ABSTRACT
Eslanda Goode Robeson was thinking about South Africa. It was March 1952, and the noted journalist, anthropologist, and activist was writing to Black newspaper editors about the forthcoming April 6 mass meetings called to protest the introduction of new apartheid laws by the country’s white Afrikaner government. Eslanda Robeson’s insistence that the struggle against apartheid and Jim Crow were interconnected had deep roots. Her Black international consciousness was informed by encounters and networks that she had forged on the African continent. The late 1940s and 1950s ushered in a new era of activism in South Africa. Following the rise to power of the National Party, the ANC moved towards a political strategy of mass-action. The state-sponsored hounding of the Frieda Matthews and the Sojourners is testament to the radical potential of these connections. The 1950s were a transformative moment in the struggle against white supremacy in South Africa.
