Pan-Africanism

V

Pan-Africanism and Civil Rights

The concept of Pan-Africanism as a political force reemerged in the Diaspora with the beginning of the Black Power movement in the United States. In the early 1960s Malcolm X, a charismatic and forceful leader of a black Muslim group called the Nation of Islam, began publicly to espouse an aggressive philosophy of racial unity and self-reliance that came to be known as Black Power (or black nationalism). In 1966 civil rights activist Stokely Carmichael became head of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), an influential civil rights organization, and then led SNCC and other groups to adopt Black Power as a guiding principle. In the United States, Pan-Africanism came to be regarded as the international expression of Black Power and Malcolm X as the American voice of Pan-Africanism.

In early 1964 Malcolm X traveled to Africa, giving well-received speeches to the governments and universities of Ghana and Nigeria. In his talks, Malcolm X expressed the theme of Pan-African unity by declaring that American blacks would not be free as long as they experienced racism in America and as long as Africa was not free. On a second trip to Africa later that year, Malcolm X became the first black American to speak before the OAU. On that occasion he asked for the assistance of African leaders in bringing charges of racism by the American government before the United Nations (UN). (The charges were never heard before the UN.) Back in the United States, Malcolm X counseled American blacks to acknowledge their kinship to Africa as a part of the civil rights movement.

VI

Later Developments

Several Pan-African organizations formed in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s. One of these was the African Liberation Support Committee, headed by activist Howard Fuller (who later took the name Owusu Sadaukai), renowned poet Amiri Baraka, black scholar and activist Maulana Karenga, and other prominent African Americans. This organization worked to increase support within the United States for liberation movements in Africa and promoted the observance of May 25 as African Liberation Day, a holiday established by the OAU to mark its birth. These projects became the instruments through which black Americans supported the growing revolutions in southern Africa by black Africans seeking to achieve independence in Rhodesia (later named Zimbabwe) and in South-West Africa (Namibia) and majority rule in South Africa.

Another major event of this period was the sixth Pan-African Congress, held in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in June 1974 and headed by Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere. The meeting drew an international delegation of more than 5,000 Africans and people of African descent, including 100 from the United States. However, it revealed a growing schism within the movement between Marxist and non-Marxist political alliances and approaches to issues. Thus, the achievements of this meeting were few.

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Between 1974 and 1980 the Pan-African movement welcomed the independence of the last European colonies in Africa. By raising public awareness and putting pressure on their governments throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, Pan-African groups around the world succeeded in focusing the world’s attention on the injustices of white minority rule in Namibia and South Africa.

VII

The Legacy of Pan-Africanism

Continental Pan-Africanism continues to surface as a strategy for addressing the problems of Africa, notably in the form of regional cooperative groups. Examples of these are the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC, formerly the Southern African Development Coordination Council), which are trade blocs that have played significant roles in regional economic integration. With the increasing pressure of economic competition from international trade blocs in North America, Europe, and Asia, the achievement of economic and political unity on the African continent remains a viable and urgent quest.

Peoples of black African descent around the world face a number of similar socioeconomic and political challenges as they strive to create better futures for themselves and their descendants. These peoples’ international cooperation and shared strategies for bringing about social change are the legacy of Diaspora Pan-Africanism.

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