'...Another important group that needs more cultivation': The Council on Foreign Relations and the mobilization of Black Americans for interventionism, 1939-1941

This article explores the role and influence of the elite US east coast organization, the Council on Foreign Relations [CFR], on the mobilization of Black Americans for aiding the Allied war effort in 1939-41. It examines the Council's wide-ranging campaign, arguing that the CFR, through two ad hoc organizations, the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies and Fight For Freedom, mobilized blacks despite their political and economic marginality, because the rhetoric of freedom and democracy which characterized the war against Hitler brought into focus America's own racist practices. This denotes the first time that US elites recognised the foreign policy implications of domestic racism. Attempts were therefore made to mobilize blacks as part of a war campaign that also demanded domestic racial reform, prefiguring the Black-led 'Double V' programme of victory over racism at home and abroad. © 2004 Taylor and Francis Ltd.