At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Pan-African ideology and movement reached an intellectual high point and its widest geographical reach, with a lively exchange of ideas and close cooperation between African American and Caribbean political and social reformers on the one hand and African nationalists on the other. Their objectives and ideals were much alike, although the political and social circumstances under which they had to be fought for were very different. After the Second World War, growing differences in the character of the respective causes – civil rights movement and political emancipation in the USA, independence and state formation in Africa – caused considerable erosion in the trans-Atlantic Pan-African solidarity. This was especially the case where Black Nationalism was lined up with political radicalism and communism in America. For those African Americans who did not want to separate the fight for racial justice from political ideals with a more universal character, the newly independent country of Ghana and its American-educated leader Kwame Nkrumah became an inspiration. To such an extent even that some of them migrated to Ghana.
Kevin K. Gaines studies this group of migrants in an inspiring book, in which biography is coupled with a sociopolitical analysis of a society in transition. The book is inspiring because it breaks loose from the often very America-centred studies on Pan-Africanism. The title of the book (‘American Africans … ’) seems a tongue-in-cheek comment on this feature. The book is thus also inspiring because it brings the study of Pan-Africanism back to Africa.
In an introduction, eight somewhat essayistic chapters and an epilogue, Gaines follows the development of Ghana as a destination for Pan-Africanist political migrants from America. Alternately, the author analyses the development of political thought and political processes on the one hand and life-histories of the more prominent migrants on the other. Leading intellectuals like Richard Wright, Pauli Murray, Julian Mayfield and Malcolm X all have their own chapter. Many others receive ample attention also. This mix of approaches is quite valuable and offers new insights into the often complicated relationship that existed between African independence politics and the politics of (American African) migration and political ideology. In this context it is significant that the chapter on Wright revolves about his book Black Power (1954) on Ghanaian nationalism and ‘African culture’. Gaines points out how Wright, ‘writing from Ghana in a state of bewilderment and enervation’ (p. 62), failed to catch on to the unique dynamics of African modernization in the 1950s, caught up, as it were, in American systems of thought. It was a problem that hit many of the American African migrants, especially when, in the early 1960s, the ideals of freedom and independence started to lose their lustre somewhat.
The ongoing struggle against colonialism in the Portuguese colonies, South Africa and South Rhodesia called for a practical approach to political change in which there was limited space for political nuance and subtlety. At the same time, the early independent African democracies came under pressure, in Ghana culminating in the overthrow of Nkrumah in 1966. In his chapter. ‘The coup’, Gaines deals with this problem in an exemplary manner, providing several fresh points of view on the dynamics of early postcolonial politics, and the role the African and American African key figures played in the events of the time.
With this book, Gaines has produced a valuable addition to the debate about the history of Pan-Africanism in Africa, and bridged a gap in our knowledge, in terms both of the period he treats and of the subject matter. Gaines also shows how a biographical approach can help us understand the history of the Pan-African movement better, with respect to anti-racism and anti-colonialism, as well as from an African point of view, but through the eyes of the African diaspora.
