From Diaspora Dream to Continental Disaster: The Pan-Africanism That Failed—And the One That Could Work

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, black diaspora intellectuals—Marcus Garvey, C. L. R. James, and W. E. B. Du Bois—responded to colonial and racial atrocities in the Caribbean and American colonies with what would later be called Pan-Africanism: the idea that people of African descent share common interests and should unite.