A “Well-Loaded” Question: Pakistanis, Black Diplomacy, and Afro-Asian Anticolonialism

Abstract

At 5:30 in the evening of March 4, 1959, Dr. John Reuben Sheeler stood in front of the Karachi Press Club and delivered a lecture titled, “The American Negro Today.”1 Sheeler told the audience of thirty-five Pakistani press corps members that despite a long history of disfranchisement and lynching in the U.S. South, World War II was a turning point in according African Americans greater rights.2 One of the journalists retorted, “Is the Negro American aware that he does not have to continue toleration of white man’s injustices, that by color he need [no] longer be a scared minority?”3 Marking the occasion of the sesquicentennial celebration of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln’s birth, Sheeler’s task as professor and cultural ambassador was to teach the history of African Americans, Lincoln, and U.S. race relations.4 The U.S. State Department authorized Sheeler to serve as an American Specialist, with a broader diplomatic purpose of “develop[ing] understanding between nations, especially between America and other countries.”5 Professor Sheeler embarked on a lecture tour of Scandinavia and South Asia from January 26 to May 1, 1959.6 He traveled to Denmark, Norway, and Sweden but his tour commenced in an entirely different place: Dacca, East Pakistan.7 Sheeler remained in East and West Pakistan for a total of six weeks in February and March, delivering twenty-eight lectures about African American life and the evolving civil rights struggle.8 He also met with ten discussion groups, held six newspaper interviews, and convened privately with individuals and small groups throughout Pakistan.9