To what extent did the Peace
Corps create a new image of
Africa in America?
The Peace Corps and African
Americans
• Set up in 1961
• Three goals:
1. providing technical assistance
2. helping other countries to understand American culture
3. educating Americans about the cultures of other countries
• Context of Cold War: America trying to improve its image and widen its
sphere of influence.
• Peace Corps anti-racist ideology – e.g. 1962 University of Texas training
contact revoked because of segregated dorms.
• Attempts to recruit African Americans to the Peace Corps - largely
unsuccessful – first 120 volunteers in Africa included only two black
Americans. Number never rose above 4 percent of the total
volunteers.
• Very embarrassing for Peace Corps.
Images of Africa
• Little variations
• Romanticised – images of
motherland
• Vanguard of worldwide black
revolution
• Would find ‘ancestral roots’
and automatically associate
with Africans
• Was this image undermined or
reinforced by experiences of
Black Americans in the Peace
Corps?
African American experiences in the
Peace Corps
1. Images of Africa as a place of homecoming
and shared humanity reinforced by
experiences of black volunteers. Experiences
of black Americans in Africa fed into civil
rights struggle in America.
2. Disillusionment – romanticised images of
Africa shattered by experiences of
volunteers. Did little to influence civil rights
movement.
Africa as a place of homecoming and
shared humanity
• LACK OF PREJUDICE: first time they felt respected as a human being
• CRITICAL OF U.S.: ‘The Peace Corps experience in Ghana was one of
the high points of my life. I believe it radicalized me and many other
PCVs because we were in a country critical of the U.S. in the early
60s before the U.S protest movements became important.’
• CULTURAL SIMILARITIES: music, church services, sports, food etc.
• SHARED HUMANITY: ‘I got an appreciation of where I came from,
and of the beauty of that. Basically we’re all the same.’
‘What the African experience did for us was to show us that people are
people – no matter where they are, no matter what their tribe, no
matter what their country, no matter what their beliefs; that there
are some values that we all have, intrinsic to the human race.
‘Irrevocable bond between peoples of colour’
Scholar’s views: Julius Amin
Peace Corps experiences and civil rights movement linked:
1. ‘Peace Corps service taught them humility and the
richness of African culture... By using what they had
learned in Africa to address the racial problems in
America, the volunteers made a difference.... Peace
Corps experience contributed immensely to the struggle
for black equality.’
2. Became more critical of U.S.: ‘They realised that the
civil rights movement was justified... They returned
home more determined to assist the course of freedom
in their country.’
The Minority Peace Corps Association
Accounts from 1980s and 1990s:
• Katrina Mathis, Guinea 1994-1996:
‘Just like all Peace Corps volunteers, I
was warmly welcomed by my
community from the minute I arrived
at the site... Various members of my
community sought me out just to
discuss our common ancestry...’
• Harris Bostic, Guinea, 1988-1991:
‘the moment I stepped onto the
shore I heard three simple words:
‘Welcome home, brother’... This was
my home, my people, my land, my
culture... I had been accepted into
these villagers’ everyday lives as one
of them. It was unceremonious and
unconditionally welcoming.’
Minority Peace Corps Association aims:
• ‘raising awareness in minority communities
about Peace Corps and its many programs’
• ‘providing support and assistance to returned
and serving Peace Corps volunteers and
applicants of color’
• ‘enhancing the participation of Americans of
color in international experience’
• Likely to present Peace Corps experience
positively.
Different images of Africa
• Prejudice between ethnicities. Carl Meacham in
Liberia (1965) found some Liberians ‘were as
‘racist’ as many whites I had encountered’ and
‘discriminatory system in Liberia reminded me of
racism and segregation in Alabama’.
• Given nicknames that undermined sense of unity:
‘white black man’, ‘suntanned white woman’,
‘black European’, and ‘native foreigner’.
• Not interested in civil rights movement.
Newspaper in Lesotho: ‘How and why has this
Negro come to help us, when his own people
are being killed?’ Did not see it as their cause.
• Ed Smith: image of ‘black world rising’
shattered – ‘I am not one of them, and never
can be’, ‘the real struggle is elsewhere, closer
to home’.
• Afro haircut: ‘there was nothing particularly
African about the Afro.’
Civil rights movement and the Peace
Corps
• Peace Corps service seen as a diversion from
rather than an expression of civil rights
activism.
• ‘In 1964, the action was here, but I, like many
of my peers, ran away from it.’
• Civil rights movement in America not
associated with Peace Corps efforts in Africa.
• Malcolm X very critical of Peace Corps,
volunteers seen as traitors to the cause.
Conclusion
• Did new images of Africa formed by Peace
Corps experiences affect the way Africa was
seen in America as a whole?
• Numbers of African American volunteers very
low.
• New descriptions of Africa by returned
volunteers not believed in America.