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W. E. B. D U B O I S , M A R C U S
G A RV E Y , A N D P A N -A F R I CA N I S M
I N L I B E R I A , 19191924
T A M BA E. M BAYO
PAN-AFRICANISMthe perceived need to mobilize all peoples of African descent
against racism and colonialismwas perhaps one of the most enduring responses
to the legacy of European slavery and imperialism. Although a project centered
around the notion of Africa, however, Pan-Africanism was in fact heavily influenced by Western discourses on Africa and Africans. It was this Western understanding that profoundly affected the thinking of Africans in diaspora, and that
in turn sometimes engendered conflicting thoughts and attitudes toward issues
of race, identity, and nationality.1 Pan-Africanism sought to unite all people of
African descent and thereby demonstrate the mutual bond believed to exist
among blacks regardless of geographic location. In reality, African American and
Afro-Caribbean Pan-Africanists often adopted contradictory positions that belied
their universalist Pan-Africanist aspirations. Indeed, despite its rhetoric and noble
ideals, inconsistencies between Pan-African theory and practice have been integral parts of the movements long and checkered history. This study analyzes these

Tamba Mbayo is a Ph.D. candidate of history at Michigan State University. An earlier

version of this article was presented at the Diaspora Paradigms: New Scholarship in Comparative Black History Conference held at Michigan State University, East Lansing,
2023 September 2001. I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers who commented on
this article.
1. In recent decades, scholars reflecting a wide array of historical, philosophical, political, and
anthropological perspectives have engaged in intense debates about the Western production
of knowledge about Africa and Africans. See, among others, Molefi Asante, Afrocentricity
(New Jersey, 1988); Kwami Appiah, In My Fathers House: Africa in the Philosophy of
Culture (New York, 1992); V. Y. Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and
the Order of Knowledge (Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1988). Also, since the PBS series
Wonders of the African World, directed by African American scholar Henry Louis Gates,
Jr. aired late in 1999, scholars from various academic backgrounds including film studies,
theology, African Studies, and African history have contributed to the resulting debate. Gatess
presentation, or what some critiques consider a misrepresentation of Africa, has provided a
platform that scholars have used to engage questions about how the West has constructed
Africa and Africans over time. Thus, Ali Mazrui, the eminent African historian and political
scientist, would disapprove of Gatess paternalistic possessiveness, ulterior selectivity, and
cultural condescension, the basic symptoms of a rather dreadful disease, Black Orientalism.
See <http://www.ccsu.edu/afstudy/updtWin2k.htm>.

20

THE HISTORIAN

inconsistencies and indeed the larger paradoxes and problems of Pan-Africanism.

It does so by analyzing the separate encounters of U.S.-born William E. Burghardt
Du Bois and the Jamaican-born Marcus Garvey with the West African republic
of Liberia between 1919 and 1924, as each black leader attempted to launch his
own particular strand of Pan-Africanism in Africa.2
Du Bois and Garvey were two of the most significant Pan-Africanist figures
in the early twentieth century. As a result, their separate engagements with
Liberia represent a litmus test for the practicality of Pan-Africanism. By
showing how both Du Bois and Garvey adopted ambivalent and contradictory
positions in their different dealings with Liberia, this article illustrates the
difficulty of putting Pan-Africanism into practice. Their experiences prove that in
spite of some common understanding about its essence, Pan-Africanism has over
the course of its existence signified a variety of ideas with different political
and social connotations for different groups of blacks. More harshly, PanAfricanism, as manifested in Liberia by both Du Bois and Garvey, was a flawed
and impractical project laden with Western cultural hierarchies. Consequently,
the task of implementing it proved to be a botched project mainly because, as an
ideological construct, Pan-Africanism underestimated the complexity of human
situations when the politics of race, identity, and nationality all blended on a
single stage.
Conventional approaches to historicizing Pan-Africanism tend to privilege its
achievements, rhetorical flourishes, and universal claims, even to the extent of
downplaying or ignoring its shortcomings.3 Pan-African constructs have often
been misappropriated in scholarly discourses, with the result that the complexity and diversity of both continental African and black diasporan experiences
have been obscured. By contrast, this study subjects the common interests, aspirations, and cultural affinity presumed among all blacks in the received wisdom

