The making of an African American foreign policy lobby: the American Negro Leadership Conference on Africa

The American Negro Leadership Conference on Africa (ANLCA) was a means for the African American elite to influence United States foreign policy towards Sub-Saharan Africa between 1962 and 1967, as well as an endeavour to intervene in African affairs. However, not much is known of its origin and motivation. The story that is usually told is that the ANLCA, which was founded in 1962, was an African American organization set up by George Houser. The point the authors want to make is that the ANLCA was deliberately created ab initio as an organization specifically for African Americans by Houser. However, why would he want to establish an African American organization? To pursue the same objectives as his American Committee on Africa? By problematizing the origin and motivation of the ANLCA, the paper draws attention to the tradition of organizational support for African causes in the United States and the circumstances which helped form the ANLCA. What Houser originally intended, as well as the African American civil rights elite, was a conference on Africa, nothing more. That the ANLCA outlasted the Arden House Conference was not the original design of either Houser or the African American civil rights elite or an intended outcome. As a foreign policy lobby organization, therefore, the ANLCA was a historical accident. Notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]