Du Bois And Pan Africanism
The great African American thinker William Edward Burghardt DuBois’s life (1868–1963) is similar to the story of Pan-Africanism in some ways. In 1868, Du Bois was born in Massachusetts. Du Bois died in 1963 as a citizen of Ghana, an independent West African state.
Du Bois had spent time studying in both the US and Germany by 1900.
Du Bois had also written books about the history of the US slave trade and a social study called The Philadelphia Negro (1899). Du Bois taught at a number of black schools, but he lost interest in scholarship over time.
In The Souls of Black Folk (1903), a collection of significant writings, DuBois wrote about the “double consciousness” of African Americans who live in a society where white people predominate. Using his craft skills, Du Bois also fought against Booker T. Washington’s racist and segregationist ideas about black schooling.
While a part of the Niagara Movement in 1905, DuBois pushed against racial discrimination and believed that the “talented tenth,” an educated class, could best serve African American interests. Du Bois got involved in the fight for human rights for African Americans.
Du Bois joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1910 and became editor of its critical magazine, The Crisis. This gave Du Bois a way to express his radical and literary ideas and gave him the title of “spokesman of the race.”
Du Bois was also very interested in the African diaspora and pan-Africanism. His work, The Negro (1915), shows this. He had been to the Pan-African Conference in London in 1900. DuBois helped set up four Pan-African Congresses after World War I. The first one took place in Paris in 1919; then there were ones in London, Brussels, and Paris in 1921; London and Lisbon from 1922 to 1923; and New York in 1927.
These small groups, mostly African Americans from the US and the Caribbean but also some white supporters, passed resolutions calling for an end to racial discrimination and the spread of democracy to the colonial powers. DuBois’s first trip to Africa was in late 1923.
Pan-Africanism began in the late 1700s as a response to slavery and the movement of black people across the world. It led to calls to go back to Africa and the cultural idea of a “black world” and “one united African people.”
Ethiopia was often used as a symbol for Africa. “Ethiopianism” has a long history that includes African American Christian groups, Marcus Garvey’s “Back to Africa” movement, and Rastafarianism, which saw the ruler of Ethiopia as a god.
Black people outside of Africa have tended to hold pan-Africanism in high regard. Because of this, it has a lot of race romanticism in it.
Du Bois talked about “PanNegroism” in the late 1890s, and Henry Sylvester Williams, who was from Trinidad, planned the Pan-African Conference of 1900 to bring together “Africans from all over the world.” In the 1800s, there were small “Back to Africa” groups in the Americas. However, Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican populist who moved to the United States, gave the idea new life.
Garvey founded the United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in 1914, which is a black nationalist organization. From 1918 to 1921, the UNIA grew quickly in North America. It was appealing as an international group that promoted racial pride and self-improvement, as well as having a radical program that opposed slavery in Africa and pushed for black people to return to the continent.
Garvey spoke out strongly against DuBois and the NAACP. A few people in Africa supported the UNIA, but most of the countries did not allow its newspaper, The Negro World, to be printed because it was seen as anti-government.
Three factors primarily influenced Pan-Africanism in the years leading up to World War II: first, Garveyism, which had an impact on the Harlem Renaissance, an African American literary and artistic movement that took place in New York in the 1920s; second, Négritude, a set of cultural ideas from the Caribbean in the 1920s and 1930s that said black people should return to their African roots; and third, the failure of the international community to stop the
Africa and the black diaspora became more politically aware after World War I. The effects of World War II were much worse, especially in Africa. This was the fifth Pan-African Congress. It was held in Manchester, England, in 1945, and DuBois was very involved in planning and running it.
However, this conference featured a majority of African Americans, in contrast to earlier ones. There were nationalists like Jomo Kenyatta, Obafemi Awolowo, Hastings Banda, and Kwame Nkrumah, who all went on to become political leaders in their own countries.
Resolutions were made at the Manchester Congress that called for an end to racial discrimination and for the colonies to be free. One of the statements ended with a rallying cry that was similar to the Communist Manifesto: “Colonial and Subject Peoples of the World—Unite.”
Pan-Africanism became more popular again after the fifth Congress. But what may have been even more important was that it started a new and important phase in the fight against colonial rule that led to a large-scale transfer of power in Africa over the next twenty years. DuBois made a big difference in the development of pan-Africanist ideas.
African and Caribbean nationalists who were younger than him looked up to him as a founding father at Manchester. But after 1945, younger, more radical forces started to take over and make him less important. Du Bois wasn’t always simple to work with.
During his time in the NAACP, he got into a lot of heated political arguments with other African Americans. Du Bois’ growing interest in communism and his criticism of his peers’ racism-based conservatism made this situation worse. He quit the NAACP in 1934, but ten years later he joined again.
As Du Bois went further to the left, tensions kept rising, and in 1948, he was fired from the NAACP. Then, DuBois, Paul Robeson, and other people got together to form the Council of African Affairs, a socialist anti-colonial group. In the early 1950s, anti-communist feelings were building in the United States. DuBois, who was now a known communist, got into a fight with the courts and had his passport taken away.
In 1959, he moved to Ghana at the request of President Kwame Nkrumah. There, Du Bois became a citizen and began working on a failed project to edit the Encyclopedia Africana. Some of the separatist leaders in Africa during the colonial era really liked pan-African ideas.
Most people spoke out in support of Nkrumah, who led Ghana to freedom in 1957. George Padmore, who was born in Trinidad and used to be a Stalinist, had an impact on his ideas. In Pan-Africanism or Communism (1956), he wrote that the coming fight for Africa would rely on nationalist leaders putting aside their racial and communal differences and accepting Pan-Africanism.
Padmore and Nkrumah both believed in pan-Africanism, and socialism was a big part of it. The 1963 book Africa Must Unite by Nkrumah was written in honor of Padmore and “to the African Nation that must be.”
This kind of optimism was based more on words than on real-world politics. African unity would be good for many reasons: political unity would lead to economic strength and free the continent from colonial rule; the continent would no longer have to deal with artificial borders created by colonial rule; and a united Africa would have power in a world split between East and West, along with other noncommitted powers. But efforts to make even two-nation federations failed because African leaders had different ideas about how to run the economy and politics.
At the time of their freedom, many new African states were in a state of instability because of racial, political, and religious rivalries within their own borders as well as problems with neighboring states. The Organization of African Unity was set up in Addis Ababa in 1963.
The people who started the country decided to work toward unity “by establishing and strengthening common institutions.” They also promised to protect the independence of each state and the integrity of the colonial borders that they had inherited.
People kept saying nice things about the idea of African unity, but more and more, this idea was seen in terms of history and culture, not as a practical, short-term political goal. Many of these differences were shown at the sixth Pan-African Congress, which took place in Dar es Salaam in 1974. There are a few pan-African groups, but they mostly look out for the interests of specific groups (like trade unions) or regions on the continent.
The goal is to work together more on the economy. At the Abuja meeting in 1991, it was said that the goal was to make a pan-African economic community by 2025. Pan-Africanism wasn’t very important in Africa by the end of the 20th century; it was mostly used as a language.
People from the black diaspora, primarily in the United States, supported pan-Africanism to a large extent. The Black Power movement in the 1960s and 1970s pushed these kinds of ideas even further by focusing on identity through culture and art in Africa and having a strong political goal.
Also Read: MARITCHA LYONS (1848-1929): An Amazing African-American Educator And Activist
