Pan-Africanism: 50 Years On

As it took place only months after the end of the War, it is not completely surprising that very little press attention was devoted to a meeting in Manchester of Africans, black Americans and West Indians. Most historians now regard the sixth Pan-African Congress, which met in October 1945, as a significant event in the history of decolonisation and of African reassertion. It differed from earlier meetings in that this was dominated by young Africans and West Indians and not, as had been the case of previous meetings in 1900, 1919, 1921, 1923 and 1927, by mostly African-American intellectual activists. Although the great American civil-rights campaigner and scholar Dr W.E.B. Du Bois, the founding-father of the pan-African movement, was present, the central roles at the week-long meeting were played by a. new generation of political activists many of whom were to become household names in the decades to come.