Joshua Scheer

Gerald Horne argues that understanding Du Bois’s radical internationalism is essential to understanding the political crisis—and ideological confusion—of our own time.

W.E.B. Du Bois did not suddenly become a radical internationalist late in life. As historian Gerald Horne argues, his opposition to racism, colonialism, imperialism and war was the culmination of a lifelong political commitment—one that brought him into direct conflict with the U.S. establishment during the Cold War.

In this conversation, Horne revisits the history explored in the new 40th-anniversary edition of his book Black and Red: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Afro-American Response to the Cold War, 1944–1963. He traces how Du Bois challenged the emerging Cold War consensus, took the struggle against U.S. racism to the international arena, and ultimately became one of the targets of the repression directed at Black radicals and left-wing internationalists.

But Horne argues that this history is not simply about the past. The political bargain that helped pull major Black institutions and sections of the labor movement away from internationalism left a legacy that still shapes the left today. At a moment when U.S. power is again being projected abroad, when far-right movements are gaining ground, and when political language is increasingly detached from historical reality, Horne warns that activists and intellectuals must recover the internationalist tradition represented by Du Bois.

His message is blunt: political movements cannot afford to stop reading, stop studying or stop learning from history. Without that historical grounding, the left risks allowing the right to define political reality—and repeating the mistakes of the past.

Dr. Gerald Horne, discusses his newly republished International Publishers book, “Black and Red:  Du Bois and the Afro-American response to the Cold War, 1944-63, the 40th anniversary edition.”

“In Black & Red, Gerald Horne shows that Du Bois’ later activities were the culmination of a lifelong commitment, which Du Bois resolutely followed despite the threats of anti-Black Cold War-era McCarthy repression.” 

W.E.B. Du Bois, Black Internationalism and the Cold War Edited Transcript

Margaret Kimberley: Good day, and thank you for joining us on Black Agenda Report. I’m Margaret Kimberley. Remember to like this video, subscribe to our YouTube page, and read BlackAgendaReport.com.

Our guest is Dr. Gerald Horne, the prolific author and historian who holds the John J. and Rebecca Moores Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston. He’s joining us from Houston to discuss the newly published International Publishers book, Black and Red: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Afro-American Response to the Cold War, 1944–1963, the 40th anniversary edition.

I’ll read from the description:

“In Black and Red, Gerald Horne shows that Du Bois’s later activities were the culmination of a lifelong commitment which Du Bois resolutely followed despite the threats of anti-Black Cold War-era McCarthy repression.”

And welcome, Dr. Horne. Thank you for coming back.

Gerald Horne: Thank you for inviting me.

Margaret Kimberley: I read the description because the words “the culmination of a lifelong commitment” really struck me. Because at first glance, it may seem that the last decades of W.E.B. Du Bois’s life showed a change in his politics, which is not the case. But talk to us about that trajectory.

Gerald Horne: Well, first of all, a few biographical details to begin with.

W.E.B. Du Bois was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, in 1868 and passed away in Accra, Ghana, in 1963.

In between, he matriculated at Fisk University, the historically Black school in Tennessee; Harvard University, where he received his doctorate in the late 19th century; and, of course, the University of Berlin.

And there hangs a tale, because in studying at the University of Berlin in the late 19th century, he was exposed to one of the more influential socialist movements on planet Earth at that time. Not coincidentally, Karl Marx himself had roots in Germany, as we all know.

Continuing the biographical thread, he then began to teach at a number of historically Black schools, including Wilberforce in Ohio and, ultimately, Atlanta University.

But he is probably best known for his leadership in helping to organize the NAACP circa 1909. He departed in 1934 over an ideological dispute concerning Black self-reliance, amongst other issues.

He returned in 1944, which is where my book takes up the story.

And this is a very propitious moment because, at this particular moment, the world was ensnared in an anti-fascist struggle. This created favorable conditions for advance politically and ideologically in the United States.

