Editor's Note: Gerald Horne is the author of numerous books, including Mau Mau in Harlem?: The US and the Liberation of Kenya, which is discussed at length in this interview. The book examines the US role in Kenya and the fears within US ruling circles that the anti-colonial uprising there would be replicated in the US. Horne's newest book is W.E.B. Du Bois: A Biography (Greenwood)

PA:  In your new book, Mau-Mau in Harlem?, you talk about some of the historical forces that produced Barack Obama, the man, not the president. Could you explain?  

GERALD HORNE:  I was rather surprised during the run-up to the November, 2008 election that more attention was not paid to the East African background that produced now President Barack Obama. Perhaps this has something to do with the financial and economic plight of the news media industry but, whatever the case, this was a deficiency.

First of all, you need to understand that there is a long history that connects East Africa with the United States of America. In the days of the African slave trade, particularly during its latter stages in the 1840s and 1850s when US flag ships were the major vessels by which Africans were transported to the Western Hemisphere in this odious commerce, East Africa was the major hunting ground for enslaving Africans. Secondly, beginning with the commencement of the British colony in what is now Kenya at the end of the 19th century, you see increased US interest in that part of the world, which is reflected in the safari that the US President who had just stepped down, Theodore Roosevelt, took there in 1909-1910, which garnered substantial press coverage. For example, the young Ernest Hemingway first was acquainted with Kenya, where he spent a considerable amount of time, because of the press coverage of Theodore Roosevelt  when he went to East Africa and shot a number of animals and brought many of their carcasses back to the United States. 

One of things that Theodore Roosevelt found when he arrived in East Africa was that prominent personalities already in that British colony were, in fact, Euro-Americans, indeed some of the richest and most affluent there, and this bespeaks the intimate connection that we see over the years between the British colonial project, Euro-American personalities, and of course the ultimate connection to the United States of America.    This connection between East Africa and the United States continues with the onset of the so-called Mau Mau revolt in the early 1950s. Because the demography of East Africa has at least a faint resemblance to that of the United States, that is to say, with an African population and a European population, there was considerable press interest once again in this so-called revolt. Another reason was that what was called the Mau Mau seemed to portend a kind of retribution for decades, if not centuries, of white supremacy, and needless to say that tended to rivet the imagination of the United States, which was at the onset of having an upsurge in protests for human rights symbolized in the figure of Martin Luther King, Jr. 

This leads directly to an attempt by the United States to deflect the national liberation struggle in Kenya, a struggle that was perceived as being led by the Kikuyu ethnic group. With typical divide-and-rule tactics that Britain had mastered over the decades, and the United States seemed to mirror, there began a concerted effort to cultivate the Luo ethnic group in Kenya, as represented in the figure of a labor leader by the name of Tom Mboya. Mr. Mboya first came to the United States in the mid 1950s and made repeated trips thereafter.  He was lionized. He met with Richard Nixon, he met with John F. Kennedy. He was on the cover of  Time Magazine. He was interviewed on the Sunday morning talk shows. Certainly, before the arrival of Nelson Mandela on these shores in 1990, it is fair to say that Tom Mboya was not only the face of Africa, but in many ways was the most highly publicized African on these shores during that particular time.    Interestingly enough, when Mr. Mboya met with Kennedy they cooked up a scheme to bring more African students to the United States to study. This was in direct response to Moscow’s attempt to do the same thing. You may recall the founding of Patrice Lumumba University in the early 1960s, and Mr. Mboya, being Luo, of course sought to bring his Luo compatriots to these shores, and there you see how Barack Obama, Sr. wound up at the University of Hawaii two years after statehood, where he meets Stanley Ann Dunham and they fall in love, and the product of that union is the current US president, Barack H. Obama.   

PA:  That’s quite an interesting story.  You mention the visits by prominent Americans like Theodore Roosevelt, that is white Americans, who in visiting Kenya frequently made comparisons between the colonial settlers in Kenya, race relations there, and the need to protect white supremacy, and the settlement of the American West and the subjugation of America’s indigenous population. Tell us a little about that.  

GH:  I initially addressed in a book that I wrote some years ago on Zimbabwe, From the Barrel of a Gun: The United States and the War Against Zimbabwe (University of North Carolina Press), where I noted what occurred as the so-called frontier was closing down in what is now the West of the United States, with the final subjugation of the indigenous peoples of the West, a process that was not completed thoroughly until the first few decades of the 20th century (which is something that is oftentimes forgotten for whatever reason). 

