Solidarity in Three Acts: Narrating US black freedom movements in China, 1961–66

Abstract

AbstractThe political campaigns and events that comprised the US civil rights movement, as well as the urban race riots that coloured the 1960s, garnered widespread public attention and press coverage within the People's Republic of China (PRC). In the years between the Sino-Soviet Split in 1961 and the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, China strove to substantiate its commitment to US black liberation in three key respects: consistent news reporting, sentimental receptions of visiting black activists, and local gatherings that publicized up-to-date information on US anti-racist struggles and featured ordinary citizens sharing notes of empathy. This multidimensional Chinese engagement of US black freedom struggles helped to cement both intra-national and international solidarities. The party state, its mouthpieces, and everyday students and workers echoed Mao Zedong's dictum that racial discrimination was a matter of class struggle. Embedded within their observations was a critical analysis of African American history and social movements in relationship to US capitalism. Their narrations of black resistance and Afro-Asian solidarity, while intimately bound up with nation-state interests, shed light on the intricate nexus of race, revolution, and international class struggle that defined the global Cold War.