The Korean War in Black America

This talk proposes reading African American literature and culture using the framework of the Korean War (1950–1953), not only as a means of periodization, examining the Black cultural productions during the war, but also as a way of interrogating what the U.S. empire’s involvement in the civil war in Korea meant and continues to mean for Black imperial subjects in the United States. Inspired by Robeson’s monthly newspaper Freedom (1950–1955) in particular, which called for resisting the war abroad as well as antiblackness at home, this talk examines the specifically antiblack conditions during the Korean War as domestic warfare against Black people begun in slavery. Thus calling for a reading practice that centers antiblackness, the talk is ultimately invested in developing an Asian Americanist critique that highlights relationality rather than analogy or commensurability in comparative approaches to studying Black and Asian racializations. It analyzes Toni Morrison’s novel Home, about a Black Korean War vet, alongside Black antiwar writings produced during the war, as a demonstration of that reading practice.