ebonymag: SWIM, Live and In Color! January, 1960. Here’s some stuff about the article advertised in the upper right corner. How Negroes Live in Russia Some of the most bizarre stories told today are of life behind the Communist Iron Curtain. In the East-West Struggle for world power, it is perhaps important for the average American—black or white—to know what life is like on the other side. But little has been written of colored people within the Soviet Union It’s a deeply anti-Communist piece by William B. Davis, who was a guide at the American National Exhibition in Moscow in 1958. It mainly involves his interactions with African-Americans who became Soviet citizens and brief stuff about African students at Moscow University. The details, even tendentiously and with accurate, cutting counter-propaganda, about those interactions are worth reading the article for, especially when Davis has to admit that a Soviet-trained and employed Black engineer from Detroit would help Soviet propaganda in Africa. I think that this article and its writer may have provided the basis for a character in the excellent Red Plenty by Francis Spufford.  I’m not going to defend the lack of freedoms in the former Soviet Union, although it should be mentioned that Ebony in 1960 was not going to publish an article with different conclusions (along with being surrounded by ads for skin lighteners and hair straighteners. By the end of the article, it moves onto to the lack of consumer goods in the Soviet Union. Davis presents the US as constantly progressing on race, even though he writes “Negro ‘struggle’” and it’s interesting that by 1960 MLK Jr was starting to be used as a defense of the US.

ebonymag:

SWIM, Live and In Color! January, 1960.

Here’s some stuff about the article advertised in the upper right corner.

How Negroes Live in Russia

Some of the most bizarre stories told today are of life behind the Communist Iron Curtain. In the East-West Struggle for world power, it is perhaps important for the average American—black or white—to know what life is like on the other side. But little has been written of colored people within the Soviet Union

It’s a deeply anti-Communist piece by William B. Davis, who was a guide at the American National Exhibition in Moscow in 1958. It mainly involves his interactions with African-Americans who became Soviet citizens and brief stuff about African students at Moscow University. The details, even tendentiously and with accurate, cutting counter-propaganda, about those interactions are worth reading the article for, especially when Davis has to admit that a Soviet-trained and employed Black engineer from Detroit would help Soviet propaganda in Africa. I think that this article and its writer may have provided the basis for a character in the excellent Red Plenty by Francis Spufford. 

I’m not going to defend the lack of freedoms in the former Soviet Union, although it should be mentioned that Ebony in 1960 was not going to publish an article with different conclusions (along with being surrounded by ads for skin lighteners and hair straighteners. By the end of the article, it moves onto to the lack of consumer goods in the Soviet Union. Davis presents the US as constantly progressing on race, even though he writes “Negro ‘struggle’” and it’s interesting that by 1960 MLK Jr was starting to be used as a defense of the US.