The Making of an African American Foreign Policy Lobby: The American Negro Leadership Conference on Africa

Abstract

The American Negro Leadership Conference on Africa (ANLCA) became adevice of the African American elite for influencing United States policytoward Sub-Saharan Africa between 1962 and 1967, and for intervening inAfrican affairs. Yet, its origin and identity have been largely taken forgranted. The story that is usually told is that the ANLCA, founded in 1962,was an African American organization that was the brainchild of GeorgeHouser. The implication is that the ANLCA was consciously created ab initioas an organization for African Americans by Houser. Why would Housercause to be established an African American organization to pursue thesame objectives as his American Committee on Africa? By problematizingthe origin and identity of the ANLCA, the paper draws attention to thetradition of organizational support for African causes in the United States,and the circumstances that gave form to the ANLCA. It contends that whatHouser proposed, and the African American civil rights elite joined inorganizing, was a conference on Africa, nothing more. That the ANLCAoutlasted the Arden House Conference was not the original design of eitherHouser or the African American civil rights elite or an intended outcome. Asa foreign policy lobby organization, therefore, the ANLCA was a historicalaccident.

…U.S.-African relations cannot be adequately understoodunless it is examined within the context of its domesticconstituency