dolus specialis (13. 414)

Having recently learned much more than our previous passing familiarity with the figure of Paul and Essie Robeson and his subsequent erasure from history from a cross-over episode of This American Life from the podcast Our Ancestors Were Messy (I strongly recommend listening), we appreciated this addendum—courtesy of Kottke—in this historic snapshot of good trouble with Robeson leading a delegation of the Civil Rights Congress to indict the US government before the United Nations with the charge of genocide perpetuated after the civil war with Jim Crow policies of segregation and disenfranchisement. A copies of the book-length petition were delivered to UN headquarters in New York as well as Paris, but manoeuvres by the United States, preoccupied with the Cold War, prevented formal debate of charges brought forward or even entertaining public discussion—supporters and signatories of the document were further persecuted and blacklisted, accused of exaggerating racial inequalities in order to advance the cause of communism. The title refers to the application of specific, deliberate intent to destroy a group in whole or in part under the UN’s own definition of the crime against humanity.