On the few occasions that Henry Kissinger, who died on November 29th at 100, reached out to the Black community, it was usually in the context of discussing African affairs, as he did in 1976. At that time as Secretary of State, Kissinger merely solicited Black Americans to join him as he sought to build a large constituency for his new African policy. Thomas Johnson, the pioneering Black reporter at the New York Times, wrote in the August 1 edition of the paper that Kissinger, in preparation for his speech to be delivered at the 66th annual conference of the National Urban League, had contacted several prominent African Americans, including the Rev. Leon Sullivan, director of the Opportunities Industrial Centers.
While Johnson did not disclose the content of that meeting, he put it in a broader context, including the cancellation of Kissinger’s speech at the NAACP four weeks earlier. “While his speaking to the Urban League is important,” said Vernon E. Jordan, the League’s director, “it is also important to Black America to finally talk directly to the secretary about this nation’s basic policy on Africa.
“I hope it means,” Jordan continued, “that Kissinger realizes that Africa cannot be treated like some ghetto in the international conference of world affairs and that Black Americans are vitally concerned with Africa.” Perhaps the closest he came to mentioning Black Americans in his speech was a reference to Abraham Lincoln and the Declaration of Independence and their link to the nation’s emancipation of Blacks in bondage. He did salute one of the Urban League’s stalwarts, Lester Granger, who he considered a lifelong friend.
“Let us pray it will not be so,” Kissinger said toward the end of his speech, referring to the notion that freedom may not be denied in Africa. “Let us help the voice of reason to prevail in Africa. In so doing, we will have reflected America’s values on the world. And we will have taken a great step toward the goal of a true world community of brotherhood that remains our most noble vision.”
Johnson pointed out that Kissinger, during his tour of Africa, was very impressed with Senegal’s leader Leopold Senghor, President Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, and Tanzania’s President Julius Nyerere, though he was rebuffed by Nigeria and Ghana.
In the Times’ lengthy obituary, former President Barack Obama was quoted as being “less than enamored of [Kissinger].” “Mr. Obama noted toward the end of his presidency that he had spent much of his tenure trying to repair the world that Mr. Kissinger left. He saw Mr. Kissinger’s failures as a cautionary tale. ‘We dropped more ordnance on Cambodia and Laos than on Europe in World War II,’ Obama said in an interview with the Atlantic in 2016. “And yet, ultimately, Nixon withdrew, Kissinger went to Paris, and all we left behind was chaos, slaughter, and authoritarian governments that finally, over time, have emerged from that hell.” He said the U.S. is still trying to help countries “remove bombs that are still blowing off the legs of little kids.”
Hardly a bright legacy for Kissinger, and an outlook that is shared by many Black Americans, particularly in the politically activist community.