BIO

I am a first-year humanities student, with concentrations in History, Modern Languages, and Anthropology.

Black Americans in the Soviet Union: an Analysis of Newspapers

Abstract

The 1920s-1930s witnessed an increase in African American interest in the Soviet Union. Prominent Black Americans, including actors, authors, musicians, and political leaders, travelled, or even moved to the Soviet Union.
Newspaper coverage of their lives and travels differs significantly between the Soviet and American press. This tension is especially interesting because this was a time when the two nations collaborated.
In this ongoing project, I am comparing how Black Americans in the USSR were perceived in both U.S and Soviet Press.
So far, I have studied coverage of the Robert Robinson trial – a Soviet trial of two white workers who assaulted a Black colleague. Coverage of the trial in the Soviet press was much less extensive than I expected and nonexistent in the mainstream American press. As I continue my research, I will expand to include more figures and more newspaper sources. I hope that this research will allow for a better understanding of Soviet-American tensions in the pre-cold war era.

Keywords: History, Soviet Union, Race, Communism, Civil Rights