About this episode

Dr. R. Joseph Parrott discusses how African liberation movements influenced US activism and foreign policy during the Cold War.

Dream the Size of Freedom: How African Liberation Mobilized New Left Internationalism (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025) by Dr. R. Joseph Parrott explores how anti-colonial movements in Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau reshaped US activist engagement with the Global South from the 1960s through the 1970s and influenced American foreign policy as the Vietnam War drew to a close. These Portuguese African liberation movements, led by nationalists like Eduardo Mondlane and Amílcar Cabral, built global solidarity networks to support their military and social challenges to empire while defending against Western intervention. US activists disillusioned with the Cold War came to see African self-determination as central to global campaigns for racial and economic justice. A broad coalition ranging from Black Power radicals to religious liberals mobilized against the North Atlantic alliance with Portugal. In the process, this grassroots movement helped define a New Left Internationalism that championed decentralized, multiracial organizing and a collaborative vision of US foreign policy to redress historic inequalities between Global North and South. Drawing on more than…

People in this episode

Guest: R. Joseph Parrott

Topics covered

• African liberation
• New Left Internationalism
• anti-colonial movements
• US foreign policy
• racial and economic justice
• global solidarity networks

Keywords

• African liberation
• New Left
• anti-colonial
• US activism
• Vietnam War
• racial justice
• economic justice
• global South
• solidarity networks

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: University of Pennsylvania Press

Places: Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau

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