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06Theme · 10 books

Pan-Africanism, Race and the Diaspora

The transatlantic argument over Black identity, unity, and history. These works, written across Africa, the Americas, the Caribbean, and Europe, ask what binds people of African descent, how to read their shared past, and how to win their freedom.

01Essays· 1903· United States

The Souls of Black Folk

W.E.B. Du Bois

"The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line."

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02History· 1938· Trinidad

The Black Jacobins

C.L.R. James

The Haitian Revolution told as the only slave revolt to build a nation.

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03History· 1974· Senegal

The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality

Cheikh Anta Diop

A claim that the pharaohs were Black, and that Greece borrowed from Africa.

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04Cultural criticism· 1993· United Kingdom

The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness

Paul Gilroy

Black identity as a ship in motion, not a flag over one homeland.

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05Political history· 1956· Trinidad

Pan-Africanism or Communism

George Padmore

Two roads out of empire, and a case for the African one.

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06Political writings· 1923· Jamaica

Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey

Marcus Garvey (Amy Jacques Garvey, ed.)

"One God! One Aim! One Destiny!" the UNIA rallying cry.

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07Poetry· 1939· Martinique

Notebook of a Return to the Native Land

Aime Cesaire

A homecoming poem that turned a slur into a banner.

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08Essays· 1887· Liberia

Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race

Edward Wilmot Blyden

An 1887 case that Islam served Africa better than the missionaries did.

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09History· 1986· Kenya

The Africans: A Triple Heritage

Ali A. Mazrui

Africa as the meeting ground of three civilizations.

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10Cultural theory· 1980· United States

Afrocentricity

Molefi Kete Asante

See the world from an African center, not a European one.

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