The concept of Pan-Africanism as a political force reemerged in the Diaspora with the beginning of the Black Power movement in the United States. In the early 1960s Malcolm X, a charismatic and forceful leader of a black Muslim group called the Nation of Islam, began publicly to espouse an aggressive philosophy of racial unity and self-reliance that came to be known as Black Power (or black nationalism). In 1966 civil rights activist Stokely Carmichael became head of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), an influential civil rights organization, and then led SNCC and other groups to adopt Black Power as a guiding principle. In the United States, Pan-Africanism came to be regarded as the international expression of Black Power and Malcolm X as the American voice of Pan-Africanism. In early 1964 Malcolm X traveled to Africa, giving well-received speeches to the governments and universities of Ghana and Nigeria. In his talks, Malcolm X expressed the theme of Pan-African unity by declaring that American blacks would not be free as long as they experienced racism in America and as long as Africa was not free. On a second trip to Africa later that year, Malcolm X became the first black American to speak before the OAU. On that occasion he asked for the assistance of African leaders in bringing charges of racism by the American government before the United Nations (UN). (The charges were never heard before the UN.) Back in the United States, Malcolm X counseled American blacks to acknowledge their kinship to Africa as a part of the civil rights movement.
Posted on: Fri, 30 Aug 2013 17:13:54 +0000
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