African Americans and the Nigerian Civil War, 1967-1970

This book is the first to recover and analyse at length the extent, complexity, and character of African American responses to the Nigerian Civil War (1967-1970).

Far from having only marginal significance, the Nigerian Civil War 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 civil rights leaders offered their service as agents of direct diplomacy during the conflict, seeking to preserve Nigerian unity; grassroots activists organised food-drives, concerts, and awareness campaigns in support of humanitarian aid for victims of famine in the warzone; while other black activists warned of an imminent genocide and called for an united response from black Americans. Drawing on private papers, activist literature, government records, and especially the black press, it charts the way the civil war shaped, as well as challenged, the worldview of African Americans regarding black internationalist solidarities, territorial sovereignty and political viability, humanitarian compassion, and the political trajectory of postcolonial Africa.

With a chronological approach, this study is the ideal resource for all those interested in the Nigerian Civil War and the history of black internationalism.