The Council on African Affairs (CAA), formed in 1937, was perhaps the first U.S. solidarity organization in support of African struggles against colonialism and apartheid. It was a largely African-American organization which was centered in Harlem. Max Yergan, who was the first African-American to work for the YMCA in South Africa and had contact...
The Council on African Affairs (CAA), formed in 1937, was perhaps the first U.S. solidarity organization in support of African struggles against colonialism and apartheid. It was a largely African-American organization which was centered in Harlem. Max Yergan, who was the first African-American to work for the YMCA in South Africa and had contact with Govan Mbeki and other members of the African National Congress, served as Executive Director of CAA. In 1943 William Alphaeus Hunton became Educational Director of CAA during a one-year leave of absence from Howard University. The following year, Hunton resigned from his job as a professor and moved to New York. When Yergan resigned, Hunton additionally assumed the role of Executive Director - assuring, often alone, the functioning of the organization until its dissolution in 1955. (Yergan moved to the right and eventually collaborated with the FBI against the CAA.) Other prominent members included W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. and Mary McLeod Bethune. The CAA sought to educate the public about the history of Africa and its struggle against colonialism and imperialism. CAA published a monthly bulletin,
New Africa, and a regular newsletter,
Spotlight on Africa, which featured in-depth stories on Africa by renowned scholars including Du Bois and Hunton. One of CAA’s first campaigns was against invasion by Italian fascist forces of Ethiopia and later the partition of the former Italian colonies in East Africa by the NATO powers in 1949. The Council mounted effective public campaigns in and raised funds around specific issues such as the Campaign of Defiance Against Unjust Laws in South Africa, against the jailing of African leaders in Kenya and South Africa, in support of workers’ struggles in South Africa, Nigeria and Ghana and for the end of South Africa’s mandate over South West Africa (Namibia). Tens of thousands attended mass rallies at Madison Square Garden and Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. But the emergence of the Cold War and activities of the House Un-American Activities Committee crippled the work of the Council. Robeson, Du Bois and Hunton were Marxists or left leaning and refused to dissociate themselves from friends in the U.S. Communist Party. The CAA also refused to back off of its criticism of race relations and segregation in the U.S., supported African struggles against colonialism and remained critical of U.S. policy towards Africa. The CAA and its officers were repeatedly investigated and accused of subversion, being unpatriotic and disloyalty. In 1954 Hunton was subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury and was forced to surrender all documents detailing CAA’s relationship with the African National Congress. In 1955 the CAA dissolved. (Sources: "The 1950s: Africa Solidarity Rising" by Lisa Brock in
No Easy Victories: African Liberation and American Activists Over a Half Century, 1950-2000 and the finding aid for the
William Alphaeus Hunton papers)
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