Summary
Journalist in Cairo, editor of the Black Panther Intercommunal News Service from 1973 to 1977, stepson of W. E. B. Du Bois and son of Shirley Graham Du Bois, whose quasi-autobiographical novel … And Bid Him Sing Feldman reads as an exploration of an Afro-Arab diaspora (A Shadow over Palestine, lines 493-555).
Details
- After a year’s study at Peking University in 1959 he stopped in Cairo and stayed, teaching American literature at Cairo University from 1960 and working for the Egyptian Gazette and the Middle East News and Features Service Agency from 1961 for twelve years (line 521).
- He collaborated closely with Malcolm X during Malcolm’s 1964 Cairo visit, and the Gazette printed Malcolm’s “Zionist Logic” and his “Appeal to African Heads of State” (line 523).
- In June 1972 he left Cairo for the United States to find a publisher for his novel, affiliated with the Black Panther Party in Oakland, and was tapped by Huey Newton in fall 1973 to edit the Panther newspaper, whose circulation was around 400,000 (lines 525-527).
- With Newton he drafted the May 1974 position paper “The Issue Isn’t Territory, but Human Rights,” circulated to the UN, the OAU, the PLO and the president of the American Jewish Congress (line 529).
- His novel was published by Ramparts Press and serialised over seventeen months in sixty-three single-page segments in the Panther newspaper (line 533).
- He died in 2005; obituaries focused on his role as founder and former president of the W. E. B. Du Bois Foundation (line 519).
Related pages
A Shadow over Palestine, Black Panther Party, Black Power’s Palestine