Join us for a compelling and fascinating discussion of African Americans' involvement in the non-proliferation movement with author and professor, Dr. Vincent Intondi. Dr. Intondi is an Associate Professor of history and founder of the Center for Black Studies at Montgomery College in Washington, DC. Intondi is also Director of Research for American University’s Nuclear Studies Program. He is a regular contributor to the Huffington Post and author of the book, African Americans Against the Bomb: Nuclear Weapons, Colonialism, and the Black Freedom Movement .

Co-hosted with the Institute Community and Equity Office.

Lunch will be provided. Please RSVP to weinmann@mit.edu.

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Since 1945, African Americans have protested the Bomb. However, historians have generally ignored their involvement when studying the anti-nuclear movement.  Now for the first time, African Americans Against the Bomb tells the compelling story of those black activists who fought for nuclear disarmament often connecting the nuclear issue with the fight for racial equality and liberation movements around the world. 

Vincent Intondi shows that many in the black community viewed nuclear weapons through the lens of race, openly questioning the decision to drop the Bomb in Japan and the threats to use nuclear weapons in Korea in the 1950s and in Vietnam a decade later. Black activists linked the nuclear issue to colonialism as they witnessed the United States obtaining uranium from the Congo and France testing its first nuclear weapon in Africa. From W.E.B. Du Bois to President Barack Obama, African Americans Against the Bomb offers an eye-opening account of those African Americans who recognized that nuclear disarmament and the black freedom movement were inextricably linked.