It was during that era that the U.S. Communist Party elected Ben Davis, a Black communist, to the New York City Council in 1943, and he was reelected in 1945.

But what happens is that with the conclusion of World War II in 1945—concluding ignominiously with the atomic bombing in Japan of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the first, and let us hope and let us struggle to ensure that the last, time that nuclear weapons are unleashed—that helps to inaugurate the Red Scare.

Which is a follow-on to the post-World War I Red Scare, post-1918. This one is more toxic, to a degree more potent, not least because of the threat of U.S. imperialism wielding nuclear weapons against the then-Soviet Union.

What happens in that context is that the NAACP leadership, like the leadership of a number of trade unions and, I must say, liberal organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union, decide to embark on the Red Scare path, the Cold War path.

What happens is that Du Bois, in 1948, where he’s employed by the NAACP, embarks on a trajectory that has him as a de facto foreign minister for Black America and for the NAACP itself, filing petitions at the newly minted United Nations charging the United States with various human rights abuses.

That kind of pressure then induces the U.S. ruling class to cut a deal with the NAACP leadership, where, in return for curtailing their internationalism—not least by throwing Du Bois overboard, not least by stabbing in the back the tallest tree in our forest, speaking of Paul Robeson—the NAACP, in return, accepts anti-Jim Crow concessions, culminating in what I call the Compromise of 1954.

The Brown v. Board of Education decision, where the High Court, the U.S. Supreme Court, rules that Jim Crow, believe it or not, is unconstitutional.

And therein begins this agonizing and reluctant retreat from the more egregious aspects of Jim Crow, with Du Bois and Robeson being amongst the sacrificial lambs in this process.

What happens, as anyone who has a faint knowledge of the past 75 years might be able to glean, is that with the retreat and collapse of the socialist camp from 1989 to 1991, and given the fact that this Cold War compromise was premised on the idea that both Du Bois and Robeson were intimately tied to the socialist camp, intimately tied to national liberation movements in Africa and the Caribbean, with the Copernican changes of 1989 to 1991, that particular Cold War bargain became inoperative.

But it’s been hard, I’m afraid to say, for many in the leadership to recognize that obvious fact.

And so, just to bring it down to the current moment, here you have, in a former province of socialist East Germany, a Nazi-curious party coming to power with a 44 percent plurality—the first time since 1945, interestingly enough, that a so-called far-right party has come to power.

And yet one will look in vain for any commentary on this from many of our Black intellectuals, many of our Black leaders, many of our Black organizations.

Even though we all recognize that with the rise of fascism—by the way, being promoted avidly by the White House—recall what happened in early 2025 when J.D. Vance went to Munich and read the riot act to the Europeans and met ostentatiously with this Nazi-curious party, but not the ruling party, interestingly enough.

And what’s happening is that our leadership, our intellectuals, need to recognize that the Cold War compromise is over.

And so it’s time to adopt the new approach, not least by analyzing and critiquing the current historic moment with the rise of these Nazi-curious forces.

But we shall see if my plea is heeded.

Margaret Kimberley: Well, I like your term “Nazi-curious.” I get the feeling people aren’t even that curious anymore. They are plainly staking their claim. They are planting their flag with fascism here in the United States.

But internationalism, as you’ve pointed out, there is a resurgence of Black people here who are explaining the importance of internationalism—that no people are an island, so to speak—and making it clear that we cannot struggle for liberation alone.

But it’s also difficult because there are movements saying, I suppose, Afro-pessimism and others, saying that Black people have no friends and nobody really likes us, and so on and so forth.

What are your thoughts about that?

Gerald Horne: Well, with regard to the latter point, I’d like to apprise those who put forth that idea with the biography written by Du Bois about John Brown—a man of European ancestry who organized an armed revolt against the hated, odious slave system in October 1859 and, for his troubles, was hanged.

