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American Networks: Radicals under the Radar (1840–1968)

2017; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 15; Issue: 3-4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14775700.2017.1553768

1741-2676

Jak Peake, Wendy McMahon,

Race, History, and American Society

In July 2016, the University of Essex organized a small conference, 'American Networks: Radicals Under the Radar,' over two and half days in the grand, high-ceilinged building at 1 Suffolk Street, just off Trafalgar Square, in London.It brought together a network of scholars from the disciplines of History, Art History, and Literature and from across different areas of American Studies: namely researchers of the Caribbean, Latin America and the US.There were three main points that served as key guidelines, themes and enquiries of the conference.The first was that of the network: how people, ideas, texts and images-all potential nodes to use network terminology-connect to one another socially, politically, artistically and so on.In adopting the lens of the network, it naturally followed as a second point that connections would inevitably traverse national borders, and therefore involve an aspect of cross-cultural encounter.The third key issue, or really the key theme, was to consider the confluence of political radicalism and the arts.In linking these two spheres of activity, we hoped to unravel the interconnections, or rather the larger networks linking writers, artists and political figures in a period of frenetic political activity upheaval which saw the building of the Panama Canal-first in the abortive attempt by French (1881-1894) then by the United States (1904)(1905)(1906)(1907)(1908)(1909)(1910)(1911)(1912)(1913)(1914)-the Russian Revolution and the spread of International Communism, the Mexican Revolution, two world wars and rise of anti-colonialism and independence movements globally.The timeline focused on the one hundred years leading up to 1968, the year in which radical movements and groups lit the blue touch paper.Across the world, dissidence spread like a conflagration in response to the perceived ills of capitalism, hand-in-glove with wars, dictatorships and imperialism.Martin Luther King's and Bobby Kennedy's assassinations that same year hinted at the dark forces lurking within the shadowy worlds of the US state and Central Intelligence Agency-echoing the assassinations of Bobby's brother, J. F. Kennedy, and King's civil rights counterpart, Malcolm X. King's death on 4 April prompted waves of protest across the United States.In that month alone, the Black Panthers, led by Eldridge Cleaver, were embroiled in fatal shootouts with the police in Oakland, California, and students at Columbia University protesting against the institution's allegedly racist policies took three of the University's administrators hostage for twenty-four hours.Black student activism on US university campuses calling for more black teaching staff and a curriculum reflective of African and African diasporic history led to the creation of the first Black Studies departments.Black student activism saw the campuses shutdown at Howard University in March, and a broad wave of student protest, which included a significant proportion of African-American students, shutdown Columbia University in April 1968.Similar activism at San Francisco State College led to the first Black Studies programme being instituted that year, and the creation of its Black Studies Department the following year.Protest against the Vietnam War-marches, street demonstrations, sit-ins-spread across the United States, West Berlin, London and Japan.The heady foment of black activism and anti-Vietnam demonstrations would lead to the creation of the Weather Underground Organization a year later, who declared war on the US government in 1970 and set about targeting governmental and bank buildings in a series of bombing campaigns.Further south, the Mexican President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz's hold on power looked increasingly shaky as he maintained a hard-line, authoritarian approach to governance, suppressing trade unions among others from expressing dissent.The Mexican government had spent an eyewatering $150 million in preparation for the 1968 Olympic Games due to take place in Mexico City and undoubtedly this huge piece of expenditure contributed to simmering tensions.In the summer, fracas between rival school gangs in Mexico City led to heavy-handed responses from the government, which in turn united students across Mexico in protest against government repression.Forming student brigadas ('brigades'), student brigadistas took to the streets, boarded buses to speak to passengers, disseminated leaflets and organized various demonstrations against government repression and corruption.On 2 October 1968, thousands of university and high school students gathered in the Tlatelolco Square, or Plaza de las Tres Culturas, in peaceful protest at the government's actions.Wanting to stem any signs of civil strife prior to the Olympic Games, Díaz Ordaz stepped up security measures and formed an Olympia Battalion, a secret security para-military wing of government, to repress acts of apparent civil disobedience.In essence, Díaz Ordaz had created a pressure cooker intended to halt further protest.At some stage during the Tlatelolco Square demonstration, shots were fired, an assault which led to what eyewitnesses believed to be hundreds left dead or wounded.As sports journalist, Richard Hoffer writes, the massacre 'was public enough to have effectively ended the student movement, yet underreported enough that the Olympics would not be stopped on its account' (Hoffer 2011, 114-115).The combination, then, of state authorized terror and control of the press-what Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser called Repressive State Apparatuses-applied pressure to the radical threat of the protesters, left Mexicans and for the person officially bringing the lawsuit, Reyes Spíndola (Díaz, the shadowy figure behind him).Hulme's discussion draws out a broader point about radical networks: that each is all too often connected to a shadow network of state agents, and repressive and ideological state apparatuses. 5This dynamic emerges in Winston James's essay, 'In the Nest of Extreme Radicalism: Radical Networks and the Bolshevization of Claude McKay in London'.In his analysis of Claude McKay's London years (1919-1921), James reveals how the writer laid low from the International Socialist Club (ISC) in London's East End, when the Criminal Investigation Department apparently began to a sustained interest in its members' affairs.He also outlines how McKay narrowly avoided arrest when the offices of Sylvia Pankhurst's Workers' Dreadnought were raided by detectives.While Pankhurst served time for sedition, she refused to name McKay as the probable author of two out of four articles ('Discontent on the Lower Deck' and 'The Yellow Peril and the Dockers') that the government used in its case against the Workers' Dreadnought.Radical networks therefore can also shelter individuals and help keep them beneath the radar when necessary.James illustrates how three groups were instrumental to McKay's radical trajectory.First, the Workers' Socialist Federation, of which Pankhurst was founder and leader, and the Workers' Dreadnought its organ; second was the Hoxton-based ISC; third was a club on London's Drury Lane established for non-white colonial and African American soldiers.