Tukuler
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of the word black of the Pan-Africanism of the Afrocentrism
because I know what they are and what they mean.
Anyone of majority African descent berating Pan-Africanism berates one of the factors that got us through the worst of political colonialism and global expression of the colour bar.
You kids don't know your history, don't want to know your history, and are psychologically damaged behind the fact of the Maafa. Why else would you accept derogatory definitions of black, Pan-Africanism, and Afrocentrism that Simon Sez.
Begin to learn what the Pan-African struggle is now.
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Tukuler
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HomeVideosThe Dreams of George Padmore The Dreams of George Padmore A communist defector in his fight for African liberation by Vistra Greenaway-Harvey - 31st August 2016
#COMMUNISM #GEORGEPADMORE AFRICANLIBERATION ANTI-IMPERIALISM CAPITALISM KWAMENKRUMAH The dreams of George Padmore tend to be invoked only within academia. Despite his status as the “father of African emancipation” for many, the dreams of George Padmore and the man himself are shrouded in obscurity. To all who know of his works, this obscurity is immensely surprising as Padmore’s theories were coupled with political activism and organisation that transformed the political landscape across Africa and the West Indies throughout the 1940s and 50s. His dream theory of Pan-Africanism has been defined as “pragmatic anti-imperialism” by James, and it is inarguable he fought tirelessly to end imperial rule in Africa and the diaspora (James, 2012). However, the means and political doctrines Padmore used to support his theories changed throughout his lifespan. Most notably, by 1934 Padmore publicly renounced his communist ideals. To some, this bold change enabled him to truly fulfil his dreams of “pragmatic anti-imperialism” and yet for others, Padmore’s disdain for communism made him too tolerant of imperialism, to the detriment of the developing new states in Africa, (Thompson, 2001).
Before one can assess the dreams of George Padmore, it is essential to uncover who he was. Born in Arouca, Trinidad in 1902 as Malcolm Ivan Meredith Nurse, the biography of Padmore has a complex mix of rigidity and flexibility. Like other Pan-Africanists such as Garvey, Padmore began his career in an archetypal fashion: journalism. Upon leaving school in 1918, Nurse began writing for The Trinidad Guardian. Yet his career took an arguably unexpected turn when Padmore embarked upon a medicine degree at Fisk University in the United States in 1924. Nurse’s desire for social remedies as well as physical cures led him to then study law at Howard University. This university was pivotal in shaping his ideology and self-identity, for it was there he adopted the pseudonym George Padmore. Ultimately however, his fundamental belief that the “yoke of imperialism” was the primary cause of the “degrading” conditions under which negroes lived (Padmore, 1931) became irreconcilable with Padmore’s life in Howard University – he was expelled for insulting Britain’s Imperial Advisor (Taylor, 2009).
On face value, Padmore’s mission to assist black colonial subjects to emancipate themselves from subjugation (Padmore, 1931) bears great similarity to the aims of Marcus Garvey. Yet, quite unlike Garvey, Padmore initially believed the vehicle for this freedom was communism. During his studies at Howard, Padmore came into contact with the Communist Party and quickly rose in its ranks. For Padmore the obvious reason for the degradation of black people was imperialism (Padmore, 1931). However, he was of the view that capitalist greed was the primary cause of imperialism. Therefore the most logical means to improve the position of black people was to end capitalism generally. Radically, he called for black people to “join forces with their white brothers against the common enemy” in a manner scholars have likened to DuBois (Austin, 2009). His dream of anti-imperialism shifted slightly to a general fight against capitalism which Padmore carried out with full force.
Upon leaving Howard University he spent four years writing for the American Negro Labour Congress (ANLC) in New York. However, he took a much more daring step in 1930 when he emigrated to the USSR to continue his socialist work. Through his appointment as Head of the Negro Bureau of the Communist Trade Union International, Padmore connected and mobilised thousands of anti-colonial militants throughout the Caribbean and Africa to join his intellectual movement against colonial imports. He was able to convince these activists that communism was essential for black Liberation in his book, The Life and Struggles of Negro Toilers, which highlighted the global exploitation of black workers, creating inspiring activists to create change.
However, the Communist Party’s change in strategy caused Padmore to depart from his communist dreams. Noting the rise of fascism in Western Europe, the Communists decided to form alliances with Anti-Fascist countries such as Britain and the US. Padmore was instructed to cease his activism throughout the British colonies to ensure the USSR did not agitate their allies. For Padmore this short-term strategy abandoned black workers and formed uncomfortable parallels between the Russians and colonial powers he sought to undermine.
