The Emergence of Diaspora

The Second Pan-African Congress. Special Collections & University Archives, W.E.B. Du Bois Library, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Originally printed in AphroChic magazine 4, Summer 2020.

The world of Pan-Africanism in the 1960s was very different from the one into which the Trinidadian lawyer Henry Sylvester Williams first introduced the term in 1900. Not only had 60 years passed, but with them two World Wars that had depleted the empires of Europe, loosening the stranglehold they once held on much of the rest of the world. But the impact of time wasn’t felt by Europe alone. Pan-Africanism had made its share of strides in that time as well.

From Pan-Africanism To Diaspora

Five Pan-African Congresses had passed since Williams’ original conference, with more to come. The New Negro Movement, The Harlem Renaissance, and Negritude all came and went in their time along with countless other movements, organizations, journals and groups. In the wake of their relentless pursuit of liberation, cracks had begun to form in the facade of colonial power.

Progress was also coming to internally colonized nations like the United States. The American Civil Rights Movement was reaching its peak in a decade that would see the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. Yet in the victories of Pan-Africanism lay the seeds of its dissolution. Soon it too would fade away. With many of its goals achieved, but so much left to be done, the passing of Pan-Africanism would prove a necessary step, paving the way for something new — diaspora.

As a concept, the African Diaspora was officially born in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. in 1965. Two papers presented at the First International Congress on African History — convened under Tanzania’s first president, Julius Nyerere — introduced the term to the world. The first, The African Abroad or the African Diaspora, by British historian George Shepperson is often credited as the first use of the term “diaspora” with regard to the historical dispersal of Africans. Shepperson himself preferred to share the distinction of this milestone with the African American scholar and author Joseph Harris, whose address, Introduction to the African Diaspora, appeared at the same conference. Though not himself a member of the diaspora he helped to define, Shepperson was an assiduous researcher and theorist of Pan-Africanism and the African Diaspora and remained so until his passing early in 2020.

In a later essay, Shepperson would trace the history of the diaspora concept to such figures as Edward Wilmot Blyden, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Lorenzo Dow Turner, marveling, as so many have since, that so much time should have passed before “diaspora” was added to the arsenal of terms with which people of African descent fought for their historical position. In particular, he singled out Blyden, whose work employed so many biblical references, and revolved around a concept so near to diaspora, yet which never seemed to openly connect the phrase.

Dr. Edward Wilmot Blyden. Sir Harry Johnston, Liberia, (London: Hutchin- son & Co., 1906). General Research and Reference Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library.

The Politics of Pan-Africanism

Despite the lengthy progress of forbears that Shepperson cited as constituting the long march to diaspora, the conceptual point of origin can be found earlier in his own work, specifically in his wrestling with the meaning and uses of the term, “Pan-Africanism.”

In response to what he termed, “a most inadequate section on African Nationalism,” in the second book of the Tropical Africa series, by George H. T. Kimble, Shepperson wrote the concise but dense article, Pan-Africanism and “Pan-Africanism”: Some Historical Notes. In it, Shepperson made it clear that he took issue with Kimble’s simplistic description of Marcus Garvey’s political and economic philosophies as “the alloy of pan-Africanism ... smelted into the ore of Ethiopianism.” In response, Shepperson clarified his position on the proper meaning and use of the term Pan-Africanism, dividing it into two separate terms, one with a capital “P,” and the other a lowercase “p”.

The distinction between the two confines the overtly political “Pan-African” movement to the wide sphere of influence of W.E.B. Du Bois, whom he posits as the official center of the movement. Meanwhile, the lowercase “pan-Africanism,” consists of all of the more culturally-focused and less centralized movements that were also happening at the time — such as the Black Arts Movement — along with any political movements with no “organic relationship” to Du Bois’ Pan-Africanism. Shepperson placed Marcus Garvey, whose enmity with Du Bois was well established, somewhere between the two.

While we are free to debate the efficiency of his approach to the problem (which also included the addition of a third term: “All-African”), Shepperson’s struggle to contain so many movements under a single term demonstrates the emerging limitations of the Pan-African concept. As Brent Hayes Edwards observed:

On the one hand, Shepperson rereads the term precisely to make room for ideological difference and disjuncture in considering black cultural politics in an international sphere ... In Shepperson’s view, it is crucial to be able to account for the transformative ‘sea changes’ that Pan-African thought undergoes in a transnational circuit.

W.E.B. Du Bois. Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Centers for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library.

