Written by Jehron Muhammad
May 25th 2025, Africa and its diaspora paid tribute to those heroes, past and present, whose legacies inspired and continue to inspire the pursuit of genuine African liberation. As the Associate Professor in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Johannesburg, Adeoye O. Akinola, who also heads the African Union Studies Unit, wrote on premiumtimesng.com, “Pan-Africanism must be reclaimed — not as nostalgia, but as a practical and urgent roadmap. It must guide our trade policies, our education systems, our conflict resolution mechanisms, and our global diplomacy. It must be people-driven, not elite-dominated.” Professor Akinole added, “And, most importantly, it must deliver tangible benefits to everyday Africans.”
This years Africa Day, a celebration of the 1963 founding of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), which gave way in 2002, to the African Union (AU), we pay tribute to those founding members of Pan Africanism which helped make African liberation a reality. As one of OAU founding members, President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana said in 1960, at a Harlem rally, reported the New York Times, “that the 20,000,000 Americans of African ancestry ‘constituted the strongest link between the people of North America and the people of Africa.’” Add to Nkrumah’s weighty words, said Dr. Anthony Monterio, we reflect on the importance of Africa and those in the diaspora that paved the way “for Pan Africanism, a historic movement that originates outside of Africa.”
The Philadelphia based, Dr. Monterio, who has a PhD in sociology, is the founder of the Saturday Free School for Philosophy and Black Liberation, which is now in its 14th year. During the phone interview with Dr. Monterio, from his home in North Philly, he explained, “Pan Africanism is a historic movement that linked the struggle for the freedom of Black folk in the diaspora, especially in the Western hemisphere to the struggle against colonialism on the African continent. It was begun by people who were not Africans as such, but were in the (U.S. and Caribbean) diaspora.”
“In the nearly half century between 1900 and 1945, various political leaders and intellectuals from Europe, North America, (the Caribbean) and Africa met six times to discuss colonial control of Africa and develop strategies for eventual African political liberation,” noted Saheed Yinka Adejumobi an associate Professor in the History Department at Seattle University on the website blackpast.or
The first Pan African Conference, according to Dr. Monterio was in 1900, held in London. Henry Sylvester Williams, a Trinidadian attorney, who formed the “African Association” in London, to encourage Pan-African unity was its principal organizer. Dr. W.E.B. DuBois, who in 1899, published “The Philadelphia Negro,” America’s first sociological study of a Black American neighborhood, also participated in the 1900 conference. While in Europe Dr. DuBois, in addition to attending the conference, while in Paris at the 1900 Paris Exposition, he and his students set up “The American Negro Exhibit,” showing through visualizations, including photographs, maps, and charts “the changing status” of the newly emancipated Black former slaves, noted the book, “Black Lives 1900: W.E.B. DuBois At The Paris Exposition.”
Professor Adejumobi noted, “For the first time, (in 1900) 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.” It was not until after World War One that DuBois revived the Pan-African congresses. DuBois, noted Dr. Monterio, later became “the torchbearer of subsequent” Pan African Conferences, or “Congresses” as they were later called. DuBois, added, Dr. Monterio, was the first to frame the problem of the “20th century, is the ‘problem of the color line,’ by which he meant the ongoing oppression of Black people in the United States, and the continuing colonization of Black people in Africa, and in the Caribbean, and in South and Central America.”
According to Dr. Monterio, “DuBois, is the father of what is modern day Pan Africanism, which begins with the first Pan African Congress, held in 1919 and in Paris, at the same time that the Great powers were meeting in Versailles, at the Versailles Palace, just outside of Paris to hammer out a peace deal between the waring parties after World War One. DuBoise’s “worldview,” explained Monterio, was that there could not be peace without the decolonization of Africa.
The small African delegation at the 1927 Congress, explained Professor Adejumobi. “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.” The majority of the delegates were Black Americans and many of them were women. The 1927 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.”
Professor Adejumobi noted in his 2008 review of the history of Pan Africanism, “The financial crisis induced by the Great Depression and the military exigency generated by World War Two necessitated the suspension of the Pan-African Congress for a period of eighteen years. In 1945, the organized movement was revived in Manchester, England.” On October 15-21, 1945, in Manchester, George Padmore, the staunch anti-imperialist, played a pivotal role in organizing the 5th Pan-African Congress. Recognizing DuBois’s unequaled contribution to the Pan-African movement, delegates named him president of the 1945 congress. Key participates included DuBois, Jomo Kenyatta, of Kenya, Kwame Nkrumah, of Ghana, Hastings Banda of Malawi, and Nnamdi Azikiwe of Nigeria.This led to the formation of the Pan African Federation. According to Dr. Monterio it inspired participants to become leaders in the anti-colonial movements in Africa.”
Dr. Monterio explained, at the 5th Pan-African Congress, “for the first time, a significant number of African freedom fighters and independence fighters (including Africans studying in England) were in attendance, which, in fact, was an indication that Pan Africanism was now the property of Africans, and that the African diaspora would become a movement of solidarity with the anti-colonial struggle and not the center of it.” African attendees of congresses, noted blackpast.org, subsequently led their countries to political independence. In May 1963, the influence of these men, including Dr. Nkrumah, helped galvanize the formation of the OAU, an association of independent African states and nationalist groups.
