What alarmed the FBI about African American Muslim groups on the eve of World War II was that many of them, or at least some of their members, saw Japanese people as potential allies. The transnational ties and diasporic consciousness of black Muslim Americans were viewed as increasingly subversive as thousands of African Americans, Muslim or not, put their hopes in the messianic prophecy that the Empire of Japan would liberate them from the cage of American racism through a military invasion. By the 1930s, black Muslims, black Jews, advocates of black emigration to Africa, and black advocates for pan-Asian solidarity declared their public support for a fellow "colored" nation, and a Japanese national, Major Satokata Takahashi, formed a "Development of Our Own" group to galvanize such feelings in Detroit, Chicago, and St. Louis.

XREF: Connects to histories of transnational black internationalism, pan-Asian solidarity movements, and the pre-WWII anti-colonial imagination beyond white solidarity frames. QUESTION: How widespread and organized was this Japanese-alliance sentiment among black Americans, and how did the FBI's alarm shape broader surveillance of black Muslims?

Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ Th…, loc. 392