Pan-Africanism

Back to Africa

There have been many times throughout history that attempts were made to return people of African descent to the mother continent, especially efforts in the United States. In spite of these attempts, there was a very low emigration rate, due to a number of factors, including the abject poverty that made it difficult to leave America, poor organization, and resistance by white capitalists who desired to maintain a cheap labor pool.

In the early 1800s, some notable whites, including Thomas Jefferson, believed that a return of blacks to Africa was a worthy goal; the foundation of the American Colonization Society and the establishment of the west African township of Liberia occurred during this period. Physician and journalist Martin R. Delany, who is credited with the pan-African slogan “Africa for the Africans,” was another advocate of mass emigration attempts just prior to the American Civil War. Although the slaves were freed after the war, conditions were far from favorable for blacks. Other attempts were made to promote the emigration, such as a venture by Delany to return blacks to Africa through a private shipping company, but they all failed to produce the desired results.

In the later part of the 19th century, other movements attempted to return African Americans to Africa. A missionary named Joseph Booth who was working in Nyasaland in the latter part of the 19th century became a staunch advocate for pan-Africanism. He wrote Africa for the African, in which he argued against the common perception that Africans were intellectually inferior and recommended that the oppression against them and their descendants cease. He also suggested that Africans should be in charge of their own [Page 812]continent and not under the control of Europe or other foreign governments; this government by Africans would appear in the form of a united Christian nation. This new nation did not materialize, however, due to a strong distrust by blacks of the whites who were trying to orchestrate the change. Years of oppression and war by the Europeans contributed to this heightened level of distrust.

Du Bois and Garvey

In the early 1900s, two key figures continued to promote the ideal of pan-Africanism. Black sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey had differing per-spectives on the subject, and in fact, the two had much contempt for each other. Du Bois was a professor of sociology at Atlanta University in the United States. He was of African, Dutch, and French ancestry, though he fully accepted the label “Negro,” not in a negative, but a positive, light. Du Bois was an intellectual, being the first person of African descent to obtain a Ph.D. from Harvard University. He was a professor, a prolific and eloquent writer, race reformer, and one of the most powerful black people in America in the 1900s.

...