Yunxiang Gao - Arise, Africa! roar, China! : Black and Chinese citizens of the world in the twentieth century

GAO YUNXIANG

THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS

Publication of this book was supported in part by a generous gift from Kim and Phil Phillips.

2021 Gao Yunxiang

Designed by Jamison Cockerham

Set in Arno, Scala Sans, and Aller

by Tseng Information Systems, Inc.

Cover illustrations: From top, clockwise: Liu Liangmo (from Green Bay [WI] Press-Gazette), Langston Hughes (courtesy New York World-Telegram & Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress), Si-lan Chen (courtesy New York Public Library), W. E. B. Du Bois with Mao Zedong (courtesy of W. E. B. Du Bois Papers, Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries), and Paul Robeson (authors collection); background courtesy iStock.

The University of North Carolina Press has been a member of the Green Press Initiative since 2003.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Names: Gao, Yunxiang, author.

Title: Arise, Africa! Roar, China! : Black and Chinese citizens of the world in the twentieth century / Gao Yunxiang.

Other titles: Black and Chinese citizens of the world in the twentieth century | John Hope Franklin series in African American history and culture.

Description: Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press, 2021. | Series: The John Hope Franklin series in African American history and culture | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021027388 | ISBN 9781469664606 (cloth ; alk. paper) | ISBN 9781469664613 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Du Bois, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt), 18681963. | Robeson, Paul, 18981976. | Hughes, Langston, 19021967. | Leyda, Si-lan Chen. | Liu, Liangmo, 19091988. | African AmericansRelations with Chinese. | African AmericansPolitical activity20th century. | ChinaPolitics and government20th century. | BISAC: HISTORY / World | SOCIAL SCIENCE / Ethnic Studies / American / Asian American Studies

Classification: LCC E185.61 .G218 2021 | DDC 327.1/708996073dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021027388

I have received generous support from numerous friends and colleagues across the globe in writing this book. Zhang Juguo of Nankai University and Pan Huaqiong of Beijing University facilitated my navigation of the enormous number of Chinese sources available at their universities. Hang Yao of the Soong Qingling (Madam Sun Yat-sen) Foundation provided me with valuable materials from the organizations collections. Alan Smith of Toronto enthusiastically shared private photographs of Paul Robeson and hundreds of newspaper articles in English.

Chen Yuan-tsung, Sylvia Si-lan Chens surviving sister-in-law, and Ji Xiao-bin, Ji Chaodings nephew, offered insights on the Chen and Ji families, respectively. Lynn Garafola of Columbia University, who had interviewed Chen on her collaboration with the legendary Soviet dancer-choreographer Kasyan Goleizovsky, patiently answered my questions and offered valuable criticism of the chapter on Chen. I enjoyed discussing the history of dance in China with Eva S. Chou of Baruch College, City University of New York. Stella Dong, a writer and family friend, enchanted me with the stories of her interviews with Sylvia Si-lan Chens brother Jack in the 1980s. I have been inspired by my conversations with Louise Edwards at the University of New South Wales (Sydney), Keisha N. Blain at the University of Pittsburgh, and Phillip Luke Sinitiere at the College of Biblical Studies (Houston), and by their distinguished work. The knowledge I gained from Marc Gallicchio at Villanova University, Emily Wilcox at the University of Michigan, Bill V. Mullen at Purdue University, and other scholars has been of great help. I would like to acknowledge in particular Wilcoxs collegiality in providing a rare image of Sylvia Si-lan Chen from the Pioneers of Chinese Dance Digital Collection at the Asia Library of the University of Michigan.

Gail Hershatter at the University of California, Santa Cruz, offered important support, collegiality, and insights into the meaning of this book, as befits her position as a preeminent scholar of China. Andrew Morris at California Polytechnic State University provided generous and insightful evaluation of the manuscript; his warm friendship and collegiality are inspirational. My teacher and valued friend Charles Hayford, an active independent scholar, read and edited much of the manuscript and offered extraordinary advice for navigating the publishing process. His late father, Harrison Hayford, a professor of English at Northwestern University, happened to be a fellow Herman Melville scholar and a close friend of Jay Leyda, Sylvia Si-lan Chens husband. This book has benefited from the valuable comments of Marc Gallicchio of Villanova University and two other anonymous readers. I feel blessed to now consider Professors Hershatter, Morris, Hayford, and Gallicchio as friends and colleagues.

I was inspired by exchanges with colleagues at the University of Michigans Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies during my invited lecture there in 2019. I benefited from wisdom of colleagues at the following conferences: the Annual Meetings of the American Historical Association in New York in 2015 and 2020; the Ninth Annual Harriet Tubman Summer InstituteNew Geographies: Africa and African Diasporas at New York University, the Third Annual Conference of the African American Intellectual History Society at Brandeis University, and the White Privilege Conference Global in Toronto, all in 2018; the Annual Conferences of the Association of Asian Studies in San Diego in 2013 and in Toronto in 2017; the Annual Meeting of the Organization of American Historians, the Southeast Annual Conference of the Association for Asian Studies, and the Annual Conference of ASIANetwork, all in 2021. A portion of appeared in my article W. E. B. and Shirley Graham Du Bois in Maoist China, published in the Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race 10, no. 1 (2013): 5985. Lawrence Bobo, the W. E. B. Du Bois Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University, carefully edited the piece.

I wish to thank the staffs at the following libraries and archival institutions: the Shanghai Municipal Library, China National Library (Beijing), the Nankai University Library, the Beijing University Library, the Archives of the Pearl S. Buck House (520 Dublin Road, Perkasie, Pennsylvania), the Special Collections and Archives of the University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries, the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, the Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives of the Elmer Holmes Bobst Library at New York University, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, the Manuscript Department of the Huntington Library (San Marino, California), the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library at Princeton University, the Butler Library at Columbia University, the Manuscript and Prints and Photographs Divisions at the Library of Congress, the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University, the Special Collections Research Center of Bird Library at Syracuse University, the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and General Research Division, the National Archives at San Francisco and San Bruno, and Colgate University Library. The Faculty of Arts at Ryerson University provided grants for final preparation of the book.