fisher, “My Most Humiliating Jim Crow Experience,” Negro Digest, July 1945, 36; Robert Lucas, “Jim Crow and Jim Fish,” Negro Digest, Jan. 1947, 53.

91 E. Franklin Frazier, “No Race Problem in Brazil,” Negro Digest, Jan. 1943, 17.

92 Ibid.

93 Ruth Benedict, “Nature Builds No Race Barriers,” Negro Digest, March 1943, 17–20; Afrano Coutinho, “Laboratory of Civilization,” Negro Digest, Oct. 1943, 23–27. See also Harold Preece, “Black Brazil,” condensed from People's Voice, Negro Digest, Sept. 1943, 18–21; Dynan; Gilberto Freyre, “Brazil Mixes Its Races,” Negro Digest, Jan. 1946, 61–63; Charles Anderson Gauld, “Race in Rio,” Negro Digest, Aug. 1949, 37–41.

94 For work that compares and contrasts race in the US and Brazil see Hamilton, Charles V., Beyond Racism: Race and Inequality in Brazil, South Africa, and the United States (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2001)Google Scholar; Marx, Anthony W., Making Race and Nation: A Comparison of South Africa, the United States, and Brazil (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Seigel, Micol, Uneven Encounters: Making Race and Nation in Brazil and the United States (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010)Google Scholar.

95 This sentiment was echoed by the African American press in general. As John Robert Badger commented in his Chicago Defender column, “American Negroes today are talking more about imperialism and colonial rule, more about what is happening in far-off lands like Greece and India because they have learned that what happens in distant nations and colonies has a great deal to do with what happens then here at home.” John Robert Badger, “World View: Spotlight on Africa,” Chicago Defender, 6 Jan. 1945, 11.

96 For Du Bois's anti-interventionist politics see Aldridge, “A War for the Colored Races,” 347–48.

97 A total of nine pieces authored by Du Bois appeared in the Digest throughout its publishing run: W. E. B. Du Bois, “Black Voices in the Peace,” condensed from Amsterdam Star–News, Negro Digest, Feb. 1943; Du Bois, “Africa at the Peace Table,” condensed from Foreign Affairs, Negro Digest, Aug. 1943, 75–78; Du Bois, “If I Were Young Again,” Negro Digest, Oct. 1943, 63–65; Du Bois, “Roundtable: Will the Peace Bring Racial Peace?”, Negro Digest, Aug. 1944, 44–45; Du Bois, “Color and Colonies,” condensed from the book Color and Democracy, Negro Digest, Sept. 1945, 65–68; letter from Du Bois, “Parlex-Vous Francais? Da Da, Jovarich,” Negro Digest, March 1945; Du Bois, “Can the Negro Expect Freedom by 1965?”, Negro Digest, April 1947, 4–8; Du Bois, “Progress Report on Negro America,” condensed from New York Times, Negro Digest, May 1949, 19–24; Du Bois, “Paul Robeson: Right or Wrong – Right: says W. E. B. Du Bois,” Negro Digest, March 1950, 9–14.

98 For more on the importance of Africa for Du Bois see Eric Porter, “Imagining Africa, Remaking the World: W. E. B. Du Bois’ History for the Future,” Rethinking History, 13, 4 (Dec. 2009), 479–98.

99 Du Bois, “Color and Colonies,” 66.

100 Sherwood, Marika, Manchester and the 1945 Pan-African Congress (London: Savannah Press, 1995)Google Scholar.

101 Du Bois, “Africa at the Peace Table”, 78.

102 Ibid., 77.

103 Ibid., 78–79.

104 Ibid., 79.

105 Du Bois's analysis of Africa was not without its problems. Although he called for self-government and challenged imperialism, he was sometimes guilty of advancing a paternalistic attitude towards Africa that assumed that African Americans would lead their African cousins to freedom. Porter, 483.

106 Tuck, Stephen G. N., We Ain't What We Ought to Be: The Black Freedom Struggle from Emancipation to Obama (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 222Google Scholar.

107 Burns, Nitty Gritty, 34–37.

108 “Introducing …,” Negro Digest, Nov. 1942, 2. Johnson also outlined his pro-American politics in an editorial in June 1945 where he stated, “Free discussion is the American way and we hope to make Negro Digest a champion of the American way of life.” John H. Johnson, Negro Digest, June 1945, back cover.

109 Eslanda Goode Robeson, “Old Country for Thirteen Million,” condensed from Asia and the Americas, Negro Digest, Jan. 1945, 3.

110 Eslanda Goode Robeson, “Book Section: African Journey,” Negro Digest, Oct. 1945.

111 Robeson, “Old Country for Thirteen Million”, 6.

112 William Seabrook, “Be Kind to Cannibals,” condensed from American Weekly, Negro Digest, May 1944, 63–65; Emil C. Schumacher, “The Sultan's Skull,” condensed from Argosy, Negro Digest, Aug. 1945, 65–66; Commander Attilio Gatti, “Jumping Giants of Africa,” condensed from Mechanix Illustrated Magazine, Negro Digest, Dec. 1945, 25.

113 Corbould, Becoming African Americans, 218–219.

114 For the pressure placed on the black press to be patriotic during the Second World War see Alkebulan, The African American Press in World War II, 143–45; Finkle, Lee, “The Conservative Aims of Militant Rhetoric: Black Protest during World War II,” Journal of American History, 60, 3 (1973), 692–713CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sitkoff, Harvard, “African American Militancy in the World War II South: Another Perspective,” in McMillen, Neil R., ed., Remaking Dixie: The Impact of World War II on the American South (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1997), 7–92Google Scholar.

115 John D. D. A. Dickson, “The Mailbag,” Negro Digest, Dec. 1949, 96–97.

116 Julius J. Gikonyo Kiano, “The Mailbag,” Negro Digest, Aug. 1949, 97.

117 Ibid.

118 Johnson Publishing decided to relaunch the Digest in 1961. Under the editorship of Hoyt Fuller, the new version of the magazine adopted a pan-African aesthetic and became a key text of the black arts movement. On the relationship between the two magazines see Hall, “On Sale at Your Favourite Newsstand.”

119 Von Eschen, Race against Empire, chapter 4.

120 Du Bois, W. E. B., “The Color Line Belts the World,” in W E. B. Du Bois: A Reader, ed. Lewis, David Levering (New York: Henry Holt, 1995), 42–43, 42Google Scholar; Slate, Nico, Colored Cosmopolitanism: The Shared Struggle for Freedom in the United States and India (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012)Google Scholar.

121 Singh, Black Is a Country, 103.

122 Edwards, Brent Hayes, The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

123 The Negro Digest advanced a form of what the philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah has referred to as “rooted cosmopolitanism” that reminds us how the international vision of African Americans was always in conversation with their relationship with the nation. See Appiah, Kwame Anthony, “Cosmopolitan Patriots,” Critical Inquiry, 23, 3 (April 1997), 617–39, 622CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

124 Some readers were critical of the Negro Digest’s promotion of American values. See Edward Peeks, “The Mailbag,” Negro Digest, Oct. 1951, 98.