A Global Reconstruction: Black Internationalism and the Human Rights Regime

Black American advocates for civil, political, and economic rights have long taken an internationalist approach and fostered connections with international organizations and transnational movements. This engagement has also been a generative force and played role in shaping international law. Beginning in the early years of the twentieth century, Black intellectuals and leaders, spearheaded by the NAACP and the UNIA, focused on human rights as a means for addressing and repairing the harms wrought by slavery, Jim Crow, and racism. From the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 through the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Genocide Convention, and the drafting of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, Black advocates argued to the international community that white supremacy and racial terror were not domestic anomalies but threats to global peace and justice.

In the mid-twentieth century, they joined forces with decolonial and anti-apartheid movements around the world, articulating a shared vision of equality through the emergent human rights regime. Finally, the Article examines late-twentieth century calls for reparations for slavery and colonialism as the next frontier of transnational advocacy for historical and distributive justice. This intellectual and political genealogy demonstrates how the Black internationalism has consistently expanded the scope of the human rights regime and challenged it to be more robust and more ambitious.