Pan-African Congress

The Pan-African Congress was a series of five meetings in 1919, 1921, 1923, 1927, and 1945 that were intended to address the issues facing Africa due to European colonization of much of the continent.

It won the reputation of a Peace maker for decolonization in Africa and in the West Indies. It made significant advance for the Pan African cause. One of the demands was to end the colonial rule and end to racial discrimination, against imperialism and it demanded human rights and equality of economic opportunity. The Manifesto given by the Pan-African Congress which were the political and economic demands of the Congress was for a new world context of international cooperation.

Background

Colonial powers in Africa wanted native Africans to wait patiently for limited political concessions and better career opportunities. Due to this all the ex-servicemen and the educated urban classes became disillusioned. Because Colonialism had been built on the foundation of capitalism, Socialist ideas of equality and global collaboration appealed to these budding revolutionaries.

There was a letter from Jamaican writer and socialist Claude McKay to Leon Trotsky in 1922 talking about the black soldiers:

“

They had been disillusioned with the European war, they kept on having frightful clashes with English and American soldiers, besides the fact the authorities treated them completely differently from the white soldiers... I was working at that time in London in a communist group. Our group provided the club of Negro soldiers with revolutionary newspapers and literature which had nothing.

”

1st Pan-African Congress

In 1919, the first Pan-African Congress was organized by W. E. B. Du Bois. There were 57 delegates representing 15 countries. Their main task was petitioning the Versailles Peace Conference which was held in Paris at that time. These were some of their demands:

• The Allies should be in charge of the administration of former territories in Africa as a Condominium on behalf of the Africans who were living there.
• Africa is granted home rule and Africans should take part in governing their countries as fast as their development permits until at some specified time in the future. The problem was that colonist offered no end in sight. Hence, the resistance and war pursued.

Delegates

Amongst the delegates were:^[1]

• Eliezer Cadet Universal Negro Improvement Association
• Blaise Diagne Senegal, and French Commissioner General of the Ministry of Colonies
• William Jernagin, Washington, USA
• Charles D. B. King, Liberia
• William Monroe Trotter
• Richard R. Wright
• Robert Russa Moton

2nd Pan-African Congress

In 1921, the Second Pan-African Congress met in several sessions in London, Paris and Brussels. There was an Indian Revolutionary who took part, Shapurji Saklatvala and a journalist from Ghana named W.F. Hutchinson who spoke. This session of the Congress was the most focused for change of all the meetings they had so far. At the London session, London Resolutions were adopted, later restated by W. E. B. Du Bois in his Manifesto To the League of Nations^[2]:

“

England, with all her Pax Britannic, her courts of justice, established commerce, and a certain apparent recognition of Native laws and customs, has nevertheless systematically fostered ignorance among the Natives, has enslaved them, and is still enslaving them, has usually declined even to try to train black and brown men in real self-government, to recognise civilised black folk as civilised, or to grant to coloured colonies those rights of self government which it freely gives to white men.

”

The only dissenting voice was that of Blaise Diagne who was a French politician of African origin. He represented Senegal in the French Chamber of Deputies. He soon abandoned the idea of Pan Africanism because he thought that the London Manifesto declaration was too dangerously extreme.

3rd Pan-African Congress

In 1923, the Third Pan-African Congress was held in London and in Lisbon. This meeting was totally unorganized. This meeting was also a repeat of the demands such as self-rule, the problems in Diaspora and the African-European relationship. The following was addressed at the meeting:

• The development of Africa should be for the benefit of Africans and not merely for the profits of Europeans.
• There should be home rule and a responsible government for British West Africa and the British West Indies.
• The Abolition of the pretension of a white minority to dominate a black majority in Kenya, Rhodesia and South Africa.
• Lynching and mob law in the US should be suppressed

4th Pan-African Congress

In 1927, The Fourth Pan African Congress was held in New York and adopted resolutions which were similar to the Third Pan-African Congress meetings.^[3]

5th Pan-African Congress

The commemorating plaque in Manchester

The Fifth Pan-African Congress was held in Manchester, United Kingdom in October 1945. It followed the foundation of the Pan-African Federation in Manchester in 1944.^[4]

Africans again fought in World War II. After this war, many felt that they now deserved independence. This Congress is widely considered to have been the most important. Organised by the influential Trinidadian pan-Africanist George Padmore and Ghanaian independence leader Kwame Nkrumah, it was attended by 90 delegates, 26 from Africa. They included many scholars, intellectuals and political activists who would later go on to become influential leaders in various African independence movements and the American civil rights movement, including the Kenyan independence leader Jomo Kenyatta, American left-wing activist and academic W. E. B. Du Bois, Malawi's Hastings Banda, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, and Obafemi Awolowo and Jaja Wachuku from Nigeria. It also led partially to the creation of the Pan-African Federation, founded in 1946 by Nkrumah and Kenyatta.

There were 33 delegates from the West Indies and 35 from various British Organizations such as the West African Students Union. The presence of 77-year-old Du Bois was historic, as he had organized the First Pan-African Congress in 1919.

The British Press scarcely mentioned the conference. There were a number of resolutions passed such as the criminalization of racial discrimination and the main resolution which decried imperialism and capitalism. ^[5]

The significance of the Pan-African movement and the fifth Congress

Pan-Africanism is aimed at the economic, intellectual and political cooperation of the African countries. It demands that the riches of the continent be used for the enlistment of its people. It calls for the financial and economic unification of markets and a new political landscape for the continent. Even though Pan-Africanism as a movement began in 1776, it was the fifth Pan-African congress that advanced Pan-Africanism and applied it to decolonize the African continent.^[6]

The people in Manchester were politically conscious and that was one of the reasons why it was selected as the venue for the fifth Pan-African congress. The fifth congress was organized by people of African origin living in Manchester. According to the Mancunian historian Simon Katzenellenboggen it has a great significance as it was an important step towards the end of those imperial powers in Africa. Unlike the four earlier congresses, the fifth one involved people from the African Diaspora including Afro-Caribbeans and Afro-Americans. Manchester had a significant part to play in helping the African countries to march forward in their fight to independence.^[7]

References

1. ^ The Worley Report on the Pan-African Congress of 1919 by H. F. Worley and C. G. Contee, reproduced in The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 55, No. 2 (Apr., 1970), pp. 140-143
2. ^ Lewis, David, W. E. B. Du Bois: A Biography, 2009, p 414-415.
3. ^ "The Pan-African Vision". The Story of Africa: Between World Wars (1914-1945). BBC News. http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/africa/features/storyofafrica/13chapter5.shtml. Retrieved 2008-04-15. 
4. ^ 'George Padmore and the 1945 Manchester Pan-African Congress' by Hakim Adi in George Padmore: Pan-African Revolurionary ed Fotzroy Baptiste and Rupert Lewis, Ian Randle, Kingston JA 2009
5. ^ http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/30/index-fa.html 1945-Pan-African Congress and its Aftermath
6. ^ "Road to Pan-Africanism". Road to Pan-Africanism. The Sowetan. http://www.panafricanperspective.com/pheko.htm. Retrieved 1999-11-15. 
7. ^ "Black History Month". It began in Manchester. BBC News. http://www.bbc.co.uk/manchester/content/articles/2005/10/14/151005_pan_african_congress_feature.shtml. Retrieved 2005-10-14.