Far from having only marginal significance and generating a “subdued” response among African Americans, as some historians have argued, the Nigerian Civil War (1967–1970) collided at full velocity with the conflicting discourses and ideas by which black Americans sought to understand their place in the United States and the world in the late 1960s. Black liberal civil rights leaders leapt to offer their service as agents of direct diplomacy during the conflict, seeking to preserve Nigerian unity; grassroots activists from New Yorkto Kansas organised food-drives, concerts and awareness campaigns in support of humanitarian aid for Biafran victims of starvation; while other pro-Biafran black activists warned of links between black “genocide” in Biafra and the US alike. This thesis is the first to recover and analyse at length the extent, complexity and character of such African American responses to the Nigerian Civil War. Drawing on extensive use of private papers, activist literature, government records and especially the black press, it charts the way African Americans conceptualised, over time and in complex ways, their varied understandings of issues such as black internationalist solidarities, territorial sovereignty and political viability, humanitarian compassion and great power realpolitik, as well as colonial and neo-colonial influence in Africa.
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