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8/11/2019 American Committee on Africa -- Portuguese-American Committee on Foreign Affairs
1/3
COCHAIRMEN
Donald Harrington
A. Philip
Randolph
VICE
CH A
IRMAN
James
A Pike
PRESIDENT
Peter
Weiss
VICEPRESIDENTS
Sophia Yarnall Jacobs
Frank
C.
Montero
Hope R Stevens
SECRETARY
Farrell
J
ones
TREASURER
Nelson Bengs t on
(
partial listing
Sadie
T. M. A
lexander
Victor L.
Anfuso
Thurman
A
rno
ld
Stringfe
ll
ow Barr
Roger N. Baldwin
Richard Boll ing
Mr s . Chester Bowles
Van Wyck Brooks
James
B.
Carey
Marguerit
e Cartwright
Allan
Knight Chalmers
Max
Del son
Peter De
Vries
Charles
C.
Diggs
Jr
.
Harry
El1 Ierson
Fosdick
Lewi
s S.
Gannett
Carlton B. Goodlett
Arthur
N .
Holcombe
Elmer
J.
Holland
.
Mary
Louise H
ooper
Hubert
H. Humphrey
Martin
Luther King ,
Jr
.
Rayford
W.
Logan
Eugene J.
McCarthy
Robert
J. McCracken
John
A. M
ackay
Will Maslow
Al e
xander
Meiklejohn
Reinhold Niebuhr
F. D. Patterson
Cia rence Pickett
Sidney Poitier
Paul A.
Porter
A.
Philip
Randolph
I ra De A . Reid
Jackie Robinson
. Franklin D. fioosevelt
Robert
SI.
John
Francis
B.
Sayre
George
W.
Shepherd
Ralph W. Sockman
Edward
J.
Sparl ing
William
E.
Stevenson
C Sumner Stone ,
Jr
.
Rex
Stout
Norman Thomas
H oward Thurman
Mark
Van
Doren
J.
Wat,es Waring
EXECUTIVE
BOARD
James Baldwin
Daniel J .
Be m
s
tein
Win
ifred Courtney
James Fa rm er
Jo
seph Jablow
David D. Jones
Stanley D.
Levison
John V.
Murra
Victor
G. Re
uther
Cl
eveland Robinson
J
ames
H .
Robinson
Bayard Rus
t
in
William
X.
Schein man
Adelaide Schulkind
Hugh H. Smyth e
Percy
Sutton
DIRECTOR
George M Houser
DIRECTOR
Jam es R. R
ob in
son
PROJECTS DIRECTOR
H azel H Gray
DIRECTOR
Collin Gonze
STAFF
ASSOCIATES
Cat h
arine
R
ay
m
ond
Em ma Thomas
GENERAL
COUNSEL
Rob ert Delson
. , 17
.
-
MERIC N
C
801 Second Avenue New
ON FRIC
U 6
7263
Cable AMCOMMAF
DATE: February
15,
1962
TO National Committee Members
ROM George M Houser
SUBJ.: Portuguese-American Committee on
Foreign
Affairs
I hope
that
you
will
pardon
the
form
nature
of
this
communi a-
tion. I have
just returned
from spending several weeks in Africa,
principally in
an
area of northern Angola held by
nationalists
of
the
Union of the
Populations of
Angola. I am
enclosing
my
report
of
this t r ip
Upon my return there were
several
communications on
my
desk
from members of our National Committee, communications related to the
le t ter and material which apparently each of you had
received
from
an
organization
called the
Portuguese-American Committee on
Foreign
Affairs. I gather that each member of
the
National Committee has
received
this
material and
has
been told that our Committee
backs
Itcommunist goals in
Africa
and is some
kind
of a pernicious front
with which none of you should be associated. To
my
knowledge, no one
has resigned from our National Committee on the basis of this
infor-
mation.
Nevertheless,
I
feel that
i t is
important to
make at
least
brief comments on
this attack.
I
think that
you may be interested
in the letter which Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr sent to
the
Portuguese-
American Committee on Foreign Affairs on his receipt of this
material.
Just for
the
record, we have recently learned a
l i t t l e
bit
more about the Portuguese-American Committee on Foreign Affairs
through
a
report
filed
with
the
Department
of Justice
b,y
Selvage and
Lee, a public
relations
firm. Selvage and Lee is under contract to
a
consortium of
o r t u ~ e s e business
enterprises called
the Overseas
Companies
of
Portugal.
According
to
the Selvage and Lee report their
program involves
disseminating
and publicizing the accomplishments
of
Portugal
in i t s
overseas provinces and
the
distribution
through
al l available media of
facts to
combat
false
and
misleading
informa-
tion relating to
current
s tr ife
in Angola. In their report, Selvage
8/11/2019 American Committee on Africa -- Portuguese-American Committee on Foreign Affairs
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emo
Page 2
and Lee
indicate
that
one
of
their employees is Dr. Martin T.
Camacho They also
indicate
that they
pay a
retainer fee
weekly to
Mr
Camacho
and
that
furthermore they pay
the
organization's
expenses
in maintaining an
office
and distributing material.
I point this out, not because there is anything wrong with a
public relations firm making a
contract
with any group with which they
wish
to
do
business, but
i t does help in making a judgement about the
credibility of material issued by such a public relations firm
i f
one
knows who is paying the
bill . The
American Committee
on
Africa re-
ceives b s o l u t e ~ none of i ts funds
from
any source
other
than
i ts
members
and
contributors in the
United
states.