Among the "sea changes" that Edwards mentions were the issues associated with communicating competing ideologies between languages. The many differences that separated the various forms of Pan-Africanism together with the scope of activity taking place on several continents, made the process of Internationalism (a term employed here to include both forms of Pan-Africanism) one of continual translation. This difficulty added to the already numerous gaps between groups — gaps that were widening in importance at the moment of Shepperson’s reconsideration of the term. His solution, Edwards reflects, was to work, “toward a revised or expanded notion of black international work that would be able to account for such unavoidable dynamics of difference, rather than either assuming a universally applicable definition of ‘Pan-African’ or presupposing an exceptionalist version of New World ‘Pan-African’ activity.”

Reconciling the needs of the quickly changing landscape with any of the constructions of Pan-Africanism available at the time quickly proved to be more than the concept could bear. Something new was needed. The process of becoming a conceptual diaspora therefore was not a simple one of connecting the story of African dispersal to that of Jewish dispersal as told in the Bible and other histories. Instead, the African Diaspora concept emerged as the result of a process of outgrowing the unilateral vision of a single, mono-centric Pan-African movement. Yet, the transition away from Pan-Africanism didn’t come about because the strategies and efforts that comprised its movements hadn’t worked, but because they had.

The Birth of Many Nations

The catalyst which would begin to render obsolete what the celebrated anthropologist St. Clair Drake called “traditional Pan-Africanism,” was the accomplishment of the political liberation that the movement had labored for so long to realize. As Drake framed it, “[T]he period of uncomplicated, united struggle to secure independence from the white oppressor ended for each colony as it became a nation.”

With the gradual absence of a ubiquitous force of oppression came the crumbling of the amalgamated front that had been erected to resist it. Africa was no longer the centerpiece of an internationally-aligned struggle for independence. Divergent national identities emerged as political priorities diversified. New African and Caribbean nations turned to questions of self-governance, while those on the American continent devoted themselves to the fight for civil rights and equality at home.

The Ethiopian World Federation. Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Centers for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library.

Meanwhile, in Africa, a series of armed coups led to what Drake termed “a parade to the seats of power of military men who had no allegiance to the kind of sentimental Pan-Africanism [that their predecessors espoused], and who were without any previous experience in dealing with West Indians and Afro-Americans.” Yet despite this political parting of ways, the sense of connection culturally, historically, if not politically, remained and demanded new modes of articulation.

New words, that would embrace the legacy of Internationalism, support cultural pan-Africanism, and yet loosen the bonds of a Pan-African ideology based on a common political destiny that stratified even as it was being achieved. Shepperson’s nomination of diaspora filled that gap.

It’s questionable whether Henry Sylvester Williams envisioned Pan-Africanism as a singular movement, or if he imagined the number of activities, groups, and leaders that would eventually be gathered under the term — or all that they would accomplish. That it was ultimately unable to contain the multitude of ideas that grew under its umbrella was perhaps the greatest mark of Pan-Africanism’s success.

The vision of what Black Liberation was, what it would mean and how it could be achieved was never truly singular, even within a single organization. But there was a certain unity of direction that became difficult to maintain as African colonies became African nations, and the restricted yet somewhat generalized national identity of the “African Abroad” became specifically “Trinidadian,” “Jamaican,” “African American” and so on.

The solidification of national identities and the necessary separation of political goals that attended it created a level of self-interest that was antithetical to the “Pan” element of “Pan-Africanism.” Diaspora, therefore makes a timely entrance into a conversation that was just beginning to turn from the politics of unity to a deeper exploration of the meanings of difference in the global Black community.

What remains of Pan-Africanism today is largely culturally focused. Though it would be inaccurate to ever categorize Black cultural activity as apolitical, to the extent that any unified Pan-African movement could be said to exist today, it lacks much of the ability to influence policy that Du Bois and other leaders had at the height of their activity. Harris and Shepperson introduced diaspora as, undoubtedly, the more accurate description of the amalgam of African and Africa-descended cultures that cross the world today.

However, there is still much that the focus and intensity of Pan-Africanism could teach to its far less politically-inclined successor. And as the strength and support behind the Movement for Black Lives and other groups continues to grow, inspiring protests across the world in response to the continued murder of Black people by police in America, the examples of Pan-Africanism’s chief leaders, strategists, and theorists may be becoming more relevant by the day.

Marcus Garvey in Regalia, 1924. James VanDerZee. Copyright Donna Mussenden VanDerZee. All rights reserved. Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Centers for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library.