It emerged as the leading voice of anti-colonialism and Pan-Africanism in the United States and internationally before Cold War anti-communism and liberalism created too much strife among members; the organization split in 1955.
The CAA, from its beginning in 1941, received the support of mainstream activists and liberal intellectuals such as anthropologist Franz Boas, historian E. Franklin Frazier, record producer John H. Hammond, Mary McLeod Bethune (from the National Youth Administration) and Rayford Logan.
Among a host of other campaigns, it lobbied the federal government and the United Nations and lent material support on behalf of Indian independence, striking trade unionists in Nigeria, and African famine relief.
It supported striking black miners and helped direct worldwide attention to the African National Congress's struggle against the Union of South Africa government and its policy of imposing racial apartheid.
In 1951, the Council produced a half-hour agitprop documentary film about apartheid in South Africa, narrated by Paul Robeson and edited by Hortense Beveridge.
[8] To the CAA's dismay, the United States introduced a series of proposals at the April–May 1945 conference that set no clear limits on the length of colonialist occupation and no motions toward allowing territorial possessions to move toward self-government.
[9] Following Joseph Stalin's excesses in the Soviet Union of murdering and repressing millions, and other problems in the communist world, Max Yergan had become disillusioned with communism and spoke out against it.