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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 April 2017
This article looks at the published reports on visits made to interwar Germany by prominent black journalists Robert S. Abbot, J. A. Rogers and Lewis McMillan. Drawing on their own experiences as well as their engagement with German-based blacks, the reporters contrasted the oppressive conditions black people faced in the US with the apparent lack of colour prejudice in Germany. Their coverage serves as a critique of race relations in the US, while also providing snapshots into the conditions under which black Germans lived as well as an insight into the writers’ own perceptions of a broader black diaspora in development.
1 For Abbott's reflections on his time in England see Robert S. Abbott, “My Trip Abroad: IX We Arrive in England,” Chicago Defender, 4 Jan. 1930, 1–2; and Abbott, “My Trip Abroad: X The Cardiff Riot,” Chicago Defender, 11 Jan. 1930, 1–2. J. A. Rogers also felt that of all the European countries he visited Britain was the one where black people would most likely encounter prejudice. J. A. Rogers, “‘Brightest Side of My Trip’,” New York Amsterdam News, 5 Oct. 1927, 14.
2 Robert S. Abbott, “My Trip Abroad: Paris,” Chicago Defender, 9 Nov. 1929, 1–2.
3 In their depictions of life in France, Abbott and Rogers present a similarly idealized image of a country largely lacking in racial prejudice. On the relationship between African Americans and France see, among many others, Stovall, Tyler, Paris Noir: African Americans in the City of Light (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1996)Google Scholar; Fletcher, Yael Simpson, “Unsettling Settlers: Colonial Migrants and Racialised Sexuality in Interwar Marseilles,” in Burton, Antoinette, ed., Gender, Sexuality and Colonial Modernities (London: Routledge, 1999), 79–94Google Scholar; Blanchard, Pascal, Deroo, Eric and Manceran, Gilles, Le Paris Noir (Paris: Hazan, 2001)Google Scholar; Boittin, Jennifer Anne, Colonial Metropolis: The Urban Grounds of Anti-imperialism and Feminism in Interwar Paris (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 For a rare exception see the work of Asukulie, Thabiti, “Joel Augustus Rogers: Black International Journalism, Archival Research, and Print Culture,” Journal of African American History, 95, 3–4 (2010), 322–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar. McMillan has largely been remembered in connection with his published criticism of African American education in South Carolina from 1952, which led to his dismissal from South Carolina State College. See the brief mention in Murty, Komanduri S. and Scipio, Julius, “Survival Management Becomes Academic Autocracy,” in Newkirk, Vann R., ed., New Life for Historically Black Colleges and Universities: A 21st Century Perspective (Jefferson: McFarland, 2012), 97–121, 98–100Google Scholar.
5 Figures from Rice, Mayiti Sengstacke, Chicago Defender (Charleston SC: Arcadia, 2012), 31Google Scholar; Farrar, Hayward, The Baltimore Afro-American, 1892–1950 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998), 8–10Google Scholar; Tischauser, Lesley Vincent, Race Relations in the United States, 1920–40 (Westport CT: Greenwood Press, 2008), 56Google Scholar.
6 DeSantis, Alan D., “A Forgotten Leader: Robert S. Abbott and the Chicago Defender from 1910–1920,” Journalism History, 23 (1997), 63–71, 64CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
7 Among many others see Barkin, Kenneth, “W. E. B. Du Bois’ Love Affair with Imperial Germany,” German Studies Review, 28, 2 (2005), 285–302Google Scholar; Greene, Larry A. and Ortlepp, Anke, eds., Germans and African Americans: Two Centuries of Exchange (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2011)Google Scholar; Diedrich, Maria and Heinrichs, Jürgen, eds., From Black to Schwarz: Cultural Crossovers between African America and Germany (Münster: Lit Verlag, 2010)Google Scholar; Höhn, Maria, GIs and Fräuleins: The German–American Encounter in 1950s West Germany (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002)Google Scholar; McBride, David, Hopkins, Leroy and Blackshire-Belay, C. Aisha, eds., Crosscurrents: African Americans, Africa, and Germany in the Modern World (Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1998)Google Scholar; Schroer, Timothy L., Recasting Race after World War II: Germans and African Americans in American-Occupied Germany (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2007)Google Scholar; Gerund, Katharina, Transatlantic Cultural Exchange: African American Women's Art and Activism in West Germany (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2013)Google Scholar.
