DOC Hidden History of the Kovno Ghetto by From Brand: Bulfinch Pr in History

Description

Unprecedented in scope and detail; Brothers and Strangers is a vivid history of how the mythic Africa of the black American imagination ran into the realities of Africa the place. In the 1920s; Marcus Garvey—convinced that freedom from oppression was not possible for blacks in the Americas—led the last great African American emigrationist movement. His U.S.-based Universal Negro Improvement Association worked with the Liberian government to create a homeland for African Americans. Ibrahim Sundiata explores the paradox at the core of this project: Liberia; the chosen destination; was itself racked by class and ethnic divisions and—like other nations in colonial Africa—marred by labor abuse.In an account based on extensive archival research; including work in the Liberian National Archives; Sundiata explains how Garvey’s plan collapsed when faced with opposition from the Liberian elite; opposition that belied his vision of a unified Black World. In 1930 the League of Nations investigated labor conditions and; damningly; the United States; land of lynching and Jim Crow; accused Liberia of promoting “conditions analogous to slavery.” Subsequently various plans were put forward for a League Mandate or an American administration to put down slavery and “modernize” the country. Threatened with a loss of its independence; the Liberian government turned to its “brothers beyond the sea” for support. A varied group of white and black anti-imperialists; among them W. E. B. Du Bois; took up the country’s cause. In revealing the struggle of conscience that bedeviled many in the black world in the past; Sundiata casts light on a human rights predicament which; he points out; continues in twenty-first-century African nations as disparate as Sudan; Mauritania; and the Ivory Coast.