In the first half of the 20th century, Chinese and black American intellectuals frequently collaborated. Langston Hughes, the world-renowned black American writer and poet, met Lu Xun, the father of modern Chinese literature, in Shanghai in the 1930s to work on theories and language for a universal, pluralistic, transnational form of cooperative nationalism. Paul Robeson, a professional actor/singer and social activist, was also a staunch ally of China’s. He actively fundraised for the Chinese Defense League, the precursor of the China Welfare Institute founded by Soong Ching-ling, the wife of Sun Yat-sen, a Chinese revolutionary considered to be the founder of the Republic of China (ROC). He also popularized the current Chinese National Anthem, the March of Volunteers, to a global audience by singing the song in Mandarin Chinese for audiences around the world. A number of other black scholars visited China during the first half of the 20th century, including W.E.B. Dubois, one of the founders of the NAACP, and Rayford Logan, a Howard University history professor.
While in exile in Cuba in the early 60s, black internationalist Robert F. Williams corresponded with Mao Zedong to support the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. Mao wrote his, Statement Supporting the Afro-American in Their Just Struggle Against Racial Discrimination by U.S. Imperialism on August 8, 1963. He declared:
I call on the workers, peasants, revolutionary intellectuals … whether white, black, yellow, or brown, to unite to oppose the racial discrimination practiced by U.S. imperialism and support the black people in their struggle against racial discrimination.