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worked to promote black culture and identity, creating an intellectual and emotional bridge between West Indians and Africans. Lilyan Kesteloot, in Les Écrivains noirs de langue française: naissance d’ une littérature( 1963), analyzed the impact of this movement on identity awareness and the rapprochement between the French-speaking diasporas and Africa.
Flashmag! Issue 164 September 2025
In the United States
In the United States, Marcus Garvey planted the seeds of Pan-Africanism in the 1920s, calling for the unity of peoples of African descent and a return to Africa. However, his movement was harshly opposed and repressed by the American authorities. Later, organizations such as the Black Panthers and other pan-Africanist activists sought to reconnect with Africa and promote racial consciousness and self-determination, but these too were violently repressed by the American system. Cedric J. Robinson, in Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition( 1983), explored how black radical movements were systematically marginalized. The civil rights movement, led by figures such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, certainly brought significant advances in civic integration and legal rights, but without provoking a revolutionary rupture comparable to that in Haiti, focusing more on integration within the existing system rather than total emancipation.
From the Kaiser’ s colonial Germany to Hitler’ s Nazism, Cameroonians led the fight against racism and contributed to global pan-Africanism. Afro-Germans have actively fought racism and made significant contributions to the history of global Pan-Africanism, as exemplified by figures such as Joseph Bilé and Martin Dibobé. Joseph Bilé, a Cameroonian communist active in Berlin, headed the German section of the League for the Defense of the Negro Race, an organization that engaged in pan-Africanist and anti-colonial activities in 1929. Through his work, Bilé created links between the struggle against racial hatred in Germany and the quest for a world free from colonial oppression. Martin Dibobé, another Cameroonian, demonstrated an early commitment to the fight against colonialism by leading a petition to the German National Assembly in 1919, demanding rights and an end to German colonialism in Cameroon.
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