Jump to content

Portal:Pan-Africanism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Introduction

Welcome to the Pan-Africanism portal!
Bienvenue sur le portail panafricanisme!
The Pan-African flag, designed by the UNIA and formally adopted on August 13, 1920.
Marcus Garvey (17 August 1887 – 10 June 1940) : A prominent Pan-Africanist. In this 1922 picture, Garvey is shown in a military uniform as the "Provisional President of Africa" during a parade on the opening day of the annual Convention of the Negro Peoples of the World at Lenox Avenue in Harlem, New York City.
The red, black, and green flag, associated with Pan-Africanism and Black nationalism designed by the UNIA in 1920.

Pan-Africanism is a movement that aims to encourage and strengthen bonds of solidarity between all indigenous peoples of Africa along with all peoples of African descent. The belief extends beyond continental Africans with a substantial support base among the African diaspora in the Americas and Europe.

Based on the belief that unity is vital to economic, social, and political progress, it aims to unify and uplift people of African ancestry. It was in the twentieth century that Pan-Africanism emerged as a distinct political movement initially formed and led by people from the Diaspora (people of African heritage living outside of the Continent). In 1900, the Trinindadian barrister Henry Williams organized the first Pan-African conference to "protest stealing of lands in the colonies, racial discrimination and deal with other issues of interest to Blacks". (Full article...)

Selected article

The Black Panther Party (BPP), originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, was a political organization founded by Bobby Seale and Huey Newton in October 1966. The party was active in the United States from 1966 until 1982, with international chapters operating in the United Kingdom in the early 1970s, and in Algeria from 1969 until 1972.

At its inception on October 15, 1966, the Black Panther Party's core practice was its armed citizens' patrols to monitor the behavior of officers of the Oakland Police Department and challenge police brutality in Oakland, California. In 1969, community social programs became a core activity of party members. The Black Panther Party instituted a variety of community social programs, most extensively the Free Breakfast for Children Programs, and community health clinics to address issues like food injustice. The party enrolled the most members and made the greatest impact in the Oakland-San Francisco Bay Area, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Philadelphia.

Selected biography

Molefi Kete Asante
Born
Arthur Lee Smith Jr.

(1942-08-14) August 14, 1942 (age 83)
OccupationsProfessor
Philosopher
Author
Scholar
SpouseAna Yenenga
Websitehttp://www.asante.net

Molefi Kete Asante (/əˈsænt/; born Arthur Lee Smith Jr.; August 14, 1942) is an African-American professor. He is a leading figure in the fields of African-American studies, African studies and communication studies. He is currently professor in the Department of Africology at Temple University, where he founded the PhD program in African-American Studies. He is president of the Molefi Kete Asante Institute for Afrocentric Studies.

Selected history

Stowage of a British slave ship (1788)
Reproduction of a handbill advertising a slave auction in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1769.

The Atlantic slave trade or transatlantic slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people, mainly to the Americas. The slave trade regularly used the triangular trade route and its Middle Passage, and existed from the 16th to the 19th centuries. The vast majority of those who were enslaved and transported in the transatlantic slave trade were people from central and western Africa, who had been sold by other West Africans to Western European slave traders (with a small number being captured directly by the slave traders in coastal raids), who brought them to the Americas. The South Atlantic and Caribbean economies especially were dependent on the supply of secure labour for the production of commodity crops, making goods and clothing to sell in Europe. This was crucial to those western European countries which, in the late 17th and 18th centuries, were vying with each other to create overseas empires.

The Portuguese were the first to engage in the Atlantic slave trade in the 16th century. In 1526, they completed the first transatlantic slave voyage to Brazil, and other European countries soon followed. Shipowners regarded the slaves as cargo to be transported to the Americas as quickly and cheaply as possible, there to be sold to work on coffee, tobacco, cocoa, sugar and cotton plantations, gold and silver mines, rice fields, construction industry, cutting timber for ships, in skilled labour, and as domestic servants. The first Africans imported to the English colonies were classified as "indentured servants", like workers coming from England, and also as "apprentices for life". By the middle of the 17th century, slavery had hardened as a racial caste, with the slaves and their offspring being legally the property of their owners, and children born to slave mothers were also slaves. As property, the people were considered merchandise or units of labour, and were sold at markets with other goods and services.