As that process is completed, you see these mercenaries and soldiers of fortune, and other ruffians and riffraff, who were so essential to subduing the indigenous people of what is now the North American West, moving on. They cross the Pacific and the Atlantic, and from both directions they converge upon Africa. They converge on what is now Zimbabwe at a time when European settlement is beginning there, which of course begins in the 1890s. Interestingly, they converge on East Africa, a process that also commences, that is to say European settlement, in the 1890s, and the same kinds of tactics and techniques that were used to subdue the indigenous people of North America, were often used to subdue the indigenous people of Africa. 

Indeed, the projects were seen as equivalent and similar. For example, there was serious talk of setting up European settler states on the US model in Africa, and as we know they were set up in the Kenya colony and what became Southern Rhodesia. The problem, in a sense, was that there weren’t enough Europeans to go around, and as a result they had to rely heavily upon African labor. Unlike North America, they did not have the “luxury” of getting rid of the indigenous labor and then bringing in European settlers, and so a different sort of unsteady model was developed, which featured a small European minority lording it over a huge African majority, and obviously that kind of project was inherently unstable and inevitably had to crack and fall.   

PA:  One of the solutions you describe in East Africa for the labor shortage was to encourage South Asian migration, but that migration would grow to cause white settlers a new set of problems.  

GH:  South Asians were brought to East Africa and still comprise a substantial percentage of the population, particularly in the Kenyan city of Mombasa, which is on the Indian Ocean Coast, and indeed in the East African coastline stretching from Mombasa down through Dar es Salaam in Tanzania to  Durban in South Africa.  Here you find a large East African population whose presence there is largely the product of European settlement plans for these South Asian settlers. 

The problem for the white supremacists was twofold at least. First, the South Asian settlers quickly developed a reputation for militancy, particularly labor militancy.  There were numerous strikes, especially in the run-up to the state of emergency that was proclaimed in the early 1950s in response to the so-called Mau Mau or Kikuyu-led upsurge. There were a number of strikes led and spearheaded by South Asians, some of whom had ties to the Communist Party of India, which then as now was a formidable force. Secondly, after the proclamation of Indian and Pakistani independence on August 15, 1947, you saw the newly-installed governments, particularly the government in New Delhi, looking askance at the white supremacist regime then prevailing in Nairobi, Kenya, and they chose to give all-sided assistance to the anti-colonial strugglers, not least because of the sympathy they had for the South Asians who were being oppressed in Kenya. 

I think it is fair to say that once India gained independence in August 1947 you can begin to sound the death knell for white supremacy on the formal level and certainly colonialism in East Africa, because India soon joins the United Nations and it becomes a vocal and active participant in debates on the question of colonialism.  Therefore you begin to see the cracking and then the crumbling of the colonial regime in Nairobi.   

PA:  Another fascinating but probably under-discussed part of the story of the anticolonial movement is the role Hollywood played in Kenya. What sparked their interest and what role did Hollywood play?  

GH:  First of all, there has long been, at least in the 20th century, a decided interest in taking safaris in Kenya because of the proliferation of wildlife, wildlife that even to this day can be found on the outskirts of Nairobi, which is the commercial and international hub of East Africa. You may recall that George Eastman of Eastman Kodak followed in the footsteps of Theodore Roosevelt. A few years after Roosevelt descended on East Africa, Eastman went there and probably shot more animals. It is very curious, the whole idea of going to East Africa to slaughter wildlife. It is something that I think should cause us to reflect upon what the entire process entailed in terms of that kind of mass slaughter.

In any case, because of the popularity of safaris, East Africa early on attracted the attention of Hollywood.  In my book I talk about how, just as the state of emergency is being proclaimed in Kenya because of the clear signs of a revolt by the African masses in that colony, you see descending on Kenya a team of Hollywood producers and stars, including Clark Gable, Grace Kelly and Ava Gardner to make a movie that you can still find online or in your local video store entitled “Mogambo,” which was filmed against the backdrop of a national liberation struggle, although that story doesn’t actually intrude into the movie. 

But it is interesting that there is little doubt that those who were fighting for national liberation can be seen on the screen in this particular movie. This is because they had this category of “tribal extra,” which was penetrated by national liberation strugglers, and they used the money they earned to help propel the national liberation struggle. Following the release of “Mogambo,” a number of other films  were made in that vicinity, “The African Queen” for example, with Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn, and “Something of Value” with Sidney Poitier and Rock Hudson.  A number of films were made either in Central and East Africa or about Central and East Africa, to the point where, when many people in the United States contemplated Africa, what they contemplated was actually East Africa. This is rather ironic, since in the United States of America there is a huge Black population that is mostly, although not exclusively, of West African origin. Yet it was East Africa that was the face of Africa to a large degree, not least because of these Hollywood film productions.   

PA:  Although the British empire was preserved at the end of  World War II, the confluence of interests and events following the war played a major role in destabilizing that empire. Could you talk about that in relation to Kenya?  