8 For the growing literature on black Germans see, among others, Aitken, Robbie and Rosenhaft, Eve, Black Germany: The Making and Unmaking of a Diaspora Community, 1884–1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Oguntoye, Katharina, Eine Afro-Deutsche Geschichte: Zur Lebenssituation von Afrikanern in Deutschland von 1884 bis 1950 (Berlin: Hoho Verlag, 1997)Google Scholar; Martin, Peter and Alonzo, Christine, eds., Zwischen Charleston und Stechschritt: Schwarze im Nationalsozialismus (Hamburg: Dölling und Galitz Verlag, 2004)Google Scholar; Campt, Tina, Other Germans: Black Germans and the Politics of Race, Gender and Memory in the Third Reich (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004)Google Scholar; Nagl, Tobias, Die unheimliche Maschine: Rasse und Repräsentation im Weimarer Kino (Munich: Text und Kritik, 2009)Google Scholar; Lusane, Clarence, Hitler's Black Victims: The Historical Experiences of Afro-Germans, European Blacks, Africans, and African Americans in the Nazi Era (New York: Routledge, 2003)Google Scholar.
9 Abbott, “My Trip Abroad: Paris,” 1–2.
10 Kelley, Robin D. G., “‘But a Local Phase of a World Problem’: Black History's Global Vision, 1883–1950,” Journal of American History, 86, 3 (1999), 1045–77, 1047CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also Edwards, Brent Hayes, The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation and the Rise of Black Internationalism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; West, Michael O., Martin, William G. and Wilkins, Fanon Che, eds., From Toussaint to Tupac: The Black International since the Age of Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009)Google Scholar; Makalani, Minkah, In the Cause of Freedom: Radical Black Internationalism from Harlem to London, 1917–1939 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
11 In particular see the work of Michel Fabre: Fabre, Michel, Black American Writers in France, 1840–1980: From Harlem to Paris (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993)Google Scholar. Also Hayes Edwards.
12 For more on the Scheve family's sponsoring of Cameroonian migrants see Aitken and Rosenhaft, 44–9.
13 “Das erste Sommerfest,” Teltower Kreisblatt, 1 Aug. 1895, 3a.
14 As yet it has been impossible to find any further information about this remarkable event.
15 For the historical situation see Bruce Levine, “‘Against All Slavery, Whether White or Black’: German-Americans and the Irrepressible Conflict,” in McBride, Hopkins and Blackshire-Belay, 53–64; Honeck, Mischa, We Are the Revolutionists: German-Speaking Immigrants and American Abolitionists after 1848 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2011)Google Scholar.
16 See Mischa Honeck, “An Unexpected Alliance: August Willich, Peter H. Clark, and the Abolitionist Movement in Cincinnati,” in Greene and Ortlepp, 17–36.
17 Leroy Hopkins, “‘Black Prussians’: Germany and African American Education from James W. C. Pennington to Angela Davis,” in McBride, Hopkins and Blackshire-Belay, 65–81, 70. On Douglass's influence see Michaeli, Ethan, The Defender: How the Legendary Black Newspaper Changed America (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016), 3Google Scholar; Rogers, J. A., World's Great Men of Color, Volume II (New York: Touchstone, 1996), 332–49Google Scholar.
18 Hopkins, 66, 70–73.
19 On Murphy Jr. see Farrar, The Baltimore Afro-American, 8–10. Also Murphy Jr's own observations of Germany; C. J. Murphy, “Travel by Rail in Germany,” Afro-American, 29 Aug. 1914, 1.
20 On Du Bois's intellectual development in Berlin see, among others, Berman, Russell, “Du Bois and Wagner: Race, Nation, and Culture between the United States and Germany,” German Quarterly, 70, 2 (1997), 123–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Barkin, Kenneth, “W. E. B. Du Bois and the Kaiserreich,” Central European History, 31, 3 (1998), 155–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gilroy, Paul, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (London: Verso, 1993), 133–45Google Scholar; Lenz, Günther, “Radical Cosmopolitanism: W. E. B. Du Bois, Germany, and African American Pragmatist Visions for Twenty-First Century Europe,” Journal of Transnational American Studies, 4, 2 (2012), 65–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lemke, Sieglinde, “Berlin and Boundaries: sollen versus geschehen,” Boundary 2, 27, 3 (2000), 45–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar; William Strickland, “W. E. B, Du Bois: The Prime Minister of the State We Never Had,” Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (2011), available at http://exhibitions.nypl.org/africanaage/essay-dubois.html, accessed 15 Nov. 2016.
21 Lewis, David Levering, W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919 (New York: Henry Holt, 1993), 138–39Google Scholar.
22 “Dr. McMillan Now from the University of Bonn,” Afro-American, 8 July 1933, 21. Lewis K. McMillan, “Carl Schnaase als Hegelianer: Kunst und Geschichtsphilosophie,” PhD thesis, University of Bonn, 1933.
