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COLONIALISM AND THE NEGRO AMERICAN EXPERIENCE 

J. H. O'DELL

The Revolutionary movements against colonialism which have been sweeping the continents of Asia, Africa and Latin America, especially since the end of the Second World War, are like a mighty wave battering the walls of oppression.  Involving in one form or another the destinies of nearly two billion people, these movements of social emancipation are tearing away at the very roots and seams of the Western world's institutional system of colonial exploitation and its countless indignities.  "Before I'll be a slave I'll be buried in my grave" has become the theme of determination of unfree peoples whether in Vicksburg or Vietnam, Alabama or Angola.  This theme of freedom has now become "a material force" affecting the thinking of millions as they move into struggle against all the old traditions and lies which have kept them the dispossessed of the earth.

There can be no doubt that the Freedom Movement of Negro Americans has gained inspiration from and contributed to share to the spirit of freedom which permeates our contemporary Age of. Man.  Nor is this due to some historical coincidence or mere accident.  Far more than just "bonds of color" unite us in fellowship with the colonized of the earth and their struggles for full emancipation.  Our centuries-old experience of slavery and racism in all their institutionalized forms here in America has shaped this bond of identification,  And our centuries-old battles t emancipate ourselves from these traditions in this American sector of the Western world have always taken place in a particular context and never in isolation from the rest of mankind.  This was true even when information was not widely shared.  Today when the information gap is being closed and lines of communication are being established, it is becoming increasingly clear that the experience of people in many diverse lands and situations is nevertheless quite similar because the system of oppression has the same roots.  We need only to define our American experience accurately for our struggle, too, is about colonialism notwithstanding the fact that our Movement's emphasis (especially in the

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