GH:  First of all, Britain could only prevail in Word War II because of the massive deployment of Africans. More than 800,000 Africans fought under the Union Jack during World War II, particularly in Asia. In order to train these troops so they could be adequate participants in this conflict, you had Africans for the first time learning how to drive trucks and learning how to use weapons, becoming numerate – learning how to use numbers – and literate, and this provided them with skills that could easily be translated into fighting for rights after August, 1945 when the war concluded. 

Also during World War II you had all this rhetoric about the Four Freedoms and the Atlantic Charter, and how it was improper for Germany to rule Britain and for Japan to attack the British Empire. So it did not take a great leap for Africans to conclude that well, perhaps it was also improper for Britain to rule Kenya or East Africa. Thus World War II. because of the anti-fascist rhetoric that had to be employed in order to motivate hundreds of thousands of Africans to fight, basically also sounded the death knell for colonialism in that part of the world. 

It turns out, as well, that many Africans during the course of that conflict met Black Americans, and Black Americans would, of course, often question them about their homeland, often expressing anti-colonial sentiments that were deeply imbibed by East Africans. So there was this mutuality of pan-African exchange that characterizes World War II.  It is fair to say that World War II was the turning point as well in the anti-colonial struggle, not least because it weakened Great Britain. It showed Great Britain to be something of a paper tiger when it came to, for example, confronting Japanese troops in Burma, and made Africans realize that Great Britain could be defeated on the battlefield, which they then proceeded to attempt to do following World War II.   

PA:  You mention the growing relationship between African Americans and the anti-colonial movement in Kenya, and throughout much of this period, the early 20th century all the way up to the revolt itself, London and the US were very interested in what African Americans were doing in Kenya and what they had to say about the racial situation there and the climate of rebellion. What are your thoughts on that?   

GH:  Black Americans, for various reasons, were able to develop a number of institutions of higher education that are still with us thankfully. I am speaking of what is now Hampton University, for instance, and what is now Tuskegee University, started by Booker T. Washington in Alabama. And starting in the first few decades of the 20th century, you begin to see Africans from East Africa coming to study at these institutions. You also begin to see African missionaries going to East Africa, and that helped to prime the pump for African students to cross the Atlantic to study at these historically Black colleges and universities. 

You also begin to see, particularly in the 1930s, a number of Black Americans traveling to East Africa. The list includes Eslanda Robeson, who is better known, I’m afraid, as the spouse of Paul Robeson, but who was a more than competent anthropologist in her own right, and it also includes Ralph Bunche who may be better known as a Nobel laureate and a top official at the United Nations, but before those events that took place in the late 1940s and 1950s was a professor at Howard University, a historically Black college that is still with us fortunately. Both he and Eslanda Robeson traveled to East Africa in the 1930s and brought more attention to a US audience of the kinds of oppression that were then unfolding in East Africa.

I should also note that it was not easy for Black Americans to get visas to travel to that part of the world. The colonial powers oftentimes saw, perhaps correctly, Black Americans as being vectors of subversion of the colonial system, and therefore made an all out effort to keep them thousands of miles away from their colonial projects. That began to change in the 1930s as the colonial powers, particularly Britain, began to worry about German encroachment and then Japanese encroachment in that part of the world. To shore up their colonial projects, they felt they had to open their doors wider to US nationals, even including Black American nationals, and therefore you begin to see people like Eslanda Robeson and Ralph Bunche gong there. 

But you also had a number of sailors from the National Maritime Union, a Communist-led union to a great degree, who begin to travel to that part of the world.  Mombasa, as noted, is a major port, and there are very interesting stories about NMU members being found in Mombasa conducting what appeared to be political work and being arrested and then expelled. 

But the most dramatic impact of Black American interest in Kenya comes with the rise of the Council on African Affairs initiated by Paul Robeson in 1937, which took a decided interest in the minority regime in Nairobi and helped to bring attention to what was happening there. Even during the darkest days of the McCarthy period, you have the Council on African Affairs conducting petition drives in Harlem and collecting funds in Harlem and other communities for material support for the liberation struggle in Kenya. To a degree you also have the NAACP involved as well in this kind of activity, but of course, and the story is well known, with the rise of McCarthyism you see inordinate pressure on the NAACP to reduce its support for national liberation struggles, on the grounds that they were Communist-influenced. Therefore you had the notorious 1953 resolution passed at the NAACP Convention that basically condemned national liberation struggles. 