23 J. A. Rogers, “Germany as 1927 Closes,” New York Amsterdam News, 14 Dec. 1927, 14.
24 J. A. Rogers, “Appreciation of Schopenhauer,” New York Amsterdam News, 19 Dec. 1928, 20.
25 Barkin, “W. E. B. Du Bois’ Love Affair with Imperial Germany,” 286, 288.
26 Magee, James J., Freedom of Expression (Westport CT: Greenwood Press, 2002), 9Google Scholar; Schaffer, Ronald, America in the Great War: The Rise of the War Welfare State (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 6–11Google Scholar.
27 The best visual expression of this is H. R. Hopps's well-known 1917 propaganda poster Destroy This Mad Brute!. Quinn, Patrick J., The Conning of America: The Great War and American Popular Literature (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Heyman, Neil M., World War One (Westport CT: Greenwood Press, 1997), 72–73Google Scholar.
28 There is a growing literature on German colonial violence. Among others see Giblin, James and Monson, Jamie, eds., Maji Maji: Lifting the Fog of War (Leiden: Brill, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hull, Isabel, Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2006)Google Scholar; Zeller, Joachim and Zimmerer, Jürgen, eds., Genocide in German South-West Africa: The Colonial War of 1904–1908 and Its Aftermath (London: Merlin Press, 2008)Google Scholar.
29 For examples see “Says French Troops Bad for Germans,” Chicago Defender, 8 July 1922, 1; “Outcry against the ‘Black Horror’ and an Urgent Appeal to Americans,” Chicago Defender, 23 Sept. 1922, 15; “30,000 Blacks Occupy Rhineland,” Afro-American, 7 May 1920, 1; “Race Prejudice in Germany for First Time in History,” Afro-American, 4 Aug. 1922, 7; “‘Lie’ Given to Charges against France's Colored Troops by Weeks,” New York Amsterdam News, 13 Dec. 1922, 1.
30 See Collar, Peter, The Propaganda War in the Rhineland: Weimar Germany, Race and Occupation after World War One (London: I. B. Taurus, 2012)Google Scholar; Last, Dick van Galen and Futselaar, Ralf, Black Shame: African Soldiers in Europe, 1914–1922, trans. de Jager, Marjolijn (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 182–84Google Scholar.
31 J. A. Rogers, “Negro Colonies Lost, Germany Is Fast Losing Interest in Negroes,” Philadelphia Tribune, 29 Dec. 1927, 9; Robert S. Abbott, “My Trip Abroad: VII Sojourning in Germany,” Chicago Defender, 21 Dec. 1929, 1.
32 Lewis K. McMillan, “Negro Soldiers Found Too Late, There Are No ‘Huns’ in Germany,” Norfolk Journal and Guide, 9 Nov. 1929, 7.
33 Rogers, “Germany as 1927 Closes.”
34 Rogers, “Negro Colonies Lost.”
35 Lewis K. McMillan, “Superior Attitude of Native German Not Essentially Race Discrimination,” Philadelphia Tribune, 3 Oct. 1929, 9; J. A. Rogers, “Camero'n Chief Justice Is a West Indian,” Afro-American, 30 June 1928, 5.
36 J. A. Rogers, “Seeing Germany by Rail,” New York Amsterdam News, 4 Jan. 1928, 6.
37 Lewis K. McMillan, “McMillan Gets Hair Cut in Germany,” Afro-American, 31 Aug. 1929, 3; and McMillan, “Lectures in German,” Afro-American, 5 April 1930, 1.
38 Robert S. Abbott, “My Trip Abroad VIII: The Negro in Berlin,” Chicago Defender, 28 Dec. 1929, 2.
39 The book referred to is likely the novel Die Neger (Berlin: Wasservogel, 1929)Google Scholar. Also Nagl, Die unheimliche Maschine, 665–68.
40 Lewis K. McMillan, “Germans Remind McMillan of US Negroes,” Afro-American, 19 Oct. 1929, 2. Also McMillan, “McMillan finds Catholic Church Is Same in Germany,” Afro-American, 12 Oct. 1929, 4.
41 Rogers, “Negro Colonies Lost.”
42 McMillan, “Superior Attitude of Native German,” 9.
43 Abbott, “My Trip Abroad: VII Sojourning in Germany,” 1.
44 Among others, Yancy, George, Black Bodies, White Gazes: The Continuing Significance of Race (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008)Google Scholar; bell hooks, Black Looks: Race and Representation (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1992)Google Scholar.
