Title: The Origins and Proliferation of Pan-Africanism
Headings: The Origins, Purpose, and Proliferation of Pan-Africanism
The Origins, Purpose, and Proliferation of Pan-Africanism
History of Pan-Africanism
African Association and Pan-African Congresses
African Independence
Modern Pan-Africanism
Sources

Content: Pan-Africanism here relates to the ending of the trading of enslaved people and the need to rebut the "scientific" claims of African inferiority. For Pan-Africanists, such as Edward Wilmot Blyden, part of the call for African unity was to return the diaspora to Africa, whereas others, such as Frederick Douglass, called for rights in their adopted countries. Blyden and James Africanus Beale Horton, working in Africa, are seen as the true fathers of Pan-Africanism, writing about the potential for African nationalism and self-government amidst growing European colonialism. They, in turn, inspired a new generation of Pan-Africanists at the turn of the twentieth century, including JE Casely Hayford, and Martin Robinson Delany (who coined the phrase "Africa for Africans" later picked up by Marcus Garvey ). African Association and Pan-African Congresses
Pan-Africanism gained legitimacy with the founding of the African Association in London in 1897, and the first Pan-African conference held, again in London, in 1900. Henry Sylvester Williams, the power behind the African Association, and his colleagues were interested in uniting the whole of the African diaspora and gaining political rights for those of African descent. Others were more concerned with the struggle against colonialism and Imperial rule in Africa and the Caribbean. Dusé Mohamed Ali, for example, believed that change could only come through economic development. Marcus Garvey combined the two paths, calling for political and economic gains as well as a return to Africa, either physically or through a return to an Africanized ideology. Between the World Wars, Pan-Africanism was influenced by communism and trade unionism, especially through the writings of George Padmore, Isaac Wallace-Johnson, Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, Paul Robeson, CLR James, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Walter Rodney.