I would also like to acquaint those who propagate that idea with what I just articulated. That is to say, the rise of the socialist camp and how that put pressure on the North Atlantic countries to move away from the more agonizing retreat from the more egregious aspects of the odious system of Jim Crow.

But I think the problem is that people are unaware, and then they base their theories on their unawareness, so to speak.

I mean, let me point you to the recent documentary on Du Bois that premiered on PBS some months ago.

Despite the facts that I have just brought forward and are encapsulated in this book that is being republished on this 40th anniversary of its initial publication, this documentary acts as if this kind of scholarship does not exist.

They basically dismiss, through their talking heads, the last few decades of Du Bois’s life. And I think part of the problem is that nowadays, with the ideological advance of the right wing, which has been significant over the past 70 to 75 years, you have creators and filmmakers and scholars who are analyzing figures like Du Bois and Robeson.

Well, they really can’t comprehend because these individuals—and that would include Claudia Jones, Shirley Graham Du Bois, and others—were basically socialist-oriented. But the creators, the filmmakers, etc., are not.

And so therefore, in a preemptive fashion, they tend to dismiss or not analyze that entire global outlook.

And I think that this does a disservice to history. It does a disservice to our community. It does a disservice to ideology.

And then I might also say that some of our friends on the left, who consider themselves to be left of liberalism, left of liberal, they haven’t kept up either.

I mean, for example, if you look at this current Trump phenomenon—with threats against Canada, threats against Cuba, threats against Denmark, threats against Iceland, to the extent that the Icelandic leadership invited the U.S. ambassador, Billy Long, in for a lecture because he had made a so-called joke about Iceland becoming the 52nd state, presumably after Canada becomes the 51st state.

And despite the fact that scholars, historians—and I include myself in this category—have made significant advances in terms of articulating a concept of settler colonialism, this has not necessarily been absorbed by our friends on the left.

They are much more prone to apply that concept to historic Palestine, to their credit, but not to North America.

And so they still have this sort of 1950s analysis of the United States as creating this great leap forward for humanity. They don’t connect the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893, creating the premise for the 50th state in 1959.

They don’t necessarily connect that kind of aggression to the threats against Canada, against Denmark, against Cuba, against Iceland, because there’s this gap between what we perceive reality to be and what the theorizing is.

And the theorizing has basically fallen behind.

And I’m afraid to say that we are all the victims of this sad process.

Margaret Kimberley: You know, the reality is so stark. There’s a level of denial—a high level of denial that’s necessary, that one has to have in order to ignore what Trump and others say very openly.

The Treasury secretary bragging, of course, “We crashed Iran’s economy.”

The recent Prime Minister Trudeau—Trump gave him a lecture and basically laughed at him and kicked him out of his house.

I mean, there are so many things that are so obvious, and yet there’s this denial.

Is it bad politics? Is it denial? How would you describe it?

Gerald Horne: Well, I think it’s not keeping up with trends.

Just like if you’re a lawyer or a doctor, presumably you’re supposed to keep up with developments in your field so that you can be up to date.

But there doesn’t seem to be that kind of criteria for political activists. They can still rely upon political education classes from the early 1970s as if there has not been significant advance since then.

But this is not only tragic, it’s unfortunate.

Because once again, to return to the thread of the book, here you have the spectacle of 83-year-old W.E.B. Du Bois, a founder of Pan-Africanism, a man who organizes Pan-African congresses—the one in 1945 in Manchester, England, perhaps being the most significant insofar as it brings under one roof many anti-colonial leaders, including Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, poised to lead that West African nation to independence by the spring of 1957.

And then, for his troubles, speaking of Du Bois, he is put on trial at the age of 83 for leading a campaign against nuclear weapons—the Stockholm Peace Appeal, for example.

He barely escapes being in prison, quite frankly, because that was certainly the aim of the federal prosecutors.

And then he moves into a new home in Brooklyn, interestingly enough, once owned by the late playwright Arthur Miller, of Death of a Salesman fame and The Crucible fame, etc.