45 Rogers, J. A., “May 1930: The American Negro in Europe,” American Mercury, 20, 77 (May 1930), 1–10Google Scholar. Also Rogers, Sex and Race, Volume I, Negro–Caucasian Mixing in All Ages and All Lands (St. Petersburg, FL: Helga M. Rogers, 1967), 188Google Scholar.
46 In “Negro Colonies Lost” Rogers refers to the manuscript he is working on that would become Sex and Race.
47 Lewis K. McMillan, “Berlin Receives Negro with Open Arms,” New Journal and Guide, 5 Oct. 1929, 1.
48 Rogers, Sex and Race, 188.
49 Spickard, Paul R., Mixed Blood: Intermarriage and Ethnic Identity in Twentieth-Century America (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), 286Google Scholar.
50 J. A. Rogers, “A Mormon Speaks,” New York Amsterdam News, 7 March 1928, 13.
51 This incident brings to mind a similar story that Du Bois recounted when he became engaged in conversation with a Dutch woman and her children while on board a steam ship on the Rhine. Levering Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois, 127–28.
52 McMillan, “Berlin Receives Negro with Open Arms.” See also Rogers's comments in “Germany as 1927 Closes.”
53 Abbott, “My Trip Abroad: VII Sojourning in Germany,” 1.
54 Barkin, “W. E. B. Du Bois’ Love Affair with Imperial Germany,” 286.
55 Abbott, “My Trip Abroad: VII Sojourning in Germany,” 2.
56 Tower, Beeke Sell, “‘Ultramodern and Ultraprimitive’: Shifting Meanings in the Imagery of Americanism in the Art of Weimar Germany,” in Kniesche, Thomas W. and Brockmann, Stephen, eds., Dancing on the Volcano: Essays on the Culture of the Weimar Republic (Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1994), 85–104, 100Google Scholar.
57 Dayal, Samir, “Blackness as Symptom: Josephine Baker and European Identity,” in Raphael-Hernandez, Heike, ed., Blackening Europe: The African American Presence (New York: Routledge, 2004), 35–52, 36, 41Google Scholar. Also Small, James, “Férrral Benga's Body,” in Rosenhaft, Eve and Aitken, Robbie, eds., Africa in Europe: Studies in Transnational Practice in the Long Twentieth Century (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013), 99–119CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
58 J. A. Rogers, “America's Foremost Comedian Coming Back after Engagement in Germany,” New York Amsterdam News, 25 July 1928, 6; Lewis K. McMillan, “Utica Singers Score in Berlin Concert,” Afro-American, 22 Feb. 1930, 12; McMillan, “Berlin Receives Negro with Open Arms,” Abbott, “My Trip Abroad: VIII: The Negro in Berlin,” 1–2.
59 “‘Information’ at US Consulate Speaks 6 Tongues,” Afro-American, 2 Nov. 1929, 2.
60 Rogers, “Negro Colonies Lost”; McMillan, “Berlin Receives Negro with Open Arms,” Abbott, “My Trip Abroad: VIII: The Negro in Berlin,” 1–2. It is likely that the men McMillan met were actually from Cameroon. There is no evidence of a Congolese community in the city.
61 Rogers, Sex and Race, 187–88.
62 Abbott, ‘My Trip Abroad: VII Sojourning in Germany’, 2.
63 Liepmann, Heinz, “Häfen, Mädchen und Seeleute,” Velhagen und Klasings Monatshefte, 47 (1932), 283–85, 285Google Scholar.
64 Abbott, “My Trip Abroad: VII: Sojourning in Germany,” 2.
65 Abbott, “My Trip Abroad: VIII The Negro in Berlin,” 1–2.
66 Ibid., 2; and “Architect and Actor,” Chicago Defender, 28 Dec. 1929, 18.
67 Aitken, Robbie, “Surviving in the Metropole: The Struggle for Work and Belonging among African Colonial Migrants in Weimar Germany,” Immigrants and Minorities, 28, 2–3 (2010), 203–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
68 On African performers and Brody in particular see Nagl, Die unheimliche Maschine; also Aitken and Rosenhaft, Black Germany, 145–54.
69 Lewis K. McMillan, “‘Charm of Negro Men over German Women Idle Chatter’,” Pittsburgh Courier, 24 May 1930, 10.
70 Rogers, “Negro Colonies Lost.”
71 See Miller, Monica L., Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also Barkin, “W. E. B. Du Bois’ Love Affair with Imperial Germany”; Aitken and Rosenhaft, 168–73.
