Origin of Pan-Africanism

The modern conception of Pan-Africanism, if not the term itself, dates from at least the mid-nineteenth-century. The slogan, “Africa for the Africans,” popularized by Marcus Garvey’s (1887–1940) Declaration of Negro Rights in 1920, may have originated in West Africa, probably Sierra Leone, around this time. Pan-Africanist ideas first began to circulate in the mid-19th century in the United States, led by Africans from the Western Hemisphere. The most important early Pan-Africanists were Martin Delany and Alexander Crummel, both African Americans, and Edward Blyden, a West Indian. The African-American Martin Delany (1812–1885), who developed his own re-emigration scheme, reported in 1861 the slogan after an expedition to Nigeria during 1859–1860 and Edward Wilmot Blyden (1832–1912) adopted it when he arrived in West Africa in 1850. Blyden, originally from St. Thomas, played a significant role in the emergence of Pan-Africanist ideas around the Atlantic through his public speeches and writings in Africa, Britain, and the United States, and proposed the existence of an “African personality” resembling contemporary European cultural nationalisms. Blyden’s ideas informed the notion of race consciousness developed by W. E. B. DuBois (1868–1963) at the end of the nineteenth century. In a historical context, Pan-Africanism served as both a cultural and political ideology for the solidarity of peoples of African descent. Most notably championed and pioneered by Marcus Garvey, Jomo Kenyatta, and Kwame Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism aims to connect and understand the universal injustices within the Diaspora. However, the past Pan-Africanist calls of Garvey, Kenyatta, Nkrumah and countless others have translated into modernity; as neo-black liberation movements are advocating for the socio-economic, political and even psychological independence from those under colonial and now, neo-colonial regimes. To be Continued… Sources : https://science.jrank.org/pages/10573/Pan-Africanism-Origins-Development-Pan-Africanism.html and http://African-research.com