American Society of African Culture

The American Society of African Culture (AMSAC) was an organization of African-American writers, artists, and scholars.^[1] The society was founded as a result of the Congress of Negro Writers and Artists in 1956^[2] based on the idea of the French fr:Société africaine de culture.

In June 1957, the American Society of African Culture (AMSAC) was officially founded by five African-American intellectuals: the political scientist and civil rights activist John A. Davis, historian and social scientist Horace Mann Bond (1904–1972), professor of French and future American ambassador Will Mercer Cook (1903–1987), philosopher William T. Fontaine (1909–1968) and James Ivy, editor of the NAACP's Crisis. Thurgood Marshall and Duke Ellington were also founding fathers.^[3]

During its heyday in the early 1960s, AMSAC had around four hundred members. One of the main goals of the organisation was to expose African Americans to their African heritage. This aim was pursued through organising exhibitions, lectures, music performances, and conferences in the United States (primarily New York) and Africa (occasionally). AMSAC published the volumes Pan-Africanism Reconsidered and Southern Africa in Transition, edited versions of the papers and discussions of AMSAC-sponsored international conferences in, respectively, I960 and I963. Earlier, AMSAC edited and published in Presence Africaine, Africa Seen by American Negro Scholars that . AMSAC also published a quarterly journal, African Forum, beginning in the summer of 1965 with themes such as African unity, African socialism, the writer (in recognition of the opening of the First World Festival of Negro Arts), the military in Africa, and South Africa and her neighbors.^[4]

Office in Lagos, Nigeria

In 1961, AMSAC opened an African office in Lagos, Nigeria.^[5] The opening was celebrated with a two-day festival of music performances, dancing, panel discussions, and art exhibited by Africans and African Americans in December 1961.^[5][6][7] It closed in 1966.

CIA funding

AMSAC had received federal tax exemption the year prior and thus large grants became available to the organization for specific projects from various entities. This financial backing was how they were able to organize the large festival in Lagos. The grants were later revealed as CIA pass-throughs.^[7]

After 1967, AMSAC's membership sharply declined after it was named as one of the organizations that was funded by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).^[8] AMSAC ceased to exist in 1969.^[9]

References

1. Cromwell Hill, Adelaide; Martin Kilson (1969). Apropos of Africa: Sentiments of Negro American Leaders on Africa from the 1800s to the 1950s. London: Routledge. p. 216. ISBN 0-7146-1757-1.
2. Minogue, Martin; Judith Molloy (1974). African Aims & Attitudes: Selected Documents. CUP Archive. p. 234. ISBN 0-521-20426-7.
3. Schechter, Dan; Ansara, Michael; Kolodney, David. "The CIA is an Equal Opportunity Employer.: New England Free Press". Reveal Digital.
4. Baker, James K. (1966). "The American Society of African Culture". The Journal of Modern African Studies. 4 (3): 367–369. ISSN 0022-278X.
5. Baker, James K. (November 1966). "The American Society of African Culture". The Journal of Modern African Studies. 4 (3): 367–369 (3 pages). doi:10.1017/S0022278X00013550. JSTOR 159208. S2CID 154863269 – via JSTOR.
6. "African-American Cultural Exchange". Ebony. 17 (5). Johnson Publishing Company: 87. March 1962.
7. Geerlings, Lonneke (18 January 2018). "Performances in the theatre of the Cold War: the American Society of African Culture and the 1961 Lagos Festival". Journal of Transatlantic Studies. 16 (1): 1–19. doi:10.1080/14794012.2018.1423601. S2CID 148821748.
8. Cooke, Alistair (February 18, 1967), "More Organisations Find They Are On CIA's Fund List", The Guardian, p. 9; Neil Sheehan, "5 New Groups Tied To C.I.A. Conduits", The New York Times, 17 February 1967, pp. 1, 16, and Richard Harwood, "8 More Groups Linked to CIA's Fund Activities", The Washington Post and Times-Herald, February 21, 1967, p. A6; Hugh Wilford, The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008); Wilford in: Dongen, Transnational Anti-Communism and the Cold War: Agents, Activities, and Networks, p. 30.
9. de Vries, Tity (2012). "The 1967 Central Intelligence Agency Scandal: Catalyst in a Transforming Relationship between State and People". The Journal of American History. 98 (4): 1075–1092. ISSN 0021-8723.