Gandhi, ‘The Coloured Races’, and the Future of Satyagraha: The View from the African American Press

Abstract

W. E. B. Du Bois, the editor of the Crisis, a journal of the ‘darker races’ that was the organ of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, was among the earliest African American intellectuals to take a strong interest in Gandhi. However, the African American press, represented by newspapers such as the Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago Defender, was as a whole prolific in its representation of the Indian Independence movement. This article, after a detailed consideration of Du Bois’s advocacy of Gandhi’s ideas, analyses the worldview of the African American press and its outlook towards the movement in India. It is argued that a more ecumenical conception of the ‘Global South’ ought to be sensitive to African American history, and I suggest that African American newspapers played a critical role in shaping notions of the solidarity of coloured peoples, pivoting their arguments around the Indian Independence movement and particularly the satyagraha campaigns of Gandhi.