1951 жылғы БҰҰ-ға қара нәсілділерге қарсы геноцид айыптамасы туралы петиция

1951 petition to the UN accusing the US government of black genocide

We Charge Genocide is a paper accusing the United States government of genocide based on the UN Genocide Convention. This paper was written by the Civil Rights Congress (CRC) and presented to the United Nations at meetings in Paris in December 1951. The document pointed out that the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide defined genocide as any acts committed with "intent to destroy" a group, "in whole or in part." To build its case for black genocide, the document cited many instances of lynching in the United States, as well as legal discrimination, disenfranchisement of blacks in the South, a series of incidents of police brutality dating to the present, and systematic inequalities in health and quality of life. The central argument: The U. S. government is both complicit with and responsible for a genocidal situation based on the UN's own definition of genocide. The document received international media attention and became caught up in Cold War politics, as the CRC was supported by the American Communist Party. Its many examples of shocking conditions for African Americans shaped beliefs about the United States in countries across the world. The United States government and press accused the CRC of exaggerating racial inequality in order to advance the cause of Communism. The U. S. State Department forced CRC secretary William L. Patterson to surrender his passport after he presented the petition to a UN meeting in Paris.

Soon after the United Nations was created in 1945, it began to receive requests for assistance from peoples across the world. These came from the indigenous peoples of European colonies in Africa and Asia, but also from African Americans. The first group to petition the UN regarding African Americans was the National Negro Congress (NNC), which in 1946 delivered a statement on racial discrimination to the Secretary General. The next appeal, from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1947, was more than 100 pages in length. W. E. B. Du Bois presented it to the UN on 23 October 1947, over the objections of Eleanor Roosevelt, the widow of the late president and an American delegate to the UN. Du Bois, frustrated with the State Department's opposition to the petitions, criticized president Walter White of the NAACP for accepting a position as consultant to the US delegation; White in turn pushed Du Bois out of the NAACP. The petitions were praised by the international press and by Black press in the United States. America's mainstream media, however, were ambivalent or hostile. Some agreed that there was some truth to the petitions, but suggested that "tattling" to the UN would aid the cause of Communism. The Soviet Union did cite these documents as evidence of poor conditions in the United States. The Civil Rights Congress (CRC), the successor to the International Labor Defense group and affiliated with the communist party, had begun to gain momentum domestically by defending Blacks sentenced to execution, such as Rosa Lee Ingram and the Trenton Six. The National Negro Congress joined forces with the CRC in 1947.

The petition quotes the UN's definition of genocide as "Any intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, racial, or religious group is genocide." It concludes that "the oppressed Negro citizens of the United States, segregated, discriminated against, and long the target of violence, suffer from genocide as the result of the consistent, conscious, unified policies of every branch of government. If the General Assembly acts as the conscience of mankind and therefore acts favorably on our petition, it will have served the cause of peace." The CRC emphasized that attempting to destroy a group "in part" was part of the definition, and argued that treatment of African Americans qualified as genocide. As evidence, the 237 page petition addresses the question of racism in the United States from different angles. It lists hundreds of wrongful executions and lynchings, refers to at least 10,000 undocumented cases, and also charges that Southern states in the U. S. had engaged in a conspiracy against African Americans' ability to vote through poll taxes and literacy tests. In addition to legal discrimination, the petition discusses systematic economic inequalities and differences in quality of life. Ultimately, the petition holds the US government responsible for genocide, through endorsement of both racism and "monopoly capitalism"—without which "the persistent, constant, widespread, institutionalized commission of the crime of genocide would be impossible. The CRC only focused on incidents of mob violence and police terror since 1945; that is to say, since America proclaimed itself the leader of the 'free world' The charge of genocide, in the wake of the Holocaust, was devastating; it was more wrenching under the klieg lights of the Korean War and American platitudes about democracy. And everyone knew it. The CRC procured source material carefully, and critics of the document acknowledged that its facts were correct. After it became clear that the CRC had, in fact, meticulously verified each incident, White tried another tactic. The 'facts are true' he lamented, but 'like all indictments drafted by a prosecutor', We Charge Genocide is one sided " The CRC sought to demonstrate that systematic oppression of African Americans amounted to genocide because it reflected a violent white supremacy at the core of American culture.

On 17 December 1951, the petition was presented to the United Nations by two separate venues: Paul Robeson, concert singer and activist, together with people who signed the petition, handed the document to a UN official in New York City, while William L. Patterson, executive director of the Civil Rights Congress, delivered copies of the petition to a UN delegation in Paris. W. E. B. Du Bois, also slated to deliver the petition in Paris, had been classified by the US State Department as an "unregistered foreign agent" and was deterred from traveling. Du Bois had previously had an expensive legal battle against the Justice Department. The 125 copies Patterson mailed to Paris did not arrive, allegedly intercepted by the US government. But he distributed other copies, which he had shipped separately in small packages to individuals' homes. The document was signed by many leading activists and family of Blacks who had suffered in the system, including: Patterson fled to Budapest, where through the newspaper Szabad Nép, he accused the U. S. government of attempting to stifle the charges. The U. S. government ordered Patterson to be detained when he passed through Britain and seized his passport when he returned to the United States. As Paul Robeson had been unable to obtain a passport at all, the difficulty these two men faced in traveling led some to accuse the United States government of censorship.

We Charge Genocide was ignored by much of the mainstream American press. One exception, the Chicago Tribune, called it "shameful lies" (and evidence against the value of the Genocide Convention itself). I. F. Stone was the only white American journalist to write favorably of the document. The CRC had communist affiliations, and the document attracted international attention through the worldwide communist movement. Raphael Lemkin, who invented the term "genocide" and advocated for the Genocide Convention, disagreed with the petition because the African American population was increasing in size. He accused its authors of wishing to distract attention from the alleged "genocide" in the Soviet Union, which had resulted in millions of deaths, because of their communist sympathies. We Charge Genocide was popular almost everywhere in the world except in the United States. One American writer traveling India in 1952 found that many people had become familiar with the cases of the Martinsville Seven and Willie McGee through the document. The American delegation heavily criticized the document. Eleanor Roosevelt called it "ridiculous." Black delegates Edith Sampson and Channing Tobias spoke to European audiences about how the situation of African Americans was improving. At the request of the State Department, the NAACP drafted a press release repudiating We Charge Genocide, calling it "a gross and subversive conspiracy." However, upon hearing initial press reports of the petition and the expected NAACP response, Walter White decided against issuing the release. He and the board decided that the petition did reflect many of the NAACP views. For instance, the organization had long been publishing the toll of blacks who had been lynched. "How can we 'blast' a book that uses our records as source material?" asked Roy Wilkins. The CRC's power was already declining due to accusations of Communism during the Red Scare, and it disbanded in 1956.

Anderson, Carol Elaine. Eyes off the prize: African Americans, the United Nations, and the struggle for human rights, 1944–1952. Dissertation (approved), submitted 1995 at Ohio State University; accessed via ProQuest. Martin, Charles H., "Internationalizing "The American Dilemma": The Civil Rights Congress and the 1951 Genocide", Journal of American Ethnic History 16(4), Summer 1997, accessed via JStor. Vargas, João H. Costa, "Genocide in the African Diaspora: United States, Brazil, and the Need for a Holistic Research and Political Method", Cultural Dynamics 17(3), November 2005; accessed via SAGE, DOI: 10.1177/0921374005061991.