2. The West African state of Liberia is a byproduct of concerns that grew over the presence of
free blacks in the United States after the American Revolution. Consequently, many white
Americans including Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe supported the idea of repatriating
blacks to Africa. The American Colonization Society (ACS), founded in 1816, had the
mandate to organize the project. The United States government supported the ACS, and the
first batch of settlers arrived in what would become Monrovia in 1822. For a detailed study
of the American Colonization Society and the early history of Liberia, see P. J. Staudenraus,
The American Colonization Movement, 18161865 (New York, 1961); Tom Shick, Behold
the Promised Land: A History of Afro-American Settler Society in Nineteenth-Century Liberia
(Baltimore, 1980); Amos Beyan, The American Colonization Society and the Creation of the
Liberian State: A Historical Perspective (Lanham, Md., 1991).
3. Earlier studies on Pan-Africanism generally tended to be less critical. See some of those listed
below, fn. 5.

W. E. B. D U B O I S , M A R C U S G A RV E Y , A N D P A N -A F R I CA N I S M

21

of Pan-Africanism to careful scrutiny. In so doing, it complements the current

revisionism in the historiography on Pan-Africanism and the black diaspora
by analyzing the discourse on Pan-Africanism and the varying political and
social contexts in which it evolved in order both to illuminate the conditions that
have limited its practicality over time, and to reassess the movements uneven
history.4
While the precise definition of Pan-Africanism tends to be elusive, however,
most scholars and activists concede that Pan-Africanism encapsulates the conscious attempts of blacks, at home and abroad, to forge a united front aimed
at combating the dehumanizing effects of slavery, racism, colonialism, and
oppression of various sorts against all peoples of African descent.5 This consciousness has been expressed over time in multiple ways, encompassing cultural,
economic, political, and religious approaches. Politically, although PanAfricanism makes no claim to any specific set of political tenets, some of its chief
proponents, such as George Padmore, C. L. R. James, and Kwame Nkrumah,
have each espoused a variant of socialism.6 Similarly, Pan-Africanism has also
long advocated the liberation and ultimate unification of Africa. Thus, in a postcolonial formulation, Pan-Africanists have pushed for the creation of a suprana-

4. See, among others, Cornel West, W. E. B. Du Bois: An Interpretation, in Africana: The

Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, eds. Kwame Anthony Appiah
and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (New York, 1999), 196782; Tunde Adeleke, Black Americans
and Africa: A Critique of the Pan-African and Identity Paradigms, The International Journal
of African Historical Studies 31 (1998): 50536; UnAfrican Americans: Nineteenth-Century
Black Nationalists and the Civilizing Mission (Lexington, Ky., 1998); Judith Stein, The World
of Marcus Garvey: Race and Class in Modern Society (Baton Rouge and London, 1996);
Michael Williams, The PanAfrican Movement, in Africana Studies: A Survey of Africa and
the Diaspora, ed. Mario Azevedo (Durham, N.C., 1998), 16981.
5. The history of Pan-Africanism is well documented. See, for example, George A. Shepperson,
Ethiopianism and African Nationalism, Phylon 14 (1953): 918; Notes on the Negro
American Influences on the Emergence of African Nationalism, Journal of African History
1 (1960): 299312; and Pan-Africanism and pan-Africanism: Some Historical Notes,
Phylon 23 (1962): 34658; George Padmore, Pan-Africanism or Communism? The Coming
Struggle for Africa (London, 1956); Colin Legum, Pan-Africanism: A Short Political Guide
(New York, 1962); Vincent Bakpetu Thompson, Africa and Unity: The Evolution of Pan
Africanism (New York, 1969); Adekunle Ajala, Pan-Africanism: Evolution, Progress, and
Prospects (London, 1973); J. Ayodele Langley, Pan-Africanism and Nationalism in West
Africa, 19001945 (London, 1973); Imanuel Geiss, The Pan-African Movement (London,
1974); and P. Olisanwuche Esedebe, Pan-Africanism: The Idea and Movement, 17761991
(Washington, D.C., 1982); Kwesi Kwaa Prah, Beyond the Color Line: Pan-Africanist
Disputations (Trenton, N.J., 1998).
6. See, for example, Padmore, Pan-Africanism or Communism?; C. L. R. James, The
Black Jacobins: Toussaint LOuverture and the San Domingo Revolution (New York,
1963); and Kwame Nkrumah, Neo-colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism (New York,
1965).

