4.2 Anticolonialism and Black Political Thought

Scholars use the term Black Freedom movement for a period of activism from the mid-1940s to the 1970s that crossed national borders. It includes both the Civil Rights movement, which ended Jim Crow laws, and the Black Power movement, which raised Black consciousness and racial pride in the US and abroad.

In 1957 the British colony of the Gold Coast won independence as Ghana, one of the first colonies in Africa south of the Sahara to break free of European rule. Its leader, Kwame Nkrumah, had studied at Lincoln University, an HBCU in Pennsylvania, and at the University of Pennsylvania, where he formed ties with African American thinkers.

Ghana's independence inspired visits from African American leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, the writer Maya Angelou, the lawyer Pauli Murray and W.E.B. Du Bois, often called the father of modern pan-Africanism. Du Bois moved to Ghana and died there in 1963. A required source is an interview King gave during his 1957 visit, when he attended Ghana's independence celebrations at Nkrumah's invitation. At a reception there, King invited Vice President Richard Nixon to visit Alabama and see the struggle for the same kind of freedom.

In the 1950s and 1960s, many African American writers, leaders and activists went to Africa to show solidarity and support for decolonization, and some embraced pan-Africanism: the political and cultural unity of all people of African descent. The required 1963 photo shows Maya Angelou, Julian Mayfield and other African Americans living in Ghana petitioning outside the US Embassy in Accra, in support of the March on Washington and against apartheid in South Africa.

In 1960 the boxing champion Joe Louis traveled to Havana with a mostly African American group of business and media leaders. They discussed promoting Cuba as a tourist destination where African Americans could vacation free from Jim Crow discrimination. The required photo records this visit.

As African Americans and Africans recognized their shared struggle against anti-Black racism and oppression, their solidarity carried the Black Freedom movement to audiences far beyond the US. It also drew international attention to Africa's decolonization. In 1960, called the 'Year of Africa', 17 African nations won independence from European colonial rule.

The connection worked both ways. During the Cold War, US leaders worried that segregation at home hurt the country's image among newly independent nations, which gave civil rights activists extra leverage. Diasporic solidarity continues today.