BEYOND THE SHORES

An intimate history of African Americans who have opted to live abroad rather than endure racial oppression in the U.S.

As a supposed “beacon of democracy” in the early 1900s, America wanted to show its best face to the world while masking the bigotry that was rampant in the Deep South, mired in racist laws and customs. Moving between historical figures and her own family’s story of migration from the South, Walker, a professor of Africana studies at Barnard College, generally eschews the famous stories of James Baldwin and Josephine Baker and explores some lesser-known personalities during and after World War I. These men and women, who found the liberty abroad they could not enjoy at home, included Florence Mills, a dancer, singer, and comedian; Herman de Bose, an early Peace Corps volunteer in Kenya; and Philippa Schuyler, a journalist and author who died in Vietnam in 1967. Touring across the European continent in the mid-1920s, Mills was as wildly popular as Baker in Europe, though she died tragically young. The author also shares the incredible stories of Joseph Roane, an agronomy student from Virginia, and Oliver Golden, a Mississippi-born veteran and graduate of the Tuskegee Institute, who seized the chance to study at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East in Moscow and later took job opportunities in Uzbekistan when they were denied career choices in their own country. Walker offers a particularly telling quote from one source: “There are places in this world where our presence isn’t viewed as a menace, as a problem, or even as an inconvenience. There are places where we are welcomed, listened to, appreciated, and even loved.” The author’s own alternating family stories of migration and travel, in the military and for jobs, underscore the emotional tug of living and traveling aboard.

Nuanced, poignant tales that beautifully flesh out a little-known aspect of the African American experience.