Black Philosopher Dubois : “Again, China and Africa, hail and farewell! “

THE WORLD AND AFRICA / W. E. Burghardt Du Bois Against a background of the vast contributions of ancient and modern Africa to world culture, peace and industry, Dr. Du Bois documents the historic injustices of the rape of Africa, from the slave trade to its partition by the colonial powers. The articles and essays on the emerging new nations and personalities of Africa, written by Dr. Du Bois frem 1955-1961, have been added to the original manuscript.<


314 Addenda to __The World and Africa_ <


CHINA AND AFRICA On February 23, his 91st birthday, Dr. Du Bois was in Peking, where his birthday was celebrated at a public dinner. On the same day he spoke to more than 1,000 students and faculty at Peking University. The text is from New World Review, New York, April 1959.


By courtesy of the government of the 680 million people of the Chinese Republic, I am permitted on my 91st birthday to speak to the people of China and Africa and through them to the world. Hail, then, and farewell, dwelling places of the yellow and black races. Hail humankind!

I speak with no authority, no assumption of age or rank; I hold no position, I have no wealth. One thing alone I own and that is my own soul. Ownership of that I have even while in my own country for near a century I have been nothing but a "nigger." On this basis and this alone I dare speak, I dare advise.

China after long centuries has arisen to her feet and leapt forward. Africa arise, and stand straight, speak and think! Act! Turn from the West and your slavery and humiliation for the last 500 years and face the rising sun. Behold a people, the most populous nation on this ancient earth which has burst its shackles, not by boasting and strutting, not by lying about its history and its conquests, but by patience and long-suffering, by hard, backbreaking labor and with bowed head and blind struggle, moved up and on toward the crimson sky.


She aims to "make men holy; to make men free." But What men? Not simply the rich, but not excluding the rich; not simply the learned, but led by knowledge to the end that no man shall be poor, nor sick, nor ignorant; that the humblest worker as well as the sons of emperors First, understand! Realize that the great mass of mankind is freeing itself from wage slavery, while private capital in Britain, France and now in America, is still trying to maintain civilization and comfort for a few on the toil, disease and ignorance of the mass of men. Understand this, and understanding comes from direct knowledge. You know America and France and Britain to your sorrow. Now know the Soviet Union and its allied nations, but particularly know China.<


China is flesh of your flesh and blood of your blood.

China is colored and knows to what a colored skin in this modern world subjects its owner. But China knows more, much more than this: she knows what to do about it. She can take the insults of the United States and still hold her head high. She can make her own machines or go without machines, when America refuses to sell her American manufactures even though this throws her workers out of jobs and hurts American industry. China does not need American nor British missionaries to teach her religion and scare her with tales of hell. China has been in hell too long, not to believe in a heaven of her own making. This she is doing.


Come to China, Africa, and look around. Invite Africa to come, China, and see what you can teach just by pointing. Yonder old woman is working on the street. But she is happy.


She has no fear. Her children are in school and a good school.


If she is ill, there is a hospital where she is cared for free of charge. She has a vacation with pay each year. She can die and be buried without taxing her family to make some undertaker rich.


Africa can answer: but some of this we have done; our tribes undertake public service like this. Very well, let your tribes continue and expand this work. What Africa must realize is what China knows: that it is worse than stupid to allow a people's education to be under the control of those who seek not the progress of the people but their use as means of making themselves rich and powerful. It is wrong for the University of London to control the University of Ghana. It is wrong for the Catholic Church to direct the education of the black Congolese. It was wrong for Protestant churches supported by British and American wealth to control





CHINA AND AFRICA 315 higher education in China. The Soviet Union is surpassing the world in popular and higher education, because from the beginning it started its own complete educational system.


The essence of the revolution in the Soviet Union and China and in all the "iron curtain" nations, is not the violence that accompanied the change-no more than starvation at Valley Forge was the essence of the American revolution against Britain. The real revolution is the acceptance on the part of the nation of the fact that hereafter the main object of the nation is the welfare of the mass of the people and not of a lucky few.


Government is for the people's progress and not for the comfort of the aristocracy. The object of industry is the welfare of the workers and not the wealth of the owners. The object of civilization is the cultural progress of the mass of workers and not merely of an intellectual elite. And in return for all this, communist lands believe that the cultivation of the mass of people will discover more talent and genius to serve the state than any closed aristocracy ever furnished. This belief the current history of the Soviet Union and China is proving true each day. Therefore don't let the West invest when you can avoid it. Don't buy capital from Britain, France and the United States if you can get it on reasonable terms from the Soviet Union and China. This is not politics; it is common sense. It is learning from experience.

It is trusting your friends and watching your enemies.


Refuse to be cajoled or to change your way of life so as to make a few of your fellows rich at the expense of a mass scha: so har i or ma sca and remining withou Africa, here is a real danger which you must avoid or return to the slavery from which you are emerging. All I ask from ou is the courage to know; to look about you and see what is happening in this old and tired world; to realize the extent and depth of its rebirth and the promise which glows on yonder hills.


Visit the Soviet Union and visit China. Let your youth learn the Russian and Chinese languages. Stand together in this new world and let the old world perish in its greed or<


THE WORLD AND ARKICA be born again in new hope and promise. Listen to the H prophet of communism: Ho! every one that thirsteth; come ye to the waters; c buy and eat, without money and without price!<


Again, China and Africa, hail and farewell!<


SELECTED TITLES from INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHERS ISBN Prefix 978-0-7 AFGHANISTAN..... - Phillip Bonosky 0732


AGAINST FASCISM and WAR - George Dimitrov 0643


"ALWAYS BRING A CROWD" - Beatrice Lumpkin 0725-0

ANGELA DAVIS, An Autobiography 0667-6


AUTOBIOGRAPHY of W. E. B. Du BOIS 0234-0



BIRTH of the COMMUNIST MANIFESTO - Prof. Dirk Struik, ed. 0320-0


COMMUNIST COUNCILMAN from HARLEM - Benjamin J. Davis 0680-5


CUBA and the USA - Prof. Harry Targ 0700-0


18th BRUMAIRE, The - Karl Marx 0056-8

IMPERIALISM - V. I. Lenin 0098-8


INSURGENT MEXICO - John Reed 0099-5


IRAN, A Child's Story, A Man's Experience - Sabri-Tabrizi 0682-9


JOHN BROWN - W. E. B. Du Bois 0375-0

JOHN BROWN, The Cost of Freedom - Louis A. DeCaro, Jr. 0742-0


KWAME NKRUMAH - Yuri Smertin 0655-3


LET the RAILSPLITTER AWAKE - Pablo Neruda 0668-3


MODERN PRINCE, The - Antonio Gramsci 0133-6


PEOPLE VS. PROFITS, Vol. 2 - Victor Perlo 0743-7


RED ROOTS, GREEN SHOOTS (Marxist Environmentalism)< - V. Brodine


0731-4 ROLE of FORCE in HISTORY - Frederick Engels

0739-0 SIQUIEROS, His Life and Works - Philip Stein


0706-2 THEY SHALL NOT PASS - Dolores Ibarruri

0468-9 ZAPATA - Robert Millon


0710-9 $10.00 ISBN