Black American radicals once forged links with Chinese communists

ON FEBRUARY 23RD, from a basement in Queens, New York, a little-known organisation announced that China would be receiving a special honour. “We present [the] People’s Republic of China with the H.R. 1242 Resilience Project W.E.B. Du Bois Award,” wrote the group’s president, Victor Mooney, in a letter to the Chinese ambassador to the United Nations. The award celebrates China’s donation of the Sinopharm covid-19 vaccine to African countries. “W.E.B. Du Bois is a vivid reminder that China is a brother to Africa and African-Americans,” Mr Mooney added.

In a time of strained relations between America and China, Mr Mooney’s olive branch is unusual. But then so is Mr Mooney. He claims to be the first African-American to have rowed across the Atlantic, braving boat-slapping sharks and boat-pinching pirates (the international arbiter of such challenges, the Ocean Rowing Society, does not recognise his efforts). He is an ally of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea, Africa’s longest-serving despot. Perhaps it then says something that it is Mr Mooney alone who is trying to resurrect a long-forgotten friendship between black activists and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). His award harks back to a time when figures such as Du Bois, to some the godfather of the civil-rights movement, looked to China to lead a Third World...