Title: Pan-Africanism | History, Achievements, & Facts | Britannica
Headings: Pan-Africanism
Pan-Africanism
History of Pan-Africanist intellectuals
The Pan-African Congress movement
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Pan-Africanism

Content: Du Bois’s famous statement was made with the clear knowledge that many Africans living on the African continent suffered under the yoke of European colonial rule. Among the more-important Pan-Africanist thinkers of the first decades of the 20th century was Jamaican-born Black nationalist Marcus Garvey. In the years after World War I, Garvey championed the cause of African independence, emphasizing the positive attributes of Black people’s collective past. His organization, the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), boasted millions of members, envisioning and then making plans for a return “back to Africa.” Garvey’s Black Star Line, a shipping company established in part to transport Blacks back to Africa as well as to facilitate global Black commerce, was ultimately unsuccessful. From the 1920s through the 1940s, among the most-prominent Black intellectuals who advocated Pan-Africanist ideas were C.L.R. James and George Padmore, both of whom came from Trinidad. From the 1930s until his death in 1959, Padmore was one of the leading theorists of Pan-African ideas. Also influential were Léopold Senghor and Aimé Césaire, who were natives of Senegal and Martinique, respectively. A disciple of Padmore, Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, was also an important figure in Pan-Africanist thought. Despite their origins outside the United States, such Pan-Africanist thinkers drew many of their ideas from African American culture.