African Americans, Pan African Policy Matters, And the Development of the Black Foreign Policy Constituency for Africa and the African Diaspora, 1930-1998.

Introduction Throughout the 20th century, African-American involvement in Foreign Affairs often paralleled domestic civil rights participation. In many cases, the domestic fight for civil rights found an extended ally in the effort to articulate a foreign policy voice for African-Americans. In this effort to construct a voice, a constituency (although amorphous at times) has served as a vehicle for the articulation of various policy concerns. The issues and arenas of this particular constituency have primarily focused on the African continent as well as on many countries of the Caribbean. Members of this constituency have consisted of civil rights leaders and organizations as well as those and individuals functioning in the State Department as ambassadors, diplomats, and field workers. Oftentimes, the existence of such a constituency was evidenced as leaders and groups rallied in support of a particular issue. Historian Brenda Plummer argues that the major issues of this constituency have historically centered around the Italo-Ethiopian war, petitions emanating from the development of the United Nations, and the Vietnam war among others. In our day, genocide in Darfur and in other African nations garners much of the current foci of the Black foreign policy constituency for Africa and the African Diaspora. With the fiftieth anniversary of Ghana's independence in 2007, as well as the July 2008 African Union summit in Accra, focusing on the continued maturation of the Union and a revival of Nkrumah's United States of Africa, such a discussion of a Black foreign policy constituency for Africa and the African Diaspora is essential (1)