He begins to write novels, and then, at a certain point, after his passport is returned—because, as you know more than most, the U.S. authorities seized the passports of many dissident U.S. intellectuals and leaders and deported others, such as Claudia Jones, born in Trinidad, deported Ferdinand Smith, one of the leading Black trade unionists of that epoch, deported back to his native Jamaica, for example, where he then becomes a leader of the independence movement in the Caribbean island, culminating in 1962 with independence.

And so Du Bois gets his passport back, goes on a whirlwind tour of the world, and finally, in 1961, decides to repatriate, if you like, to West Africa, where his once pupil, Kwame Nkrumah, opens the doors to him.

And along with W. Alphaeus Hunton, another Black American intellectual of the left who worked closely with Du Bois and Robeson on the Council on African Affairs, a left-leaning movement in solidarity with African liberation, particularly South African liberation, they began to toil on an Encyclopedia Africana.

But alas, in August 1963, as the March on Washington is unfolding, leading to another stage in the Black liberation movement, Du Bois passes from the scene. That is to say, he expires.

And yet he leaves behind not only many volumes that are worth consulting, but also a legacy that is carried on by his widow, Shirley Graham Du Bois, who, after the Ghana coup of 1966, moves to Cairo and then moves to China, where she passes away about a decade after the overthrow of the Nkrumah government in February 1966.

And so, to return to the thread of your question, if I were to make a plea to many of those whom you were addressing implicitly in your question, I would say that they really need to keep up with the literature.

And not only the literature that’s being churned out, but also keep up with day-to-day events—for example, this troublesome event that’s just unfolded in Eastern Germany.

Margaret Kimberley: Well, you know, when you say “keep up with the literature,” you mean read books.

That’s something quite out of fashion now. It’s very disturbing to me. I think there’s a lot of reading because of social media and so forth, but not enough reading of books.

And I think we have to sometimes keep it very basic. You’ve got to read books.

I know I probably don’t have to convince anybody who’s listening to us now, but I think that needs to be said, because otherwise that’s why people don’t know what they’re talking about.

So, for example, here in New York City, we’re told we have a socialist mayor. We don’t. Mamdani is not a socialist, a liberal reformer. Much of that is useful. He’s proposing many things that will be good for New York City, but he’s not a socialist.

And it does not help that the right wing goes on these crazy attacks that he is a socialist, that he shouldn’t go to the September 11th commemoration, and so forth.

So what do you think of those two issues—the lack of reading and the confusion that that leads to, and allowing the right wing to define and determine and confuse people even more?

Gerald Horne: Well, with regard to the former, I recall when I had less gray hair than I do today, all the rage was the formation of study groups, whereby folks—a group of folk, five, six, seven, perhaps a few more—would read a particular text and then, on a regular basis, would discuss it.

And even though we now have this phenomenon such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams, which actually simplifies the ability to meet face-to-face, because back in the day, of course, we literally met face-to-face, it seems to me that this phenomenon known as study groups has withered on the vines.

And that’s tragic and unfortunate because, as noted, we are living at a very perilous moment.

I mean, just for example, at the Group of 20 finance ministers meeting that took place a few days ago in Asheville, North Carolina, the U.S. authorities banned South African representation, even though South Africa is a member in good standing of the G20. It actually hosted the G20 last year.

And South African representatives will be banned from the presidential and prime ministerial-level meeting at the end of this year at Mr. Trump’s country club in South Florida, for example.

Now, I’m old enough to remember when there was a vibrant, thriving anti-apartheid movement, for example, which had significant impact, not least in the United States, and helping to pass the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of the 1980s, which in many ways sounded the death knell for the apartheid regime in Pretoria.

But that kind of movement has been allowed to wither, and some complicity and blame can be laid at the doorstep of our comrades in South Africa, who could have done more, it seems to me, to keep that movement alive.

But that’s another story for another day.