72 Identity paper, Josefa Boholle, 23 Feb. 1927, Landesarchiv Berlin A.Pr.Br.Rep. 030-06 no. 6473.
73 On the legal status of colonial migrants and this impact on their lives see Aitken and Rosenhaft.
74 In particular see St Drake, Clair, Black Folk Here and There: An Essay in History and Anthropology, 2 vols. (Los Angeles: University of California, Center for Afro-American Studies, 1987–90)Google Scholar. Also Harrison, Ira E. and Harrison, Faye V., “Introduction: Anthropology, African Americans, and the Emancipation of Subjugated Knowledge,” in Harrison and Harrison, eds., African-American Pioneers in Anthropology (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 1–35, 12–16Google Scholar; Asukulie, “Joel Augustus Rogers”; Lochard, Metz T. P., “Phylon Profile, XII: Robert S. Abbott – ‘Race Leader’,” Phylon, 8, 2 (1947), 124–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Muhammad, Bayina W., “The Baltimore Afro-American’s Pan African Consciousness Agenda, 1915–1941,” Journal of Pan African Studies, 4, 5 (2011), 8–25Google Scholar.
75 West, Michael O. and Martin, William G., “Introduction: The Rival Africas and Paradigms of Africanists and Africans at Home and Abroad,” in West and Martin, eds., Out of One, Many Africas: Reconstructing the Study and Meaning of Africa (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 1–36, 19–22Google Scholar.
76 “Playing in Berlin,” Chicago Defender, 10 Jan. 1931, 9; Victor Bell, “Letter,” Chicago Defender, 24 May 1930, 4; “Auf Wiedersehen, Gluckliche Reise,” Chicago Defender, 12 April 1930, 1; “The Long and Short of Sunshine in Morning Land,” Afro-American, 3 Jan. 1931, 10.
77 Abbott later rejected the term as well as a range of other racial descriptors. Robert S. Abbott, “Editor Puts Taboo on ‘Negro’ as Descriptor of Race,” Chicago Defender, 29 Dec. 1934, 9.
78 Lewis K. McMillan, “M'Millan Thot Turk, Siamese in Germany,” Afro-American, 16 Nov. 1929, 3.
79 For examples see “300 Families Affected by Hitler Ban,” Afro-American, 30 Dec. 1933, 1; “Africans Feel Lash of Adolph Hitler,” Philadelphia Tribune, 18 Oct. 1934, 4; “Africans in Germany Living in Terror, French Report,” Norfolk Journal and Guide, 20 Oct. 1934, 5; “Hitler Expels Africans from Germany,” Chicago Defender, 15 April 1933, 1.
80 J. A. Rogers, “Paris Paper Compares Hitlerism with Race Hate in US,” Afro-American, 23 Sept. 1933, 19; Editorial, “Adolph Hitler, K.K. K.,” Afro-American, 9 Sept. 1933, 16.
81 Larry Greene, “The African American Press on Nazi Germany,” in Greene and Ortlepp, Germans and African Americans, 70–87, 78. Also Lusane, Hitler's Black Victims, 118–28.
82 Rogers, “Paris Paper Compares Hitlerism,” 19; “Adolph Hitler, K.K. K.,” 16. J. A. Rogers, “Hitlerism Is a Disease Cultivated by His Present Foes,” Pittsburgh Courier, 29 Nov. 1941, 9; Rogers, Sex and Race, 1–2.
83 Lewis K. McMillan, “Jim Crow More Dangerous than Hitler,” Afro-American, 18 Jan. 1941, 5; Rogers, Sex and Race, 188. This was a view that was repeated by John Welch, pianist and correspondent for the Pittsburgh Courier, who spent 12 years in Nazi Germany and was repatriated in 1944. See series of articles in the Pittsburgh Courier from April to May of 1944.
84 Black Germans were simultaneously also involved in radical black internationalist networks through connections to George Padmore and Tiemoko Garan Kouyaté. See Aitken and Rosenhaft, Black Germany, chapter 6.
85 See in particular Höhn, GIs and Fräuleins; Fehrenbach, Heide, Race after Hitler: Black Occupation Children in Postwar Germany and America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Höhn, Maria and Klimke, Martin, A Breath of Freedom: The Civil Rights Struggle, African American GIs, and Germany (New York: Palgrave, 2010)Google Scholar.
86 Lewis K. McMillan, “Just What Should We Do about Those 3,000 Brown Babies?”, Afro-American, 5 Nov. 1949, 1. McMillan, “Love Keeps German Mother and Her War Baby Together,” Cleveland Call and Post, 29 Oct. 1949, 1; McMillan, “Brown Skinned War Babies,” Chicago Defender, 5 Nov. 1949, 18.