Kennedy (who arrived late, via the servant’s entrance, having given his bodyguards the slip earlier in the evening).56 Other high-profile events were held in New York, such as “The Negro Writer and His Relationship to His Roots,” a winter 1959 conference graced by the dean of African American poetry, Langston Hughes; regional meetings; and regular lectures at AMSAC’s New York offices.57 The printed word was not neglected. Among AMSAC publications were a monthly six-page newsletter, printed in English and French; a special collaborative issue of
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a host of cultural services to Africans visiting the United States, including an information service, student exchange grants, and English-language education for UN delegates from former French colonies. African guests of honor were entertained at annual holiday parties, where they danced to the music of Count Basie and his jazz orchestra.59
The event that really put AMSAC on the map in Africa took place in December 1961. Timed to coincide with Nigerian independence celebrations, “Negro Culture in Africa and the Americas” was a festival of the performing arts that brought together the cream of black creative talent from both sides of the Atlantic for two days and nights of music, dance, and theater under open skies in Lagos’s King George V Stadium. Yvonne O. Walker, the AMSAC officer charged with assembling, transporting, and managing the American contingent, faced her share of difficulties.
The famous jazz bandleader Lionel “Hamp” Hampton, who traveled separately from the main party, did not arrive until 11:00 at night on the event’s first day, then demanded a tour of Lagos nightspots, which lasted well into the following morning. He also overran badly on stage, causing the next act, Nina Simone, to refuse to come on until Walker threatened her with “a long, cold swim back to the United States.” Artistic tempera-ments notwithstanding, the festival was judged a spectacular success, with audiences of up to 5,000 “going wild” for Hampton, Simone, and the other U.S. performers.60 Shortly afterward, Ben Enwonwu, a noted Nigerian painter and sculptor, cut the ribbon on the West African Cultural Center, a local branch of AMSAC housed in a downtown Lagos office building, inaugurating a new program of art exhibits, receptions, and performing arts exchanges.61 With Ted Harris having quit the organization earlier in the year to run the Institute of Law and Administration in Leopoldville (later Kinshasa) in the Congo, management of the African office was entrusted to his successor as Associate Executive Director, Calvin H. “Hank” Raullerson, who was accompanied to Lagos by his wife, Olive, and their three children.62 Raullerson was replaced in New York by another Lincoln University graduate, lawyer James K. Baker.
It was, perhaps, predictable that AMSAC’s expansion into Africa, which had taken place without consultation with the Société Africaine de Culture and violated the territorial jurisdiction of the international movement’s Nigerian affiliate, NIGERIASAC, should have been greeted by protests from Paris. Granted, Alioune Diop admitted, in a frosty letter to
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John Davis, AMSAC was “the most important section of SAC at present because of the number of its writers and artists and because of the financial and political means which support it,” but this did not give it the right to trample on NIGERIASAC. “We have suffered enough from the cultural oppression of Europe to hope that our Black brothers of America will not
. . . give rebirth to cultural colonialism,” Diop continued.63 As in earlier disputes with SAC, Davis attempted “to smooth the ruffled feelings of Mr.
Diop,” paying for him to travel to New York for talks about the future of the Lagos office, and himself journeying to Paris.64 The ill feeling carried on, however. AMSAC refused to concede control of the West African Cultural Center to NIGERIASAC, as Diop demanded, and Davis reminded Diop, somewhat tactlessly, that the American Society was “representative of some 20 million Negroes in the nation which is one of the world’s great powers.”65 Underlying the clash about Lagos was the division between English and French-speaking Africans that had been highlighted by the 1956 Congress. “We wish that the Negro Americans, instead of being assimilated into the Western culture of America, would to the contrary assign greater importance to the originality of their African heritage,” Diop revealingly told Davis.66