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Vistra Greenaway-Harvey Vistra Greenaway-Harvey is an academic copywriter and legal researcher. As well as African commentary, she drafts consultations and legal submissions for local councils and Fortune 500 companies.
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HomeVideosThe Dreams of George Padmore The Dreams of George Padmore A communist defector in his fight for African liberation by Vistra Greenaway-Harvey - 31st August 2016
#COMMUNISM #GEORGEPADMORE AFRICANLIBERATION ANTI-IMPERIALISM CAPITALISM KWAMENKRUMAH With a bitter realisation that “the Russians, like the British ruling class, have no ‘permanent friends, nor permanent enemies, only permanent interests’ namely the survival of the Soviet Union” (Lewis, 2008), Padmore sought to reframe his own permanent interest: the removal of colonial powers. Despite his orders, he continued to argue vociferously against colonial polices. As a result, by 1934 the relationship between Padmore and the Communist Party came to a tumultuous end. To Austin, this move was “as risky as it was principled because it involved underground connections in the dangerous world of the ideological conflicts of the period” (Austin, 2009) . It reaffirmed the length Padmore was prepared to go to achieve his dreams.
Padmore returned to London (with little material possessions) to refocus his view of how to ensure autonomy in Africa and the African diaspora – without the assistance of communism. Trewhala has argued that his departure from the Communist Party enabled Padmore to gain pre-eminence in the Pan-African movement, for he could now create a concept of African independence that was free from communist constraints, such as pre-conceptions of class (Trewhala, 1988). This view is supported by Austin who says Padmore’s departure from the Communist Party enabled him to explore broad conceptions of Pan-Africanism “out in the open” and free from capitalism and communism (Austin, 2009).
It is true that after 1934, Padmore pursued a different course for Pan-Africanism with immense perseverance and purpose. Padmore turned to his earlier inclinations and used political journalism to create a theory of liberation that would develop and revolutionise brewing anti-colonialist sentiments. His journal, The International African Opinion, was an essential source of information which enlightened the growing network of Pan-Africanists Padmore was connecting.
Most significantly, in 1937, Padmore and I.T.A. Wallace-Johnson founded the International African Service Bureau in order to help coordinate the “voluminous correspondence between African and Caribbean nationalists, trade unionists, editors and intellectuals,” (Marable, 1998). The bureau continued to expand until it eventually merged into the Pan-African Federation in 1944. Padmore’s federation was instrumental in co-ordinating a wealth of Pan-African activists. He was a chief organizer of the fifth Pan-African Congress, held in Manchester in 1945, which laid the foundation for post war African colonial liberation movements.
Padmore continued to denounce communism and came to redefine a coherent twentieth century theory of Pan-Africanism. His second book Pan-Africanism or Communism urged black people to become “mentally free from the dictation of Europeans, regardless of their ideology” and achieve self-emancipation (Padmore, 1971). This message resonated loudly with Jomo Kenyatta and Kwame Nkrumah. From 1947-57 Padmore and Nkrumah’s relationship was strengthened. Padmore became an invaluable advisor to the future President. It has been stated that “it is difficult to overemphasize Padmore’s crucial ideological and political role in the emergence of political nationalism and movements of independence in English-speaking Africa” (Marable, 1998). And, for Ghana, this is undeniably true. Padmore continued to personally advise Nkrumah after his presidency to guide Ghana to become a beacon for African unity.
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Vistra Greenaway-Harvey Vistra Greenaway-Harvey is an academic copywriter and legal researcher. As well as African commentary, she drafts consultations and legal submissions for local councils and Fortune 500 companies.
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HomeVideosThe Dreams of George Padmore The Dreams of George Padmore A communist defector in his fight for African liberation by Vistra Greenaway-Harvey - 31st August 2016
#COMMUNISM #GEORGEPADMORE AFRICANLIBERATION ANTI-IMPERIALISM CAPITALISM KWAMENKRUMAH Yet, despite all of these immense triumphs, Padmore’s Pan-Africanism is arguably very conservative, especially when compared with Garveyism. In his 1942 seminal paper, “The White Man’s Duty”, Padmore creates a great deal of conflict with his earlier Pan-African liberation dream (as espoused in The Life and Struggles of Negro Toilers) when he pleads with colonial powers to emancipate their workers to serve their own colonial interests.
