The story is simple, powerful, and convincing.  After the onset of the Cold War, fierce anticolonialism emanated solely out of the black left, which paid dearly for opposing U.S. imperial policy.  Paul and Eslanda Robeson, W.E.B. Du Bois, W. Alphaeus Hunton, and even, in his own twisted way, Max Yergan came up against the Leviathan of the Red Scare and lost.  Meanwhile African American liberals, such as the NAACP, turned their backs on Asians and Africans determined to be free, colluded with the Truman Administration’s support of European empires, and, like Judas, received a few pieces of civil rights tokens in exchange for betrayal.

We know this story, which has been told so many times and in so many ways. The problem:  it’s just not true.

Dr. Carol Anderson is an associate professor of African American Studies and History at Emory University. 

Co-sponsored by CSREA, the Department of History, the Department of American Studies, the Department of Africana Studies, and South Asian Studies.