A Weekend with Richard Wright

Abstract

In 1955 the famous African American writer Richard Wright traveled to Southeast Asia to observe and report on the Asian-African Conference in Bandung, Indonesia. A watershed moment in the history of decolonization, the meeting, also known as the Bandung Conference, drew representatives from twenty-nine newly independent Asian and African countries, including the conference's sponsors: Burma, Ceylon, India, and Indonesia. At the conference's conclusion, as part of a “final communique,” participating countries issued their Declaration on the Promotion of World Peace and Cooperation, which advanced ten principles, ranging from “[r]espect for fundamental human rights” to “[r]ecognition of the equality of all races and of the equality of all nations” to abstention from “serv[ing] the particular interests of any big powers” (Kahin 84). As an important precursor of the Nonaligned Movement, which was officially organized in 1961, the Bandung Conference set the stage for newly independent states to assert and strengthen their autonomy in a world often polarized by the United States and the Soviet Union.