His calls for Britain to free her colonies and create “a new Commonwealth of nations, bound together in equal partnership” (Curnard, 1942) seems markedly unequal when his reasons for this freedom are assessed. Padmore urges Britain to liberalise India to appease anti-colonialists, with the belief that a free India would willingly trade with Britain. He encourages Britain to realise that this trade would enable “industrial and agricultural resources” to be “exploited” by the “full force of political movements which are operating against England.” This view seems overly sympathetic to colonial interests and in direct contradiction with his earlier works that called for an end to exploitation of coloured labourers by the colonial powers. As Marable argues, the deferential approach Padmore has to colonialists in later life, goes some way to explaining the version of Pan-Africanism that has unfolded in independent African states today. Many modern African leaders seem to maintain colonial interests to the detriment of their subjects.
Pointing to the subsequent prevailing new black elite, who became the rulers of the newly established independent African nations, as well as the coup d’état and eventual overthrow of Nkrumah in 1966, Marable perhaps rightly asserts that Padmore totally failed to realise the power of the colonialists to usurp independence movements for their own aims (Marable, 1998). In the end, Padmore acquiesced to colonial imports, primarily because, as he said, his conception of Pan-Africanism was “an ideological alternative to communism on the one side and tribalism on the other.” It can be argued, this dichotomy appears to try to save Africans from their own nature as well as communism, and yet moves away from the desire to overthrow the imperialists he’d come to despise.
Worse still, Padmore’s dreams continued to suffer as they failed to truly break from Marxism. Though he renounced communism from 1934, democratic socialism remained to guide Padmore in his quest for “the attainment of the government of Africans by Africans,” (Padmore, 1953). Trewhala and Taylor both argue that Padmore never truly departed with Marxism, despite his split with the Communist Party. In fact, through his commitment to democratic socialism, Padmore appeared to try to transpose Marxist ideology onto the realities of African politics (Trewhala, 1988), and in a manner which Thompson has described as “jaundiced” and “distorted.” Indeed, many scholars argue Padmore’s theories should be taken with a pinch of critical salt (Hargreaves, 1972).
In view of his incredible contributions to the movement of Pan-Africanism, (including but not limited to the development of the West Indian Federation; Ghana’s independence from colonial rule, as well as several other nations) this author is reluctant to conclude Padmore’s dreams were as deficient as others have suggested. As James alludes, Padmore’s dream has always been one of pragmatic anti-imperialism, (James, 2012) and this entails taking practical steps to ensure liberation. Padmore utilised the knowledge and vehicles he had at his disposal to try to bring about liberation for his people. It could even be argued his denouncement of communism was based upon a disdain for the particular politics of the Communist Party at the time, as opposed to a general disdain for socialism altogether. If so, this is evidence that Padmore never truly dispensed with some of its ideologies. Nonetheless, it is fair to say that at times Padmore became blind-sided with his desire to liberate Africa at all costs and he should have enquired deeper into the ramifications of this kind of physical and mental liberation.
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Home The Pan-African Congresses, 1900-1945
Speakers at The Pan African Congress, Brussels, Belgium,1921 Image Ownership: Public Domain In the nearly half century between 1900 and 1945 various political leaders and intellectuals from Europe, North America, and Africa met six times to discuss colonial control of Africa and develop strategies for eventual African political liberation. In the article that follows, historian Saheed Adejumobi describes the goals and objectives of these six Pan African Congresses and assesses their impact on Africa.
Pan-Africanist ideals emerged in the late nineteenth century in response to European colonization and exploitation of the African continent. Pan-Africanist philosophy held that slavery and colonialism depended on and encouraged negative, unfounded categorizations of the race, culture, and values of African people. These destructive beliefs in turn gave birth to intensified forms of racism, the likes of which Pan-Africanism sought to eliminate.
As a broader political concept, Pan-Africanism’s roots lie in the collective experiences of African descendants in the New World. Africa assumed greater significance for some blacks in the New World for two primary reasons. First, the increasing futility of their campaign for racial equality in the United States led some African Americans to demand voluntary repatriation to Africa. Next, for the first time the term Africans, which had often been used by racists as a derogatory description, became a source of pride for early black nationalists. Hence, through the conscious elevation of their African identity black activists in America and the rest of the world began to reclaim the rights previously denied them by Western societies.
