Kenya (1924)

In 1920 the territory formerly known as British East Africa and the German colony of German East Africa were united by the British Empire into one colony known as the Kenya Colony. In that colony several problems have immediately appeared. In the first place, Great Britain has decided to segregate black men into the worst and least habitable parts of their own land.

They have tried to give the best of the land for agriculture and grazing to white Europeans. They have established a government based upon white suffrage and they have tried to deny to the large number of East Indians in the colonies the right to settle on the best land or to have any decisive voice in the government; they have kept the black man from any voice whatsoever.

One cannot contemplate a more unjust and shortsighted policy. It is an attempt to find white supremacy in Africa itself and to carry out the idea that the European white man is going to dominate the earth. It will never succeed but it will cause endless bloodshed and misery before it fails.

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Citation: Du Bois, W.E.B. 1924. “Kenya.” The Crisis. 27(4):152–153.