With regard to New York City politics, and as a person who resided in that metropolis for a number of years, I still try to keep my finger on the pulse.

Part of the problem in New York, once again, is the analysis.

I mean, for example, many of our friends on the left, they tell us that one of the reasons why the Democrats, why the Republicans do so well, is because the Democrats don’t style themselves as social democrats.

Then you have a person running in the Democratic primary who styles himself as a social democrat but loses Staten Island, which is the headquarters of the Euro-American working class and middle class—Italian American, Jewish American, Irish American, etc.

And once again, it comes back to the analysis.

Because just like in the 19th century, for example, there was this idea of popular sovereignty. That is to say, if the settlers descended upon Nebraska or Kansas, or Missouri, I should say, and they decided that slavery should obtain and the Indigenous should be ousted, well, they’re the people, so to speak, and so their appeal should prevail.

And I think that that sort of 19th-century notion has yet to dissipate, has yet to disappear.

And so what you have is a number of our friends on the left—it seems like their job is to make excuses for ideological backwardness in the Euro-American working class and middle class, for example, which then is viewed euphemistically with skepticism and suspicion amongst others who have not been inducted into the hallowed halls of whiteness.

And this complicates the ability to have ideological clarity. It complicates the ability to build coalitions, etc.

Because other than popular sovereignty, there’s this idea of class collaboration, which many on the left consider themselves to be class warriors, but they have little or nothing to say about class collaboration.

It’s like the Christian pastor who always talks about heaven and never talks about hell, for example.

I mean, which you did not expect, and certainly I expect more, for whatever reason, from our friends on the left.

Margaret Kimberley: And as we close, since we’re talking about people reading books, and our conversation is about your book, Black and Red: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Afro-American Response to the Cold War, talk to those people who may be behind in their reading about why this would be a good place for them to get back on the good foot, so to speak.

Gerald Horne: Well, as suggested a moment or two ago, this original edition of this book came out four decades ago, but I still consider it to be timely, which is one of the reasons we’ve come out with this new edition.

Because I think it helps to shed light on the current moment. It helps to shed light on how and why it was that the NAACP, for example, broke its alliance with those to their left, which has now left us in a pickle, to put it mildly.

And it also sheds light on why the trade union movement moved in a similar direction.

For example, a figure in this book, as has been a figure in a number of my books dealing with the late 20th century, is Harry Bridges, Australian-born leader of the West Coast longshoremen, who led the San Francisco General Strike of 1934 and was a pioneer in terms of inducting Black and Brown members into the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.

But alas, Harry Bridges, too, and the ILWU was attacked by the NAACP, attacked by the liberals. And in return, they tended to ally with the East Coast Longshore, International Longshoremen’s Association.

Those of you who’ve seen the movie On the Waterfront, with Marlon Brando, are familiar with that union and its mob connections.

And so, in some ways, what happened is that many of the liberals decided that the better part of wisdom was to associate with a mob-led union, the ILA, rather than the so-called Communist-led union, the ILWU.

And that fateful choice encapsulates the problem that we face today.

Because we face today the pressing problem of organizing more unions, organizing more unions, particularly in the private sector, for example.

Because unions in this country are heavily in the public sector—the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Service Employees International Union—but not as much in the private sector.

And if we could organize more unions in the private sector, as we found during the anti-Jim Crow movement, they could provide seed money for protests against Jim Crow, just like these unions could provide sustenance for pushing back against curtailment of subway service and raising wages and working conditions.

Which would be a gigantic leap forward, not only for our constituency, but I dare say for the international community as a whole.

Margaret Kimberley: Well, thank you. Thank you so much, Dr. Horne, for joining me again.

Gerald Horne: Thank you for inviting me.

Margaret Kimberley: And that was Dr. Gerald Horne discussing the 40th anniversary edition of Black and Red: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Afro-American Response to the Cold War, 1944–1963.

Thank you so much.

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