Umoja: Early Pan-Africanists Who Paved The Way For This Year’s Kwanzaa Theme

As we celebrate Kwanzaa, BLACK ENTERPRISE would like to acknolwedge three early Pan-Africanists who sought justice in their own rights and paved the way for Kwanzaa.

To all far and wide, “Heri za Kwanzaa! Happy Kwanzaa!”

Umoja (Unity) marks the first day of this beloved week-long holiday, founded by Dr. Maulana Kalenga in 1966. In an annual founder’s message, the notable Black intellectual sends his greetings and calls on us to unify and work to achieve freedom, justice and peace in families, communities, and the world. While in action, Kalenga also reminds us to achieve these vital goods while honoring our ancestors who “taught us the life-giving, life-preserving essentiality of justice.”

“We are morally called, commanded and compelled to bear witness to truth and set the scales of justice in their proper place, especially among the voiceless and devalued, the downtrodden and defenseless, the oppressed, and the different and vulnerable,” Kalenga wrote.

Today is the first day of Kwanzaa! Kwanzaa was created in the 1960s by Maulana Karenga as a way of empowering Black communities in the aftermath of Watts Rebellion. pic.twitter.com/HjepkIaYWJ
— Black Lives Matter (@Blklivesmatter) December 26, 2023

Kalenga’s practice is reminiscent of Pan-Africanist ideals and is re-emerging in new ways. The legacy of Pan-Africanism envisioned a unified African nation where all African diaspora people could live. Highlighting Kalenga’s message, BLACK ENTERPRISE would like to acknowledge four early Pan-Africanists who sought justice in their own right and paved the way for Kwanzaa celebrations.

DR. MAULANA KARENGA

“Indeed, we live in turbulent times of continuing unfreedom and oppression, the enduring evil of injustice and destructive conflicts, and unjust and genocidal war. And freedom, justice and peace in the world and for the good of the world and all in it are urgent, essential and indispensable.” — Dr. Maulana Karenga

MARTIN DELANY

“Every people should be the originators of their own destiny, the projectors of their own schemes, and creators of the events that lead to their destiny – the consummation of their own desires.” — Martin Delany

Martin Delany hailed from Virginia and was among the most prominent early African American Pan-Africanists. He was also a notable abolitionist and physician who co-founded and edited several newspapers, including The Mystery, The North Star, and The Provincial Freeman. Delany believed that Black people could not advance alongside whites and advocated for African Americans to self-govern their own nation by leaving the United States. With a drive to find foreign colonization opportunities for African Americans, he led an exploration party to West Africa to investigate the Niger Delta as a location for settlement from 1859 to 1860.

W.E.B. DUBOIS

“After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world.” -— The Souls of The Black Folk, W.E.B Dubois.

The true father of modern Pan-Africanism was the influential thinker and prolific author W.E.B. Du Bois. Throughout his seasoned career, Du Bois was an advocate for the study of African history and culture. At the turn of the 20th century, Dubois’ statement: “the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line,” was made with Pan-Africanist thinking in mind. During those years, it was common for many in the United States to refer to the problem of African Americans’ social status as the “Negro Problem.”

MARCUS GARVEY

“If we as a people realized the greatness from which we came we would be less likely to disrespect ourselves.” ― Marcus Mosiah Garvey

Jamaican-born Black nationalist Marcus Garvey was a well-known Pan-Africanist thinker of the first decades of the 20th century. In the years after World War I, Garvey championed the cause of African independence. He led the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), which boasted millions of members. They strived for a return “back to Africa.” The idea gave birth to Garvey’s Black Star Line, a shipping company established in part to transport Blacks back to Africa as well as to facilitate global Black commerce. But it was ultimately unsuccessful.

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