So often, when we reflect on the origins of Pan-Africanist organizations and ideals, we look to the “Great Men” of Black radical history among them, W.E.B. Du Bois, George Padmore, and Marcus Garvey. But what is less acknowledged is the noble leadership and tenacious contributions of African women in the Pan-African struggle.
The historical contributions of African women to the earliest expressions of Pan-Africanism cannot be excluded or forgotten as the struggle develops. Additionally, all subsequent expressions of Pan-Africanism must be informed by merging Black Feminist theory with the movement.
African Women and the Pan-African Conference/Congress
In the first Pan-African Conference in London, July 1900, Annie J. Cooper and Anna H. Jones were the only two African women who spoke. Cooper, who was elected to serve on the executive committee of the congress, presented her speech, “The Negro Problem in America,” and Anna H. Jones delivered “The Preservation of Racial Equality.” The Pan-African Conference was one of the earliest organized forms of Pan-Africanist expression, and African women were involved.
Du Bois converted the Conference into a Congress to ensure it could continue in the future and Ida Gibbs Hunt, an African woman, participated in Du Bois’ first Congress in 1919. Mary White Ovington played a pivotal role in gathering the necessary funds to ensure the Congress could take place in Paris that year.
From that point on the impact of African women grew and sustained the movement as a whole, which is underscored by the “group of twenty-one women [who]were the main organizers of the Fourth Pan African Congress, held in New York, 1927” (Roy-Campbell, 1996, pp.46).
From the inception of organized Pan-African expression, like the first Pan-African conference and it’s later congresses, African women have assumed positions of power and influence in the face of male-centered spaces that directly and indirectly limited their full participation. Those positions of power and influence are crucial to origins of Pan-Africanism, and there is a duty among Pan-Africanists today to center those contributions as much as any other.
Audley Moore
Audley “Queen Mother” Moore was a political theorist and Pan-African revolutionary based in New Orleans, Louisiana the Cold War Era. Moore cultivated, sustained, and “practiced a form of gender-conscious Pan-Africanism…[which] laid the groundwork for the next generation of radical praxis” (Farmer 2016, pp.275).
During her time in the United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), founded by Marcus Garvey, Moore found community in the gender-focused branches where women “in the UNIA elected their own presidents and vice-presidents, led the Black Cross Nurses, and headed the organization’s Juvenile Auxiliary.” (Farmer, 2016, pp.277)
But, ultimately the patriarchal ideology in the UNIA squandered the ability for these pivotal women to gain the recognition and status they deserved for their trailblazing in a male-centered Pan-African organization(Farmer 2016, pp. 277).
After Garvey’s deportation, Moore joined the Communist Party (CP) because their new “Black Belt Thesis” closely aligned with her ideology. The Black Belt Thesis, under the CP, supported “the claim that African Americans in the Southern United States constituted a nation, with a shared heritage and culture, and that they had the right to self-determination.” Moore became one of the CP’s leading organizers in the Upper Harlem Branch (Farmer, 2016, pp.279).
Eventually, Moore left the CP because they could not solve the internal sexism and racism. This landed her with the Sojourners for Truth and Justice, a Pan-African womanist organizing collective that she joined before she returned to Louisiana.
When Moore returned in 1957, she established a grassroots Pan-Africanist organization, the Universal Association of Ethiopian Women. In that organization, “[President] Moore and [Vice-President Dara] Abubakari organized a series of grassroots political campaigns, lobbied for Black women’s economic rights, and provided legal aid for incarcerated Black men facing interracial rape charges” (Blain, 2019).
Queen Mother Moore, an honorific bestowed upon her by the Twi-speaking Asante people of Ghana, also founded the Committee for Reparations for Descendants of U.S. Slaves. She is, to date, the most influential figure in the work for reparations.
Black Feminist Theoretical Influences
George Padmore, a popular Pan-Africanist, often presented concepts as polar — only one side or another — in his written and material organizing work. This was present in his works like Pan-Africanism or Communism which, through the usage of “or,” presents the concepts as though they cannot coexist.
Early Black Feminist theory, however, sought to destroy the “one or the other” mindset that is core in upholding types of Eurocentric thinking within movements. Specifically for transnational black feminists “the sense of a conjunction (the “and”) of seemingly disparate political positions (Pan-Africanism and feminism) was signified as a co-identification rather than an alternative as indicated by the “or” between Pan-Africanism and communism” (Davies, 2014, pp.78).
Though Black Feminist Pan-Africanism has only been recently absorbed into an academic formation, Carole Boyce Davies claims that the early work of these women, like Audley Moore and Claudia Jones, validate the theory itself in practice.
Though Black Feminist Pan-Africanism has only been recently absorbed into an academic formation, Carole Boyce Davies claims that the early work of these women, like Audley Moore and Claudia Jones, validate the theory itself in practice.
Claudia Jones is certainly a pivotal figure in the field, her historic call for coalition building around “internationalizing women’s peace work” was built upon a Pan-African knowledge base. That base recognizes colonialism as the cause of nation-state production, displacement resulting in diasporas, and other forms of domination all of which, according to Jones, have geopolitical locations at the core (Davies, 2014, pp.90).
Carole Boyce Davies even describes the cautioning in “Black feminism against the tendency towards identity-based analyses that neglect the material basis of inter-related gender and class exploitations to depict a mythical, pre-colonial Africa devoid of gender contradictions” (Abbas & Mama 2014). That analysis by Davies solves certain ideological struggles happening today, especially around how gender is navigated within the Pan-African space.
Conclusion
The long tradition of African women’s contribution to Pan-Africanism cannot be forgotten nor discounted as Pan-Africanism continues to develop. As the movement and goal of unity among Africans develops, an intentional focus must be placed on the role of African women historically and currently.
African women have always steered and participated in the Black radical tradition with theoretical and praxis contributions.
Bibliography
Abbas, H., & Mama, A. (2014). Editorial: Feminism and pan-Africanism. Feminist Africa, 19,
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Blain, K. (2019). Audley Moore, Black Women’s Activism, and Nationalist Politics. AAIHS
https://www.aaihs.org/audley-moore-black-womens-activism-and-nationalist-politics/.
Davies, C.B. (2014). Pan-Africanism and Feminism. Feminist Africa, pp. 78-93.
https://feministafrica.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/fa_19_web.pdf
Farmer, A. D. (2016). Mothers of Pan-Africanism: Audley Moore and Dara Abubakari.
Women, Gender, and Families of Color, 4(2), 274–295.
https://doi.org/10.5406/womgenfamcol.4.2.0274
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http://www.jstor.org/stable/23489743