A Passport Ain’t Worth a Cent

This chapter explores the travels and media of foreign news correspondent William Worthy, the first U.S. newsman to report from China after the establishment of the PRC in 1949. The chapter begins by examining how Worthy recast dominant representations of black prisoners of war and Chinese communism during the 1950s. The chapter then considers how Worthy built on such news coverage and on the topic of black-Asian cultural contact when reporting from other locations. Intrigued by connections between U.S. black political struggle and Asian anti-imperialist movements, Worthy’s radical journalistic practice took him to Vietnam and later China where he risked his credibility and passport to inform the world about what he learned.