Few Latin Americanists will recognize the name Moorfield Storey. A little-known figure in U.S. reform history, Storey is remembered chiefly as the white patrician president of the NAACP from 1910 to his death in 1929. Professor Hixson’s fine study illuminates Storey’s dual role as an opponent of institutional racism and a critic of U.S. imperialism. Storey, a conservative lawyer, believed in the equality of all men before the law and the right of all nations to self-determination. From the U.S. subjugation of the Filipinos to the military occupation of Nicaragua, he denounced his government’s policy toward weaker countries. He particularly feared “the consequences of American rule over peoples the Americans generally considered inferior” (p. 73). As U.S. interference in Latin America increased and anti-imperialism in his own country waned, Storey broadened his attack on U.S. policy to condemn economic penetration and domination as well as military conquest and the establishment of protectorates. Storey had as few allies in his fight against imperialism as he had in his struggle for the civil rights of black Americans.
Professor Hixson’s book is a significant contribution to U.S. intellectual and reform history. Latin Americanists will find nothing new here about U.S. imperialism, but they will discover one of the few U.S. citizens who perceived a link between America’s racism and imperialism, hated what he saw, and dared to say so.
