Ready for Revolution: Examining the contributions of Pan-African activists in the San Francisco Bay Area to the global Pan-African movement 1980-2000

• In Event: Black Education in the Crosshairs of Local Struggles

Abstract

The history of the Pan-African movement (PAM) is often debated, researched and written around the contributions of key Pan-African figures. Marcus Garvey, George Padmore, W.E.B. DuBois, Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere and Kwame Ture are often centered when the history of the Pan-African Movement is being told in written form or through oral history. Women in the Pan-African narrative are often featured as appendages to their more famous and established husbands. The Pan-African masses are even less of a focus of research and debates than more prominent women. This research contends that to construct a holistic history of the PAM, which will inform the future, one must engage and research all PAM actors regardless of celebrity status. The expansive nature of the PAM incorporates pockets of activism globally, including Pan-African organizations, activists and individuals who collectively comprise the global movement. The names and faces of these Pan-Africanists are often blurred by the Eurocentric way that history is written. Some who write about Pan-African history use methods that favor individual contributions over the contributions of organizations and collectives. This study attempts to shift the gaze from individuals to the collective by interrogating the contributions of Pan-African activists in the San Francisco Bay Area (from Sacramento to San Jose) to the global Pan-African movement. It exposes the individual and collective contributions of organizations, activists, academics, and events to crucial Pan-African moments. The paper focuses on the organizations in the Bay Area such as the All-African Peoples Revolutionary Party, All-African People’s Socialist Party, Malcolm X Grassroots, African/Black Student Statewide Alliance, and Anti-Imperialist United Fronts between 1980-2000. This study seeks to uncover the contributions of lesser-known Pan-Africanists, including strategies, tactics, organizational modes, and the ideology of the Pan-African movement in the San Francisco Bay Area, to think critically about Pan-African Futurism.

Authors

• Dr. Mjiba Frehiwot, MSW, University of Ghana

• Ashley Gillard, Lincoln University, PA