The Pan-African movement, 1897–1958

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Sixty years of Pan-Africanism, from a London association to a conference on African soil.

The record

1897, London: Trinidadian barrister Henry Sylvester Williams founds the African Association to speak for Africans across the British Empire.

1900, London, July: Williams convenes the first Pan-African Conference at Westminster Town Hall. W.E.B. Du Bois drafts its “Address to the Nations of the World.”

1919, Paris, February: Du Bois organizes the first Pan-African Congress alongside the Paris Peace Conference. Senegal’s Blaise Diagne, a deputy in the French parliament, presides.

1921, London, Brussels and Paris: The second congress meets in sessions across three imperial capitals.

1923, London and Lisbon: The third congress meets in two sessions.

1927, New York: The fourth congress is the first held in the Americas. The movement then goes quiet for eighteen years.

1945, Manchester, October: The fifth congress is organized by George Padmore and Kwame Nkrumah, with Du Bois presiding. Delegates include Jomo Kenyatta, students and trade unionists from Africa and the Caribbean. The demand becomes independence.

1958, Accra, December: A year after Ghana’s independence, Nkrumah hosts the All-African People’s Conference. Pan-Africanism now meets on African soil.

What changed

Between 1900 and 1927, the congresses were led largely from the diaspora and asked the empires for reform. From 1945 to 1958, the movement was led from Africa and asked for independence. In sixty years, its center moved from London to Accra.