Winter on the Equator: The Successes and Failures of Robert Williams' Personal Propaganda Machine

This paper analyzes black internationalist Robert F. Williams’ experience as an American exile from 1961-1969 and the Sino-Cuban conflict that emerged during his time abroad.  The paper examines how a rift between two Third World nations and each nation’s shifting policy toward Africa adversely impacted the Black Power Movement.
During this period, Williams cultivated a developing rapport with the two leading Third World governments and international communist parties – that of Cuba and the People’s Republic of China (PRC).  He was captivated by both governments’ support for the anticolonial and antiracism struggles being waged by black Americans and by various African liberation movements.  In particular, Cuban and Chinese assistance to guerilla movements in Tanzania and the Congo drove Williams to push black Americans more and more to link themselves to Cuba and the PRC.  But during Williams’ period of exile, Cuba and China’s competition for influence and prestige among Africans and black Americans escalated and Williams was pulled into the center of this rift.  Attacked and denounced by the international left community, Williams opted to side with the Chinese, an action that further increased the intrigue of Maoist thought among young black radicals and nationalists.  Nonetheless by the early to mid 1970s, China would too be criticized and condemned, most centrally for its actions in African affairs.  
This paper contextualizes this history and points to the Black Power Movement’s entanglement in the politics of the Cold War.  Last, it argues that Cuba and China’s rise was filled with contradictions and shortcomings that caused black activist intellectuals to clash with one another and which ultimately helped lead to the dissolution of the Black Power Movement’s ties to various Third World movements.