For many, independence from the conflict between the two world superpowers was as important as freedom from colonization under France or Britain. This chapter charts the possibilities that key African American and francophone black intellectuals explored in tandem through their connections to the journal and publishing house Présence Africaine in the years from 1956 through 1960. The work of thinkers such as Aimé Césaire, Richard Wright, Frantz Fanon and W. E. B Du Bois directly shaped the relationship between the Republics of the United States and France and formed contemporary notions of the relationship between politics and culture in staking civic rights claims in the Western framework. Here, the thought of these black thinkers - distilled from congress transcripts, journal articles, private correspondence and published monographs – is mapped out in terms of US State Department and French Colonial Office surveillance of their efforts and each country's approaches to decolonization. Not only does this illuminate the work of understudied figures such as Alioune Diop, Christine Yandé Diop, Mercer Cook and James Ivy but it also shows the ways that their work directly shaped the relationship between the Republics of the United States and France as well as contemporary notions of citizenship rights.

The post-war era began with optimism and the hope of liberty for all but it did not last. Between 1945 and 1947, the atrocities of the Nazi death camps received significant public attention in the United States. Very quickly, however, the horror was assimilated into a narrative of a particular Nazi identity, rooted in flawed domestic politics. This chapter charts the ways that black intellectuals, caught at the crossroads of race and republican values which enmeshed in the Cold War clash between communism and capitalism, fought against “an American brand” of fascism to realize the democratic potential of the French Union and the United States. Thinkers such as Aimé Césaire, Claude McKay and Langston Hughes – all of whom had compared Nazism with US Jim Crowism and European colonization during the war - were quick to point to the hollowness of a victory rhetoric while there were no universally guaranteed rights. As far as they were concerned, the end of World War II, far from vanquishing fascism once and for all, had merely shifted the battle lines. These men and women aired their views through a variety of mediums, from speeches on the Senate floor through to poetry and political petitions. This chapter brings these diverse sources together, often for the first time, to illustrate their visions for a post-war order.