In 1897, Henry Sylvester-Williams, a West Indian Barrister, formed the African Association in London, England to encourage Pan-African unity; especially throughout the British colonies. Sylvester-Williams, who had links with West African dignitaries, believed that Africans and those of African descent living in the Diaspora needed a forum to address their common problems. In 1900, Sylvester- Williams organized the first Pan-African meeting in collaboration with several black leaders representing various countries of the African Diaspora. For the first time, opponents of colonialism and racism gathered for an international meeting. The conference, held in London, attracted global attention, placing the word “Pan-African” in the lexicon of international affairs and making it part of the standard vocabulary of black intellectuals.
The initial meeting featured thirty delegates, mainly from England and the West Indies, but attracted only a few Africans and African Americans. Among them was black America’s leading intellectual, W.E.B. DuBois, who was to become the torchbearer of subsequent Pan-African conferences, or congresses as they later came to be called. Conference participants read papers on a variety of topics, including the social, political, and economic conditions of blacks in the Diaspora; the importance of independent nations governed by people of African descent, such as Ethiopia, Haiti, and Liberia; the legacy of slavery and European imperialism; the role of Africa in world history; and the impact of Christianity on the African continent. Perhaps of even greater significance was the formation of two committees. One group, chaired by DuBois, drafted an address “To the Nations of the World,” demanding moderate reforms for colonial Africa.
The address implored the United States and the imperial European nations to “acknowledge and protect the rights of people of African descent” and to respect the integrity and independence of “the free Negro States of Abyssinia, Liberia, Haiti, etc.” The address, signed by committee chairman DuBois as well as its president Bishop Alexander Walters, its vice president Henry B. Brown, and its general secretary Sylvester-Williams, was published and sent to Queen Victoria of England. The second committee planned for the formation of a permanent Pan-African association in London with branches overseas. Despite these ambitious plans, the appeals of conference participants made little or no impression on the European imperial powers who controlled the political and economic destiny of Africa.
It was not until after World War I that DuBois revived the Pan-African congresses. Following the war, European and American politicians gathered for a peace conference in Versailles, France. DuBois, who attended the conference as a special representative of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), appealed to President Woodrow Wilson. In a letter to Wilson, he urged the American government to initiate a comprehensive study of the treatment of black soldiers. Moreover, DuBois expressed hope that the peace treaty would address “the future of Africa” and grant self-determination to the colonized peoples. President Wilson subsequently released a Fourteen Point memorandum, which suggested the formation a League of Nations and called for “an absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based on the principle that the interests of the population must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government.” Although historians have questioned the impact DuBois’s request had on Wilson’s Fourteen Point memorandum, it was apparent that the loudest voice on behalf of oppressed blacks in the New World and colonized Africa belonged to the participants of the Pan-African Congress.
Galvanized by the gathering of world leaders and the discussion of colonial Africa’s future, DuBois proposed the formation of a Pan-African Congress. In 1919, as the Versailles Peace treaty deliberations ran their course, DuBois, with the support of Blaise Diagne, a member of the French Parliament from the West African colony of Senegal, and funding from African American civil rights and fraternal organizations such as the NAACP, the Elks, and the Masons, convened a Pan-African Congress in Paris. The Congress, attended by approximately sixty representatives from sixteen nations, protectorates, and colonies, however, was more “pan” than African since most of the delegates had little, if any, first-hand knowledge of the African continent. Prominent American attendees included black members of the NAACP such as John Hope, president of Morehouse College, and Addie W. Hunton, who had served with black troops in France under the auspices of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), as well as white NAACP members, such as the Columbia University professor Joel Spingarn, the socialist William English Walling, and the socialist muckraking author Charles Edward Russell. Among the other delegates from the United States were Roscoe Conklin Simmons, a well-known black orator; Rayford W. Logan, who had served with the U.S. Army in France; black women’s rights activist Ida Gibbs Hunt; and Dr. George Jackson, a black American missionary in the Congo.
