Rayford Logan

Rayford Logan

Reconsidering internationalism from the perspective of organisers and intermediaries reveals the effort contributed by organisers on the ground, as well as their decisive role in shaping its politics. In his unpublished autobiography, Within and Without the Veil, the historian Rayford Logan (1897-1982) reflects on his role as one-time Congress organiser and translator. Logan, who was fluent in French and had served in France as a soldier during the First World War, remained in Europe for several years after the war and helped arrange various meetings of the Pan-African Congress. Logan was the first person to meet Du Bois when he disembarked in Paris’s Gare Saint-Lazare in 1921 and, after stark disagreements emerged between American and French delegates at that year’s Brussels’ session, Logan was tasked with translating between Du Bois and Diagne, the first black African to hold a position in the French government. Logan later recalls choosing to translate only part of their bitter remarks in order to obtain what Diagne called 'une formule transactionnelle' – a temporary compromise to hold together the Congress’s two divergent figureheads. Through these micro-interventions, interlocutors like Logan played an important and often unseen role in shaping the form and direction of internationalism.

Holiday Magazine, February 1950