One thing distressing about the
attack
of the Portuguese
American Committee
on
Foreign
Affairs
is
that
nothing
substantive
is
stated. The American Committee on Africa is attacked because i t
ubacks communist goals in Africa. But there is no examination of
what
the issues in Africa
or
in
African-American
relations are,
no
analysis of what the Soviet
position is ,
no comment on any statements
or on any literature which our Committee has issued, and nothing at
all is
said
about statements by American
state
Department repre-
sentatives or our Mission to
the
UN
on the
question of Angola and
especially no reference is made to the report of the
U N
Sub-commis
sion on Angola with
whose findings
our Committee has
generally
agreed.
Our
Committee has published pamphlets
written
by scholars in
the
field of African affairs including some on Mozambique and Angola. Our
position
is backed up by almost all
serious students
of African
affairs
that
Portuguese
rule
in
Africa has
laid
the
seeds
for
i t s
own destruction through
i ts
political repression of the great mass of
people i t s economic
exploitation,
i t s forced
labor
system and i t s
particular
form
of
racism which does differ from
the
apartheid pat-
tern
of
South
Africa,
t r
instance,
but is
nevertheless racist.
We
have taken
the position
that the way should
be
paved
for
Portuguese
colonies in Africa to become independent although we have never tried
to put a timetable on the achievement of
this
objective.
The
Portuguese-American Committee along with Selvage and
Lee
has undoubted
ly distributed millions of copies t atrocity pictures of what hap
pened
on March 15th,
but with no
analysis of
events leading up
to
that date. Our Committee has never made any excuse for
the atrocities
which were committed by the Africans other than explaining the
bitterness
which
the
Africans
do
teel
towards
the
Portuguese.
The
Portuguese-American Committee however has never made any comment on
the wave of mass
terror against
the Atricans by the well-armed
Portuguese both
on land and in the
air.
We should feel highly honored that the Portuguese-American
Committee on Foreign
Affairs
practically gives us
credit tor
molding
American
policy
towards
Africa.
NatUrally any
organization
hopes
that
i t
can have some influence from time to time. I trust that our
activities
and our statements have not been e n t i r e ~ unnoticed by
those
who
do form government policyo The Porttguese-Amerioan Committee
makes
8/11/2019 American Committee on Africa -- Portuguese-American Committee on Foreign Affairs
3/3
Page
i t
seem almost pernicious to have engaged in
discussions
with G.
Mennen Williams,
for
example. We carryon
activities no
different
from thousands
of
other
groups
that
are
interested
in
public
policy
in
the United States. .
The Portuguese-American Committee, undoubtedly
taking
i ts
information from elsewhere, says some rather unfortunate
things in
order
to make i t
seem that
the communists have had a
role
in
the re-
volt n Angola.
As
the report on rrry t r ip indicates, and I think I
can speak with sane authority
since
I
was
just in Angola, I
saw no
evidence
of
any communist influence on the
revolt. The
U.N. Sub
commission concurs in
this
observation. The le t ter which the Portu-
guese-American Committee enclosed with the material
sent
out,
supposedly written by Holden Roberto, the President
of the
U.P.A.,
is
an obvious forgery. I t doesn't even have his correct
signature
on i t Roberto has never visited Moscow. The fi rst time he was
even
in
any
part of Eastern
Europe
was
when he
attended
the Belgrade
Conference
last
September. He
travels
regularly on a Tunisian
pass-
port, and persistently has refused to do business with the Eastern
bloc countries. I have
personally
known him
ever since 1954 when
he called on
me at the
Union Mission House
in Leopoldville.
He him
self
is a product of
British Baptist
missionary work
n northern
Angola and
in
the Congo.
Frequently
the final refuge of someone holding an untenable
position is to attack the opposition as tlconnnunistic. The A.C.O.A.
cannot
take this attack
by innuendo seriously, and
therefore
I
shall
make
no
effort to
answer
the
smears
against
some
of
our
Board
mem-
bers. Suffice i t
to
say that
any
examination of the positions of
A.C.O.A. would
find
them at wide variance with the Communist position
on key questions such
as
the Congo, for example.
We
certainly have
had no Communists on
our
staff or Board.
If
the Portuguese-American Committee on Foreign Affairs had
taken
the trouble to get in
touch with our Committee
some
of
their
small factual
errors
could have been
cleared
up quite easily. They
call
our publication
Africa Speaks instead of AFRICA
TODAY
They
call Mr. Hope Stevens
an
Associate Executive
Director
of the
o ~
mittee
and
Homer
Jack a former Executive
Director,
both of which
are wrong, although the mistake is not important.
They
say that
Frank Montero
recently
visited
Mozambique which he has never done.
Ordinarily
we would ignore irresponsible attacks made by
committees such
as
Camacho's. But I thought
i t
important
that
some
comments should be made to
various
members of our National Committee
since
a number had written
in to
us.
If
there are
s t i l l
questions
which you would like to have answered
of
a more specific nature,
please le t me know.
Obviously, I have not dealt with every
point the
Portuguese-American Committee has tried to make, because this did not
seem
necessary.
But I would be
glad to make
comment on any
question
that
members
of
the
National
Committee would
like to raise
after
reading the report on my
recent
t r ip .