ABSTRACT
Transnational Inklings The period from 1949 to 1954 marks the true break point in the histories of race relations in both South Africa and the United States. In South Africa, the National Party was able to rise to power and quickly consolidate its rule through the rapid implementation of apartheid laws. The legal system would be the key factor in the United States as well, as individuals, groups, and the NAACP and its Legal Defense Fund used the court system to attack “separate but equal.” By 1955, the futures in both countries appeared to be taking dramatically different shape, although no outcome was inevitable. It was also during this time-period that activists and interested observers in each country began paying more attention to what was going on in the other. Black Americans and their white allies in the fight against Jim Crow took notice of the onset of apartheid and especially of the Defiance Campaign. Black South Africans continued their interest in American and especially black American popular culture. True transnational engagement would still be for the future, but the first step was this wave of increased transnational interest. In the early 1950s, Americans interested in human rights were beginning to look beyond America’s borders. The American athlete, entertainer, lawyer, and activist Paul Robeson had become a preeminent spokesman for a human-rights driven international vision. But Robeson, like many human rights activists, was too tainted by his attraction to Communism even for organizations like the NAACP, which roundly condemned his ties to the Soviet Union and to Communist organizations in the United States.1 Robeson’s dilemma was also one that fractured the civil rights struggle that was emerging in the United States. On the one hand, those on the left, including Communists and socialists, were among its most vocal and able potential allies. On the other, the increasingly shrill tenor of anti-Communism that was becoming dominant in the United States meant that mainstream civil rights organizations were forced to make a Hobson’s choice-either shun these potential allies (or at least keep them hidden) or else run the risk of being tainted with Communism and thus being rendered ineffective. Anti-Communism therefore counted among its victims a more ardent internationalist campaign against white supremacy. Nonetheless, when the National Party rose to power black Americans took notice and condemned the deluge of legislation creating the apartheid state.
