Thursday, September 21, 2017

By using three of the following principles, unity, self-determination, and amalgamation, what politics, ideologies, and organizations have been part of the essential development of Pan-Africanism from the 1960s on?

It is important to note that Pan-Africanism began much earlier than the 1960s. The first Pan-African conference was held on August 14, 1893. The Chicago Conference addressed repatriation to Liberia and included a conversation about connecting to people of African descent beyond North America.
A few years later, in 1897, the Trinidadian barrister Henry Sylvester Williams established the African Association (AA), a London-based organization that sought to “encourage a feeling of unity [and] facilitate friendly intercourse among Africans” and “promote and protect the interests of all subjects claiming African descent, wholly or in part, in British Colonies and other place [sic], especially in Africa.” Williams used the momentum of his organization to facilitate the largest Pan-African conference up to that time, drawing 32 delegates from African countries, the United States, the Caribbean, and parts of Europe. Though most of the participants were African American (there were only four Africans), he was able to promote diasporic studies and expand his association into the larger Pan-African Association (PAA).
Marcus Garvey, the leader of the United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), is, perhaps, the best-known proponent of Pan-Africanism. It was his intention to establish a colony for repatriated blacks in Liberia—a plan that failed for reasons that remain unclear. 
These early organizations unified on the basis that people of African ancestry shared common struggles and could improve their situation by unifying in pursuit of common goals. From the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century, repatriation was the popular solution to race-based violence in the United States. By the 1960s, the solution was to reject assimilation into Western society and culture in favor of specifically African modes of being and thinking. These ideas were put forth by the proponents of Negritude—an ideology developed in the 1940s by the Senegalese thinker and future Senegalese president, Leopold Sédar Senghor, and the Martiniquan poet Aimé Césaire. The ideas were put into practice as part of the effort to decolonize former French holdings in West Africa and the Caribbean. 
Negritude, which encouraged reconnection with African history and cultural values, was part of the effort toward self-determination. The frequent presence of African diplomats in the United States in the late 1950s and early 1960s brought African Americans in contact with these ideas during the Civil Rights Movement. Negritude inspired young activists and thinkers. It was not only important to gain equal rights in the United States, now it was also vitally imporant to develop a uniquely "black" sociocultural awareness. From this seed of thought, the Black Arts Movement developed. In addition, attempts were made to reconnect to Africa through the celebration of Kwanzaa and the wearing of traditional African garb. Thus, self-determination was not only about the pursuit of economic and political power, it was also about the pursuit of uniquely black cultural values.
Later political amalgamation efforts focused on concerns related to race, class, and the sexual and social exploitation of women. The final Pan-African Congress was convened in 1974 by the Tanzanian president, Julius Nyeyere. Its tone was hopeful, but it acknowledged the unresolved nature of the black struggle against oppression.
Today's meetings between members of the diaspora are less about the consciousness-raising of the 1920s and 1960s and more about meeting practical demands. These issues include female education, female economic status, access to quality healthcare and birth control, and coping with the perils of climate change.
http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/twenty/tkeyinfo/garvey.htm

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