History will record two Bandung conferences.
The one recently concluded, marking the golden jubilee of the first,
and the one held in April 1955 at which 29 African and Asian nations
met in
Bandung, Indonesia to promote economic and cultural cooperation and to
oppose colonialism.
The idea of the Bandung Conference came from Ahmed Sukarno of Indonesia. It
was conceived in Colombo, Indonesia, where the Colombo powers India, Pakistan,
Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Burma (now Myanmar) and Indonesia, the host country met
in April 1954. The Bandung Conference led to the 1961 creation of the Non-Aligned Movement.
The first head of state to arrive at the 2005 conference was South African President
Thabo Mbeki. Ironically, South Africa along with Israel, Taiwan and North
and South Korea were all barred from the 1955 conference. In light of recent
tragic events, Mbeki visited the tsunami stricken province of Aceh before he proceeded to the conference.
I first heard about the Bandung Conference in the mid-1960s while listening
to a speech by El-Hajj Malik Shabazz (Malcolm X) titled "Message to the
Grassroots, which was first delivered at the King Solomon Baptist Church
in Detroit on November 10, 1963. Malcolm talked about places and faces I had
never heard of, however, he didn't get it completely correct. There were White
people at the Bandung conference. Marshal Tito represented Yugoslavia, and
there were American, Australian and numerous members of the European press
at the conference. In fact, African American journalist
Ethel Payne, who was at Bandung, pointed out, The British had sent just hordes
of correspondents, and the Dutch and the Germans and all the Europeans countries."
Africans
in North America paid close attention to this historic event. In Canada,
Daniel Braithwaite's organization, which had a relationship with the U.S.-based
Council on African Affairs (CAA), sent a message of support. Braithwaite
was so impressed by CAA co-founder Paul Robeson that he not only started
a CAA chapter in Toronto, he named his son Paul in tribute to Robeson.
Other Africanists like W.E.B. DuBois, Alphaeus and Dorothy Hunton, along
with Robeson, were members of the Council on African Affairs.
At the time of the first Bandung Conference, the North American left, in general,
and the African American liberation movement in particular were under attack.
Senator Joseph McCarthy was looking for a "red under every bed. Robeson, "the
Tallest Tree in the Forest," wanted to attend the conference but couldn't
because the U.S. government had taken his passport. Ditto for DuBois. However,
several African American politicians and journalists found themselves in Indonesia
from April 18-25, 1955. Adam Clayton Powell Jr.,
Carl T. Rowan, Dr. Marguerite Cartwright, journalist Payne and Richard Wright
all were there.
Powell, the Congressman from Harlem, went to the Conference
on a dare. He wanted to attend the event to represent the interest of
U.S. imperialism by talking about the progress the Negro in America was
making. "It will mark the first time in history that the world's
non-White people have held such a gathering," he told reporters in
Washington, D.C., "and it
could be the most important of this century." Powell, no matter what
we think of him, knew what time it was. His appeals to President Dwight D.
Eisenhower and
others in the State Department fell on deaf ears. The flamboyant Powell
was told the U.S. government saw no need to send an official observer
to Bandung. However, he got there compliments of the African American
weekly newspaper, New York Age-Defender.
Karl Evanzz pointed out in his brilliant book, The Judas Factor, "There was
at least one unofficial observer: at the request of John Foster Dulles' brother,
CIA Director Allen Dulles, a young African American journalist named Carl T. Rowan covered the conference."
Rowan went on to become the Director of the United States Information Agency.
He also went on to alienate a generation of African Americans after the February
21, 1965 assassination of Malcolm X. Rowan's statement after Malcolm's death
was: "All this about an ex-convict, ex-dope peddler who became a racial fanatic."
Of the two female African American journalists at the conference, the well-connected
Dr. Cartwright represented a chain of White dailies and the United Nations.
The lesser-known Payne was the new kid on the block and represented the Chicago
Defender, which was part of John Sengstacke's chain of Black weeklies.
Payne, who went on to be crowned "The First Lady of the Black Press",
said she had little or no contact in Indonesia with Dr. Cartwright. Of Cartwright,
Payne said, "She had a desk at the U.N. and so she had quite
a lot of access that I didn't have." However, Payne did network with
writer Richard Wright, a one-time member of the Communist Party U.S.A. who
went on his own and wrote the book, Color Curtain, about The Bandung
Conference.
Color Curtain was first published by University Press of Mississippi
in 1956. Wright wrote about the faces and places in Indonesia in 1955, and
one can
feel him learning about what would come to be called "The Third World.
The first Bandung Conference was attended by 21 Asian, seven African and one
Eastern European country. The second was attended by 54 Asian and 52 African
nations. The Asian-African Conference has been transformed into the Asia-Africa
Summit. A recent re-reading of Robeson's Here I Stand made me realize
how important these two conferences are to humanity. At both, questions of
world peace, South-South cooperation, nuclear weapons and Palestine
were discussed.
Toronto-based journalist and radio producer Norman (Otis) Richmond
can be heard on Diasporic Music, Thursdays, 8 p.m.-10 p.m., Saturday Morning
Live, Saturdays, 10 a.m.-1 p. m. and From a Different Perspective,
Sundays, 6-6:30 p.m. on CKLN-FM 88.1 and on the internet at www.ckln.fm.
He can be reached by e-mail [email protected].
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