African Americans’ transnational solidarity was read by the FBI as subversive disloyalty

Evidence

What alarmed the FBI about African American Muslim groups on the eve of World War II was that many of them, or at least some of their members, saw Japanese people as potential allies. The transnational ties and diasporic consciousness of black Muslim Americans were viewed as increasingly subversive as thousands of African Americans, Muslim or not, put their hopes in the messianic prophecy that the Empire of Japan would liberate them from the cage of American racism through a military invasion. — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 392

Categorization

• QUESTION: The messianic prophecy that Japan would liberate black Americans is strikingly unfamiliar history — worth chasing the primary documents on this imagined Japanese invasion as a salvation narrative.