Sadly and very unfortunately, the Council on African Affairs was driven out of business by the mid 1950s, but that didn’t stop the decided interest by Black Americans in the Kenyan struggle. Then with the onset of the civil rights movement as symbolized and embodied by Martin Luther King, you begin to see a number of Black students at these very same historically Black colleges and universities, like Morehouse College in Atlanta or Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, taking up the banner of the national liberation struggle in Kenya. This was facilitated because, of course, you had East African students studying at these particular colleges, and to a degree you have at this time a confluence of the struggle in the United States and the struggle in East Africa, and it is a story that needs to be better known.   

PA:  You refer to the role of anti-communism in splitting African Americans along political lines over the question of national liberation in Africa, but those same struggles for national liberation also had the ironic effect of splitting the major imperial powers as well, which is something you talk about a bit.  

GH:  It’s very interesting. Let’s start in the 1930s with the nation now known as Tanzania, but then known as Tanganyika, which was formerly German East Africa, but as a result of the settlement after World War I you have Britain taking over there. Then with the rise of fascism in Germany, you have revanchist tendencies in Berlin and a desire to kick the British out of Dar-es-Salaam. That kind of tension characterizes this part of East Africa through the 1930s and 1940s.  At the same time, you begin to have imperial Japan casting an eye upon East Africa, figuring that they could do a better job of colonizing that part of Africa than the British. So you have that contradiction emerging as well. 

But the contradictions began to take on a new meaning in the post World War II period when colonial Britain is weakened terribly, and the United States decides that it can better administer what had been referred to as the British Empire. Thus  you see Uncle Sam beginning to embrace John Bull with one arm and pick John Bull’s pocket with the other arm, and that is the fundamental tendency that you see in the imperialist world following 1945. This reaches a turning point, it seems to me, in 1956 with the Suez Crisis, when Britain, France and Israel engage in their joint attack on Nasser’s Egypt. and it is Eisenhower, the US president, who basically tells them to stand down, because as he sees it and the US ruling class sees it, this kind of brigandage was weakening the overall imperialist project, and therefore you see them stand down. It is interesting. 

This was a turning point because the European powers drew contrasting lessons from this episode. Britain from that point feels that there can be no daylight between John Bull and Uncle Sam and that it has to attach itself to the coattails of Uncle Sam, something that is still with us and we saw most vividly during the run-up to the March, 2003 illegal and criminal invasion of Iraq, which was given sustenance by then British Prime Minister Tony Blair. France, however drew an opposing lesson from the Suez Crisis – that Uncle Sam cannot be trusted, a lesson that is also revealed when you see liberal senators, like then Massachusetts Senator John Kennedy, beginning to issue critiques of the French role in Algeria. Following the Suez episode and following these sorts of critiques, you see France slowly but surely pulling away from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and trying to develop its own so-called nuclear alternative force. This once again culminates in March, 2003 when then French President Jacques Chirac basically stands apart from the US and British illegal and criminal invasion of Iraq. These kinds of tensions and contradictions the national liberation movements were able to play upon.

I should also add that we cannot ignore the role of Moscow during this particular period, because, of course, there were very strong and strident calls from Moscow  condemning the Suez episode, and that kind of support made it possible for Nasser to survive and also helped to motivate Eisenhower, who realized that unless Washington criticized this criminal escapade against Nasser’s Egypt, the Soviet Union would steal a march and gain an advantage over the imperialists. So you cannot ignore the international context when seeking to explain how it was that Kenya came to independence in December, 1963, just as you cannot ignore the international context when trying to explain how and why it was that Jim Crow in the United States began to crumble at the same precise moment.       

PA:  One of the arguments you make is that the US government was very concerned about its image in the world in the period of the 1950s and 60s, and so, to counter charges by the Soviet Union that it was a racist society, it has to take these steps to end Jim Crow. You call them retreats from white supremacy, which annoyed London, especially when it came to Kenya, because they were trying to rule there using the white supremacist model.  

GH:  Even more than London, the colonial settler regime in Nairobi was deeply resentful of this retreat from white supremacy, because their entire regime was based on bedrock-fortified white supremacy. They saw the United States basically pulling the rug out from under them, which in a sense was true. This came to a head during the Little Rock school desegregation crisis in Arkansas in 1957, when President Eisenhower had to order troops into a high school in order to effectuate desegregation. This caused the colonial settler regime in Nairobi to become infuriated with the United States, because it saw this as double-dealing and basically a stab in the back. There was this intricate interconnection between the struggle against Jim Crow in the United States and the struggle for national liberation in Kenya. The advances against Jim Crow in the United States were helpful to the national liberation struggle and vice-versa, and this kind of dynamic, I would suggest, still holds true, and it is a subject that needs further illumination and discussion.   

PA:  This has been a fascinating discussion and I hope it will lead people to read your book. When is your W.E.B. Du Bois biography coming out?  

GH:  It’s out.  It’s a little book, only 200 pages, but it’s out and making its way to the bookstores.