Triangulating Racism: French and Francophone African Reactions to the African American Freedom Movement (1954-1968) Allyson Tadjer Georgia State University

Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University History Dissertations Department of History 8-11-2015 Triangulating Racism: French and Francophone African Reactions to the African American Freedom Movement (1954-1968) Allyson Tadjer Georgia State University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/history_diss Recommended Citation Tadjer, Allyson, "Triangulating Racism: French and Francophone African Reactions to the African American Freedom Movement (1954-1968)." Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2015. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/history_diss/46 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of History at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in History Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. TRIANGULATING RACISM: FRENCH AND FRANCOPHONE AFRICAN REACTIONS TO THE AFRICAN AMERICAN FREEDOM MOVEMENT (1954-1968) by ALLYSON TADJER Under the Direction of Denise Davidson, PhD, and Michelle Brattain, PhD ABSTRACT This dissertation examines the meanings and significance of the African American freedom movement for the French and Francophone Africans at the momentous juncture of decolonization. By analyzing the French and Francophone African press, as well as the writings of French and Francophone African intellectuals, this project demonstrates that American racial events of the 1950s and 1960s allowed both communities to begin a reflection on the phenomenon of French racism. In particular, the French historical traditions of universalism and egalitarianism, important pillars of French colonial discourse, shaped the French and Francophone African responses to American racism. French and Francophone Africans’ frequent comparisons between the American racial context and the French colonial and national contexts reveal that while American racial events were evocative of French racial prejudice, a deep attachment to the France of 1789 precluded the two groups from assessing French racism fairly. Marxism, a political theory that found its way in French colonies in the late 1930s and a major intellectual current in postwar France, largely influenced French and Francophone African reactions to the African American freedom movement. The French and Francophone Africans’ adherence to a Marxian metanarrative of oppression especially allowed them to build parallels between American racism and French colonial and racial oppression. However, the global and systematic dimensions of a Marxian, if not Marxist, analysis of these phenomena also precluded the French and Francophone Africans from engaging in a particularistic evaluation of French racial prejudices. By highlighting the ways in which the French nation-state shaped both the French and Francophone African responses to American racial events and reflections on French racism, this dissertation adds a line in the scholarly story of the “French imperial nation-state.” In addition to offering a revisionist take on French popular and academic narratives regarding the rise of French racial awareness, which those narratives locate at the turn of the 21st century, my analyses and conclusions shatter the mythical, and still widely held, assumption that the global “race war” of the 1950s and 1960s had created a powerful sense of racial identification among blacks of Africa and the African diaspora. INDEX WORDS: African American civil rights movement, Black Power Movement, Racism, French colonialism, Francophone African decolonization, Black diaspora TRIANGULATING RACISM: FRENCH AND FRANCOPHONE AFRICAN REACTIONS TO THE AFRICAN AMERICAN FREEDOM MOVEMENT (1954-1968) by ALLYSON TADJER A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University 2015 Copyright by Allyson Marie-Madeleine Tadjer 2015 TRIANGULATING RACISM: FRENCH AND FRANCOPHONE AFRICAN REACTIONS TO THE AFRICAN AMERICAN FREEDOM MOVEMENT (1954-1968) by ALLYSON TADJER Committee Chairs: Denise Davidson Michelle Brattain Committee: Jacqueline Rouse Tyler Stovall Electronic Version Approved: Office of Graduate Studies College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University December 2015 iv DEDICATION Although many more people have played an important role in the completion of this dissertation, I wish to give a special dedication to my parents and my husband for their financial and moral support throughout this process. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS To begin, I want to express my utmost gratefulness to my parents, whose support and sacrifices have allowed me to attend Georgia State University and successfully complete this dissertation. I also wish to give a special thanks to my husband for his patience and his valuable help in this, at times, trying intellectual experiment. Without my parents and husband’s financial and moral support, this task would have been far more arduous, if not impossible. I was also fortunate to work with wonderful scholars and fellow graduate students. I would like to start by acknowledging my academic advisor and chair of my dissertation committee, Dr. Denise Davidson. Her availability and intellectual and professional guidance have played a monumental role in this enterprise. Dr. Davidson has been far more than an academic mentor; her kind encouragements throughout this process have allowed me to keep faith in my project and to brave some of the psychological discomfort that is more often than not a part of this experiment. I also want to thank the co-chair, Dr. Michelle Brattain, and members of the dissertation committee, Dr. Jacqueline Rouse and Dr. Tyler Stovall. Through seminars and various discussions with Dr. Brattain and Dr. Rouse, I have obtained precious insights on the subjects of racism and the African American freedom movement and enjoyed their kind support. Finally, I want to express a special thanks to Dr. Stovall who kindly accepted to serve as an external member of my committee and whose scholarship significantly inspired my own research. Members of my dissertation group, Dylan Ruediger, Sara Patenaude, Mindy Clegg, and Lauren Thompson, all deserve heartfelt thanks for reading and commenting on multiple chapter drafts and for being supportive friends. In conclusion, I am also grateful to all the faculty and fellow graduate students at Georgia State University who have provided me with intellectual guidance and moral support. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................. v LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................ vii Introduction: The African American Freedom Movement and the French “Racial Question” ............................................................................................................. 7 Chapter 1: French Leftist Intellectuals and the American Racial Context: From a Theorization of Colonial Racism to a Revolutionary Thirdworldism ......... 26 Chapter 2: The African American Freedom Movement in Antiracist Droit et Liberté and Nationalist Rivarol ...................................................................... 76 Chapter 3: Debating the African American Freedom Movement: The French Mainstream Press and Decolonization ......................................................... 125 Chapter 4: Between Afrocentrism and Marxism: Francophone African Intellectuals’ Engagement with the African American Freedom Movement .......................................................................................................................... 182 Chapter 5: Building a Nation or Re-building the World: The Francophone African Press on the African American Freedom Movement .................................. 238 Conclusion: Double Tragedies? ................................................................................... 287 REFERENCES .............................................................................................................. 294 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: “Piscine: Ceci nous amènera-t-il cela?” Droit et Liberté, July-August 1964. 124 Figure 2: Rivarol, August 29, 1963. ............................................................................... 125 Figure 3: L’Humanité, September 25, 1957.................................................................... 180 Figure 4: Jacques Kamb, L’Humanité, July 21, 1964. .................................................... 181 Figure 5: Jacques Kamb, L’Humanité, March 13, 1965. ................................................ 182 INTRODUCTION: THE AFRICAN AMERICAN FREEDOM MOVEMENT AND THE FRENCH “RACIAL QUESTION” In 1957, African American author James Balwin, who had resided in France for almost a decade, decided to return to the United States. Like black American authors Richard Wright and Chester Himes, Baldwin’s exile to France was largely motivated by the desire to escape racist America.1 The onset of the Algerian war of independence quickly transformed Baldwin’s view of French racial exceptionalism. Observing Frenchmen’s treatment of Algerians in Paris, Baldwin concluded that the latter were France’s “niggers.”2 The shocking presence of racism in France and the ongoing struggle his black compatriots were waging in the U.S. in the name of racial equality ultimately convinced Baldwin that his place was across the Atlantic.3 The story of Baldwin’s

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