22

THE HISTORIAN

tional state to transcend the current national boundaries and structures of the
nation-state inherited from the colonial past.7
Conventional accounts locate the first expressions of Pan-African sentiments
in the Americas during the era of the Atlantic slave trade.8 More recently, Michael
Williams, among others, has argued that continental Africans also expressed
pristine Pan-Africanist sentiments during the same period.9 From this perspective, one could legitimately talk about the mutual duality concerning the origins
of Pan-Africanism, thereby acknowledging the contributions of both diasporan
and mainland Africans to its emergence. Significantly, the term Pan-Africanism
itself only began to gain widespread usage at the turn of the twentieth century,
when Henry Sylvester Williams, a Trinidadian barrister living in England, convened the first Pan-African conference to protest against the expropriation of
lands in the colonies, racial discrimination, and other problems affecting all
peoples of African descent.10 Consistent with the older view locating the origins
of Pan-Africanism among Africans in the diaspora, Imanuel Geiss has drawn
parallels between Pan-Africanism and Zionism, insofar as both movements
envisioned the voluntary migration of those in the diaspora back to their motherland.11 It is noteworthy that both Du Bois and Garvey, albeit in different ways,
conceded similarities between Pan-Africanism and Zionism. Du Bois, while he
believed it was absurd to propose a mass exodus of American blacks to Africa
after all their contributions to the economic development of American society,
yet agreed that the African movement [Pan-Africanism] must mean to us what
the Zionist movement must mean to the Jews, the centralization of race effort
and the recognition of a racial front.12 For Garvey, his back-to-Africa movement
7. The transformation of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), which was inaugurated
in 1963, into the African Union in 2002 best represents this aspiration. The birth of the
OAU during the decade of African independence (1960s) was a defining moment for PanAfricanism, insofar as it marked a conscious attempt by various African leaders and PanAfricanists to forge a continental body with the expressed purpose of facilitating the ultimate
unification of the continent. How to achieve this goal, however, developed into a perennial
problem for the African leadership.
8. Shepperson, Notes on the Negro American Influences; W. E. B. Du Bois, The World and
Africa (New York, 1997), 78; Rayford Logan, The Historical Aspects of Pan-Africanism,
19001945, in Pan-Africanism Reconsidered, ed. American Society of African Culture
(Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1962), 3752.
9. Williams, The PanAfrican Movement.
10. T. Abdul-Rahman, ed., Pan-Africanism: Politics, Economy, and Social Change in the
Twenty-First Century (London, 1996).
11. Geiss, The Pan-African Movement, 3.
12. W. E. B. Du Bois, The Future of Africa, Advocate of Peace 81 (January 1919): 1213;
Letters from Du Bois, Africa, Reconstruction and Africa, and Not Separatism,
Crisis 17 (February 1919): 16366.

W. E. B. D U B O I S , M A R C U S G A RV E Y , A N D P A N -A F R I CA N I S M

23

constituted a major component of his Pan-African project to ensure that blacks

ultimately became economically self-reliant and fully participated in their own
government. Garveyism therefore essentially revolved around the idea that New
World blacks should establish strong links with Africa to facilitate exchanges in
commercial goods, manpower, and technological skills for the mutual benefit of
all peoples of African descent.13
The legacy of slavery, racism, and the dissemination of negative stereotypes
about black people generated a wide range of responses from blacks in diaspora.
Arguably, Pan-Africanism was the most enduring of these responses. During
the years immediately after the declaration of American independence in 1776,
African Americans were already expressing discontent over their plight and the
anti-African racist doctrines that typified the campaign for the abolition of the
Atlantic slave trade. They registered their protests in a language that was essentially Pan-African in tone and content. As articulated then and subsequently
elaborated by its numerous advocates, Pan-Africanism entailed seven broad components: Africa as the homeland of Africans and persons of African origin, solidarity among people of African descent, belief in a distinct African personality,
rehabilitation of Africas past, pride in African culture, Africa for Africans in
church and state, [and] the hope for a united and glorious future Africa.14 In a
very broad sense, then, Pan-Africanism attempted to encompass the political and
cultural aspirations of all blacks and sought to cement a lasting bond among
all those sharing a common African heritage. Furthermore, Pan-Africanism was
predicated on the idea that there was a historical affinity between blacks in diaspora and continental Africans that, presumably, three centuries of separate existence in different worlds had failed to dismember completely. And indeed, to
a certain degree, one may argue a trans-Atlantic commerce of ideas and politics
between blacks in the Americas and continental Africans had existed for
much of this period. This was perhaps most evident during the nineteenth century,
when Paul Cuffe, Edward Blyden, Dr. Albert Thorne, Martin R. Delany, and
Bishop Henry M. Turner, among others, not only advocated Africa for the
African but also established direct links between blacks in the Americas and
those on the continent.15
13. Stein has pointed out that there is a lot of misunderstanding surrounding Garveys
back-to-Africa movement. Garveys assertion that Africa should be for the black people
of the world, she suggests, was taken as a call for exodus by those who sought
to denigrate Garveyism. For more on this see, Stein, The World of Marcus Garvey,
10827.
14. Esedebe, Pan-Africanism, 4.
15. Shepperson, Notes on Negro American Influences.

