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Abstract
Europe's "Scramble for Africa," beginning in the 1880s, continued a worldwide policy of discrimination against Africans and people of African heritage. Britain, France, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Belgium, and Italy, divvied up the continent, vying for prestige, strategic advantage, and access to vast natural resources while altogether ignoring the rights of the natives living there. The most atrocious example of this abuse occurred in the Congo Free State from 1885 to 1908, where the locals suffered torture, maiming, and even death as they harvested rubber and ivory for their dictator, King Leopold II of Belgium.
Across the Atlantic Ocean, life was not much better in the United States for African Americans after Reconstruction. In the face of entrenched scientific and political racism, blacks continued their struggle for equality. Using a variety of methods, they also faced down a seemingly insurmountable propaganda machine headquartered in Brussels. African Americans like George Washington Williams, Booker T. Washington, William Henry Sheppard, and W.E.B. Du Bois, among others, utilized popular and influential tools such as newspapers and journals, missionary reports and publications, and visual displays including photographs to combat Leopold's impressive media lobby. Underestimated by the king, this minority group brought the plight of the oppressed Congolese people to the United States citizenry and government and persuaded them to intervene on their behalf.
