Horace R. Cayton Responds to the ADL–1958
The Anti-Defamation League reported that it detected a “rising attempt to agitate the Negro community with anti-Semitic propaganda,” which it blamed on “Arab money.” They complained that Blacks were finding common interests with Kenya, Ghana, and other African countries and movements, and that the Black press was full of stories along these lines. Black writer Horace R. Cayton responded (Pittsburgh Courier, May 3, 1958)
If the anti-Defamation League knew more about Negroes they would have been familiar with the fact that Negroes have always been interested in Africa. It is the land of their forefathers. There have been many plans throughout the history of the American Negro to return to Africa, several sponsored by the United States government itself. American Negroes did migrate in some numbers to Liberia.
Marcus Garvey founded the only Negro mass movement on a program to effect the transporting of hundreds of thousands of American Negroes to the dark continent. More recently the Negro community of the United States has watched with interest and followed with enthusiasm each country in Africa that gained political freedom: Liberia, Eritrea, Tunisia, Morocco, the Sudan and Ghana.
American Negroes realize that the color line of Western European civilization has to be broken before the special color discrimination in the United States is finally crushed, that there must be a world assault upon color discrimination just as there must be one against anti-Semitism. And this interest and knowledge does not come from Arab propaganda.
THERE is a feeling which dominates, and obsesses, the Jewish community that anyone who criticizes Israel is anti-Semitic, or that anyone sympathizing with the aspirations of the Arab world is against the Jews. For one, I have supported the fight of Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria for years.
Further I was, and am, sharply critical of Israel for joining forces with England and France, and invading Egypt during the Suez crisis. Israel is not known for an anti-colonial foreign policy.
As to James Lawson: “He may be a ‘rabid anti-Semitic,’ but I knew him for years at the United Nations and he never approached the subject with me. He is passionately pro-African and pro-Arab. This may place him on some questions against Israel. But this is a legitimate political position: Israel, England, France, the Soviet Union and the United States have all acted shabbily in North Africa’s fight for Independence.”[1]
[1] Horace R. Cayton, “World at Large,” Pittsburgh Courier, May 3, 1958.
