Charlene Mitchell - Internationalism

Internationalism

Lisa Brock interviewed Charlene Mitchell in her home in Harlem in 2004. Among the topics raised were anti-colonialism, Pan-Africanism and the internationalism of the Communist Party USA:

BROCK: I want to turn now specifically to solidarity with Africa. And were you involved in solidarity activity with the growing anti-colonial movement in Africa, that sort of emerged after World War II in the late '40s and then sort of reached sort of a pinnacle in the '50s and '60s? Were you involved in any of that anti-colonial activity?

MITCHELL: Actually, in the '40s, no. The most I knew about Africa in the '40s, I guess, was the existence of the ANC. But no, I really didn't know much about it. But in the '50s, in the late '40s, in the '50s, already there was tremendous concern on the left in the United States, but particularly in the Communist Party. Not all the left agreed in terms of the importance of Africa. And I began to read a lot. But also, there was Alphaeus Hunton, whom I had come to know, and his interest, and his knowledge about Africa was—really showed deep. And it was at that time that Ghana was in the process of receiving its—or winning, not receiving, its independence. And Du Bois was already interested in what was going to happen there. The interesting thing about it, at that time, was the Freedom newspaper—Paul Robeson and Louis Burnham, and Du Bois was kind of part of it, but they were mainly the activists there. And that was where there was a tremendous bringing together of the struggles in Africa and those for liberation in the United States, of African Americans. So that was when I really began to see the importance of it.

And then in, I think it was 1957, I came to New York for a meeting, and I heard about a big demonstration that was going to be held in Washington, DC, and it was in support of the movements in Africa for liberation. And the speaker was Tom Mboya. And it was really interesting because we came back and the song that we were all—it was kind of a protest song when we were marching sometimes. It's "I want to be a Mau Mau just like Jomo Kenyatta," and it was kind of a more militant aspect of the youth movement and the peace movement and bringing it together. Because it wasn't taking place all over in the peace movement, or the youth movement, and we kind of saw the importance of that.

And then, of course, what was happening in Kenya at the time—and I hadn't thought about it until right now, and that is all of the blame for the terrible violence and how awful, people were being hatcheted to death, and so on, is the same as they're projecting what's going on in Iraq, with the beheadings and so on. All the blame, now, is on the people who are conducting this kind of terror, and not the people who brought earlier all the terror up on these people, in terms of just forbidding them any humanity whatsoever. So I really had not thought about that until now.

So, but that was kind of the beginning. And then, in 1960, when I went to London, one of the first people I went to meet with—well, I saw Claudia Jones, whom I had met earlier here in New York. Claudia was a member of the leading committees of the Communist Party and had been deported to London. So I went to visit her, and she took me to visit Yusuf Dadoo, who is an Indian member of the Communist Party and had been a member of the Indian Congress of South Africa. But by then he was a leader of the Communist Party and a leader in ANC, and at one point, I think the editor of the African Communist, which is a quarterly magazine that still comes out. And I remember being so impressed about his knowledge and his understanding of what actually was happening in Africa, and why South Africa was so important.

And immediately after that, I began to hear more and understand more a phrase that Henry Winston, who's the chairman of the Communist Party, used. He would say that Israel was the northern end opening of American imperialism, and South Africa was the southern opening for imperialism in South Africa—in the world. And I kind of would put that together with what I had learned from Dadoo, and it was so very—not just moving, I mean, it explained so much to me that as a teenager, I could not understand. I'm not even sure teenagers do today, that Africans did not all come from—either come from princesses and princes or they were slaves. I mean, there were workers, there were people who were farmers. They were people. And they fought for their freedom from day one. But we seem to see it only as a bunch of people who need help, and not that they have been of assistance to the whole world development, and that a lot of the wealth in the world has come from that, from those workers.

So to me, Africa opened its doors, to me, more as part of the movement and solidarity with us as we were with them. And I kind of always saw that as an equal thing, because I would learn so much from it.

Writer and CCDS militant Carl Bloice celebrated Mitchell's globe-embracing vision and work at the 2009 CCDS Convention: "I have a picture on my wall at home. It's of a hall full of Bulgarian communists, all smiling, and right in the middle is one Black woman, Charlene."