Exactly years ago, in Manchester, England, black leaders from Africa, the Caribbean, Great Britain and the United States came together in pursuit of the liberation of the black diaspora. In its manifesto, "Challenge to the Colonial Powers," they declared: "We are determined to be free. We want the right to earn a decent living; the right to express our thoughts and emotions, to adopt and create forms of beauty. We demand for Black Africa autonomy and independence. . ."
The 1945 Manchester Congress, led by black scholar W.E.B. Du Bois, George Padmore and Kwame Nkrumah, was both the culmination of a historical process of black struggle which had begun a half century before, as well as a decisive political intervention to influence the events after World War II. Behind "Pan-Africanism" was the idea that people of African descent the world over shared a common destiny; that our forced dispersal through the transatlantic slave trade, our common oppression under colonialism in Africa and the Caribbean, and under Jim Crow segregation in the United States, through the exploitation of our labor power under capitalism, and the denial of political rights, had created parallel contours for struggle. Our kinship was also cultural, social and historical, and we found within ourselves the genius and grace of being which was denied us by the racist standards of the white world. By renewing our connections, we forged a consciousness of resistance which could be felt across the globe.
The perspective of Pan-Africanism was first advanced in the international context by barrister Henry Sylvester Williams of Trinidad and Tobago, in the London conference of 1900. It was at this gathering that the young scholar, W.E.B. Du Bois, predicted that "the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line." After Williams' death in 1911, the Pan-Africanist movement was continued by Du Bois. The Pan-African Congresses were later held in Paris in 1919; in London, Paris and Brussels in 1921; in London, Paris and Lisbon in 1923; and in New York in 1927. These Congresses created the context for black intellectuals, political leaders and reformers to challenge the prerogatives and power of white colonialism.
Last month, black scholars and activists from Africa, the Caribbean and the US met in Manchester, England, to mark the fiftieth anniversary of that historic Pan-African Congress. I addressed the gathering on the challenges of Pan-Africanism in the twenty-first century, and its continuing relevance to black Americans.
The future of Pan-Africanism as a strategy for liberation depends upon our ability to bring together young people, workers, political organizers, trade unionists, women activists and intellectuals behind a common vision of black empowerment at a global level. The new Pan-Africanism must first challenge the structures of patriarchy within black communities and black organizations, creating a more egalitarian relationship between black women and men. So long as we tolerate the oppression of our sisters, our liberation moment as black people will never succeed.
The new Pan-Africanism of the twenty-first century must take a progressive stand on environmental issues and state of the world's ecology. We must address the utilization of the natural resources of the world; our reliance on petrochemicals and carbon-based technologies which foul the air and pollute our water; and the storage of toxic wastes which shorten the lives of our children. In the United States, three-fifths of all toxic waste dumps are found within a twenty-five mile radius of black or Hispanic communities. We need coalition strategy creating a dialogue with environmental organizations and green political parties, linking the struggle against racism to a safe, clean environment.
Pan-Africanism of the next century cannot define itself in biological, genetic or racial categories, but in terms of its politics and social vision. Race is a category of antiblack exploitation, a product of slavery, white supremacy, and economic domination. But race today also attacks the humanity of an entire spectrum of people: the Hispanics of California who suffer under the recently implemented Proposition 187, which denies their children access to education and denies their families admission to public health facilities; the Turks in Germany who encounter rampant discrimination and neo-Nazi gangs. The struggle against racism must be fought on a global, international level.
Pan-Africanism remains an essential democratic vision, to deconstruct and uproot the inequalities of racism; to challenge the unpopular capitalist "New World Order" represented by the IMF, the World Bank, and more recently by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Pan-Africanism remains vital as a political framework bringing together the collective perspectives of people of African descent in our eternal struggle to assert and to affirm all humanity. Our struggle for the empowerment of the African world is, as W.E.B. Du Bois wrote, "the last great battle of the West."