African Americans at the League of Nations

During its 20-year existence, dozens of prominent Black activists visited the League of Nations in Geneva, including W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, and Alain Locke. These visits epitomised how the League idea animated African American thought in the interwar years, despite the United States remaining a non-member. This paper traces the overlooked history of African Americans at the League. In the 1920s, race reformers saw global governance as a promising new avenue for activism, yet internationalising racial issues was not a simple act of transplanting demands from Washington to Geneva. As neither colonial subjects nor stateless people, the League prompted African Americans to rethink how their circumstances differed from those of other black groups around the world. The paper explores the promise and failure of liberal internationalism on the race question in the 1920s, the rise of human rights, and the role Black reformers played in shaping the ‘American Century’.