Black Global Leadership and the Fight for Justice at Home and Abroad
Black global leadership has shaped freedom movements from Africa to Minnesota. As institutions falter worldwide, renewed unity across the African diaspora is essential.
Vacations are times that hold special meaning for Black Americans. The chance to see new places and enjoy time with family and friends relieves some of the weight that we carry every day. Whether it is a cruise, a beach trip, or a flight to a distant city, that freedom of movement is one of the symbols of the larger freedoms won since 1865.
Stories of Josephine Baker and James Baldwin in Paris have taken on mythological importance, reflecting the ways the pressure of American racism can be escaped, even if only for a few days or weeks.
Recently, historian Gerald Horne emphasized the construction of the Black Radical Tradition as a means of connecting with the African continent and the diaspora to advance the struggle for human rights. Leaders such as Henry McNeal Turner, Mary McLeod Bethune, Paul Robeson and W.E.B. Du Bois opened new doors for liberation through relationships with Aimé Césaire, Léopold Senghor, Miriam Makeba and Kwame Nkrumah, among many others.
After the successful campaign to liberate South Africa and elect Nelson Mandela as the nation’s first president of a free society, attention to these international partnerships has faltered. Icons including Randall Robinson, Bill Fletcher, Angela Davis and Assata Shakur laid a foundation for contemporary Black leadership that too often misses opportunities to expand the roles African American institutions can play in global society.
At the heart of this absence is an unresolved assessment of the impact of Barack Obama as a world leader and cultural icon. Most insights into Obama’s rise as a transnational figure through Illinois politics focus on the fictional creation of Black American presidents in films such as “Deep Impact” and television shows like “24.”
Almost no one mentions the importance of Kofi Annan as secretary-general of the United Nations, despite his critical role in bridging global leadership from Mandela to Obama. Annan’s achievements deserve sustained study: shifting the institution from a focus on peace through negotiations among European nations and the Security Council to a broader peacekeeping mission that amplified the voices of the Global South.
It was this experience that enabled the young Obama to be taken seriously within Democratic Party politics by 2004. Obama himself, along with his wife, Michelle, and daughters, Sasha and Malia, faced an impossible task: upholding the dignity of an office predicated on militarism against the people of Africa, Asia and Latin America, while simultaneously opening new pathways for justice and liberation worldwide.
It is no surprise that journalists and scholars have struggled to explain the organized hatred that has dismantled global democracy since he left office. Obama could not be Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Kwame Ture and Kimberlé Crenshaw at the same time.
Worse, the leaders pursuing his coalition — Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Wes Moore and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — have not yet found ways to succeed culturally or politically with the independent and conservative white Americans who have enabled the current violence shaping U.S. and global politics.
The fractures among people of the African world are visible here in Minnesota. Even as the federal government invades communities and terrorizes families, young African Americans look to social media and encounter hostile exchanges between immigrant voices and Black advocates for foundational and nationalist Black identities.
More troubling, within a state population united by a shared desire for safety and prosperity, the failure to develop the shared visions of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X around a beloved community has become a fatal feature of contemporary politics. There is an immediate need for both unity and diversity in Minnesota, in the United States, and across the world.
Black American history offers unique lessons for this mission, lessons that benefit every society determined to reject fascism and dictatorship.
When our schools engage in discussions about anti-racism, how do we connect those ideas to the realities of national independence in Africa, Asia and Latin America? When communities unite to celebrate Indigenous cultures, how do we reinforce those lessons in our language, particularly by connecting to voices across the Pacific?
When we teach social studies and history, do we place the insights of new research at the center of instruction? When we invest in small businesses and build new media networks, how do we employ and empower the best and brightest from all of our communities in these efforts?
Minnesota holds keys to the future of America and the world. As ethnic nationalists dismantle institutions such as NATO and the United Nations, voices from Minnesota have demonstrated the capacity to imagine new forms of social order rooted in accountability to local families.
It is not enough to simply document attempts to collapse the organizations that defined global peace over the past 80 years. This moment, the 250th anniversary of the United States, offers an opportunity to bring the moral voices of Black Americans and Indigenous peoples into the hearts of humanity.
The stress of an old world being destroyed by tech billionaires and corrupt officials is immense. The fear that leaves societies unprepared for what comes next is even greater. This is the time for the arc of the moral universe to bend toward justice. Unflinching determination is required everywhere.
Walter D. Greason, Ph.D., is a Twin Cities metro historian and Dewitt Wallace Professor of History at Macalester College. For more information, visit www.walterdgreason.com.