Conference participants adopted a resolution calling for the drafting of a code of law “for the international protection of the natives of Africa.” Other demands called for direct supervision of colonies by the League of Nations to prevent economic exploitation by foreign nations; to abolish slavery and capital punishment of colonial subjects who worked on the plantations of European colonial powers in Africa, especially in the Belgian Congo; and to insist on colonial peoples’ right to education. Moreover, the gathering stressed the need for further congress meetings and suggested the creation of an international quarterly, the Black Review, which was to be published in several languages. ‘While congress attendees insisted that African natives should be allowed eventually to participate in their own government, they did not demand African self-determination. Despite the moderate nature of the demands, the European and American powers represented at the Versailles Peace Conference remained noncommittal.
The Pan-African Congress reconvened in London in August 1921 and a month later in Brussels, Belgium. Both meetings featured representatives from the Americas, the Caribbean, Europe, and Africa who echoed earlier Pan-Africanist reformist ideas, denouncing imperialism in Africa and racism in the United States. Moreover, the delegates demanded local self-government for colonial subjects and DuBois stressed the need for increased interracial contacts between members of the black intelligentsia and those concerned about the political and economic status of colonial peoples.
In 1923, the Pan-African Congress met in two separate sessions in London and in Lisbon, Portugal. Noted European intellectuals such as H.G. Wells and Harold Laski attended the London session. Several members of previous meetings participated in the deliberations that addressed the conditions of the African Diaspora as well as the global exploitation of black workers. While some scholars argue that the 1921 and 1923 congresses were effective only in keeping alive the idea of an oppressed people trying to abolish the yoke of discrimination, others claim that the international gatherings laid the foundation for the struggle that ultimately led to the political emancipation of the African continent.
Delegates reconvened for a fifth Pan-African Congress in New York in 1927. The congress featured 208 delegates from twenty-two American states and ten foreign countries. Africa, however, was represented only sparsely by delegates from the Gold Coast, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Nigeria. The small number of African delegates was due in part to travel restrictions that the British and French colonial powers imposed on those interested in attending the congress, in an effort to inhibit further Pan-African gatherings. Most of the delegates were black Americans and many of them were women. The congress was primarily financed by Addie W. Hunton and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, an interracial organization that had been founded in 1919 by opponents of World War I. Similar to previous Pan-African congresses, participants discussed the status and conditions of black people throughout the world.
The financial crisis induced by the Great Depression and the military exigency generated by World War II necessitated the suspension of the Pan-African Congress for a period of eighteen years. In 1945, the organized movement was revived in Manchester, England. It is unclear whether DuBois or George Padmore, a West Indian Marxist, provided the initiative for this meeting. Recognizing DuBois’s historic contribution to the Pan-African movement, delegates named him president of the 1945 congress. The Manchester meeting marked a turning point in the history of the gatherings. For the first time representatives of political parties from Africa and the West Indies attended the meetings. Moreover, the conservative credo of the forum gave way to radical social, political, and economic demands. Congress participants unequivocally demanded an end to colonialism in Africa and urged colonial subjects to use strikes and boycotts to end the continent’s social, economic, and political exploitation by colonial powers.
While previous Pan-African congresses had been controlled largely by black middle-class British and American intellectuals who had emphasized the amelioration of colonial conditions, the Manchester meeting was dominated by delegates from Africa and Africans working or studying in Britain. The new leadership attracted the support of workers, trade unionists, and a growing radical sector of the African student population. With fewer African American participants, delegates consisted mainly of an emerging crop of African intellectual and political leaders, who soon won fame, notoriety, and power in their various colonized countries.
The final declaration of the 1945 congress urged colonial and subject peoples of the world to unite and assert their rights to reject those seeking to control their destinies. Congress participants encouraged colonized Africans to elect their own governments, arguing that the gain of political power for colonial and subject peoples was a necessary prerequisite for complete social, economic, and political emancipation. This politically assertive stance was supported by a new generation of African American activists such as the actor and singer Paul Robeson, the minister and politician Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., and the educator and political activist William A. Hunton Jr. who took an increasing interest in Africa.
While the Pan-African congresses lacked financial and political power, they helped to increase international awareness of racism and colonialism and laid the foundation for the political independence of African nations. African leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Nnamdi Azikiwe of Nigeria, and Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya were among several attendees of congresses who subsequently led their countries to political independence. In May 1963, the influence of these men helped galvanize the formation of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), an association of independent African states and nationalist groups.
Sources: Saheed A. Adejumobi, “The Pan-African Congress,” in Organizing Black America: An Encyclopedia of African American Associations, Nina Mjagkij, ed. (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 2001).
Contributor(s):
Adejumobi, Saheed A. Seattle University
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