Scope and arrangement
The Council on African Affairs/Freedom of Information Act (CAA/FOIA) collection consists of photocopies of the FBI file on the CAA obtained through a FOIA request. The FBI surveilled activities of CAA branches across the United States but the collection most frequently mentions the Los Angeles and Philadelphia branches, monitoring the growth, or lack thereof, of those branches.
The collection contains reports; communications from field agents to the FBI directorate about the organization they considered "substantially directed, dominated or controlled by the Communist Party"; and interviews with former members of the CAA being considered as potential witnesses before the Subversive Activities Control Board. Alleging that the Communist Party USA's (CPUSA) support of the CAA was in the form of personnel, the FBI kept a close eye on the officers of the CAA. Included in the files are a summary of Paul Robeson's, W. E. B. DuBois's, and W. Alphaeus Hunton's alleged Communist Party affiliations and a letter regarding DuBois from J. Edgar Hoover to the CIA. There is also a report juxtaposing CPUSA and CAA policies as "evidence of the extent to which the positions taken or advanced by the CAA in matters of policy do not deviate from those of the CPUSA".
The CAA files also contain records of the organization's internal activities as well as extracts from several publications, including the organ's newsletter "Spotlight on Africa" and the CPUSA's National Negro Commission's "Negro Affairs". Subjects covered in these newsletters include colonialism, neo-colonialism in Africa, and critiques of American and European involvement in Africa, particularly in South Africa and Kenya.The material also documents the split that developed between Max Yergan and Paul Robeson and includes communications from Robeson to the membership detailing Yergan's "disruptive activities".