Selected culture

Mask; wood coloured with kaolin; by Punu people from Gabon; Musée du quai Branly (Paris)
Statuette; 19th-20th century; by Mambila people from Nigeria; Musée du quai Branly

African art describes the modern and historical paintings, sculptures, installations, and other visual culture from native or indigenous Africans and the African continent. The definition may also include the art of the native African, African diasporas, such as African American, Caribbean and other American art. Despite this diversity, there are some unifying artistic themes when considering the totality of the visual culture from the continent of Africa.

Masquerade, metalwork, sculpture, architecture, fiber art, and dance are important art forms across Africa and may be included in the study of African art. The term "African art" does not usually include the art of the North African areas along the Mediterranean coast, as such areas had long been part of different traditions. For more than a millennium, the art of such areas had formed part of Islamic art, although with many particular characteristics. The art of Ethiopia, with a long Christian tradition, is also different from that of most of Africa, where traditional African religion (with Islam in the north) was dominant until relatively recently. African art includes ancient art, Muslim art of North and West Africa, the Christian art of East Africa, and the ritualistic art of these and other regions. Most African sculpture was historically in wood and other natural materials that have not survived from earlier than, at most, a few centuries ago; older pottery figures can be found from a number of areas. Masks are important elements in the art of many peoples, along with human figures, often highly stylized. There is a vast variety of styles, often varying within the same context of origin depending on the use of the object, but wide regional trends are apparent; sculpture is most common among "groups of settled cultivators in the areas drained by the Niger and Congo rivers" in West Africa. Direct images of deities are relatively infrequent, but masks in particular are or were often made for religious ceremonies; today many are made for tourists as "airport art". Since the late 19th century there has been an increasing amount of African art in Western collections, the finest pieces of which are now prominently displayed.

African mask art has had an important influence on European Modernist art, which was inspired by their lack of concern for naturalistic depiction.

West African cultures developed bronze casting for reliefs, like the famous Benin Bronzes, to decorate palaces and for highly naturalistic royal heads from around the Bini town of Benin City, Edo State, in terracotta as well as metal, from the 12th–14th centuries. Akan goldweights are a form of small metal sculptures produced over the period 1400–1900; some apparently represent proverbs, contributing a narrative element rare in African sculpture; and royal regalia included impressive gold sculptured elements. Many West African figures are used in religious rituals and are often coated with materials placed on them for ceremonial offerings. The Mande-speaking peoples of the same region make pieces from wood with broad, flat surfaces and arms and legs shaped like cylinders. In Central Africa, however, the main distinguishing characteristics include heart-shaped faces that are curved inward and display patterns of circles and dots.

Selected images

Organisations

Festivals

Grand Durbar in Kaduna State in the occasion of Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture, 15 January - 12 February 1977.

Photo by Helinä Rautavaara (1977)

Publications

  • Awakening the Natural Genius of Black Children (1992) by Dr. Amos N. Wilson
  • Blueprint for Black Power: A Moral, Political and Economic Imperative for the Twenty-First Century (1998) by Dr. Amos N. Wilson
  • Afrikan-Centered Consciousness Versus the New World Order: Garveyism in the Age of Globalism (1999) by Dr. Amos N. Wilson
  • The Cress Theory of Color-Confrontation and Racism (White Supremacy) (1970) by Dr. Frances Cress Welsing
  • The Isis Papers: The Keys to the Colors (1991) by Dr. Frances Cress Welsing
  • The root cause of the bread and butter demonstration (1959) by Alieu Ebrima Cham Joof

Films and TV

Audios and videos

Did you know

...that on arriving in Cuba in 1920, the SS Yarmouth (crew pictured), flagship of Marcus Garvey's Black Star Line, was hailed as the "Ark of the Covenant of the colored people"?

Selected quotes

In addressing the first ever conference of the Organization of African Unity (1st May 1963). The Gambian Pan-Africanist and nationalist Alieu Ebrima Cham Joof delivered the following message:



Pan-Africanism topics

Categories

Category puzzle
Category puzzle
Select [►] to view subcategories

Things you can do

Associated Wikimedia

The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:

Discover Wikipedia using portals