24

THE HISTORIAN

These links were further solidified by many blacks perception of racism in the
New World and colonialism in Africa as identical evils they felt called upon to
mobilize against and confront. This spirit of black solidarity, however erratic,
was crucial in the evolution of Pan-Africanism. As blacks in diaspora sought to
rediscover their identity and redefine their position within their racist societies,
they also realized the necessity of knowing more about Africa and the Africans
with whom they shared ancestral ties. Persistently struggling to come to terms
with their identity crises, race, and racism, be it in the United States, the
Caribbean, or Europe, most Africans in diaspora sought answers to fundamental questions about their heritage and identity: What is Africa? What does it mean
to be an African, African American, Afro-European, or Afro-Caribbean? More
importantly, what is the essence of Africanness?
The fundamental issue for most Pan-Africanists in diaspora was how to deal
with the unequal power relations their societies had constructed on the basis of
skin color. As Du Bois eloquently put it in his attempt to universalize the issue,
The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-linethe relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and
the islands of the sea.16 Like Martin Delaney and Alexander Crummell before
them, early-twentieth-century diasporan Pan-Africanists defined their African
essence mainly in terms of race. This thinking is surely ironic since, it could be
argued, blacks in the Americas garnered social consciousness as a people by
adopting for their own specific purposes a concept of race originally constructed
by a dominant white society that entertained supremacist beliefs. Certainly, ethnicity in a purely cultural sense for diasporan blacks was problematic because
African Americans and Afro-Caribbeans were descendants of Africans forcibly
uprooted from diverse African cultural and geographic backgrounds. Moreover,
slave culture in the New World evolved out of a process of creolization that
intermeshed African beliefs and customs with Euro-American cultural traits and
values.17 Significantly, therefore, by adopting race as a defining factor to map out
their link with their ancestral home, blacks in diaspora somehow replicated the
rather bigoted parameters set by their white-dominated societies.
The significance of race for African Americans understanding of PanAfricanism was evident in the years after World War II when African Pan-

16. W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (Chicago, Ill., 1903), 13.
17. For a concise but well written account on the idea of creolization, see Sidney W. Mintz and
Richard Price, The Birth of African-American Culture: An Anthropological Perspective
(Boston, Mass., 1992).

W. E. B. D U B O I S , M A R C U S G A RV E Y , A N D P A N -A F R I CA N I S M

25

Africanists focused their energies less on fighting racism than on fighting colonialism. This shift in emphasis from racism to African independence among PanAfricanists in the colonized world seemed to dampen African American interests
in global Pan-Africanism. As a result, while many African Americans contributed
significantly to the struggle for independence in Africa, especially during the
1950s and 1960s, many more inevitably shifted their focus to the civil rights
movement in the United States, which at the time was gaining increasing momentum.18 As Ali Mazrui pertinently observes, What loosened the ties between
[African Americans] and Africans was the emergence of independence as the paramount slogan for the African sector. For as long as the slogan was [African
American] dignity this was indeed a shared cause.19 Ironically, and indicative of
the continuing difficulties inherent in any attempt to create a singular understanding of Pan-Africanism, while Africans pushed for independence, consensus
about how to achieve some of the goals of Pan-Africanism, especially a unified
Africa, continued to evade African leaders.20
Following the death of Booker T. Washington in 1915, W. E. B. Du Bois and
Marcus Garvey emerged as the two most influential black leaders in the world.
Like their nineteenth-century predecessors, both Pan-Africanist leaders were
products of their time and place, insofar as their profession of identity with
Africa was matched by an abiding interest and faith in cultural affinity with
Euro-America.21 In addition, their cast of mind mirrored a dilemma Du Bois
aptly described in the context of early-1900s American society: One feels his
twonessan American, a Negro; two souls, two unreconciled strivings; two
warring deals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being
torn asunder.22 Although Du Bois was describing the position of blacks in U.S.
18. Among other contributions, the Third Annual Conference of the American Society of African
Culture (AMSAC), which convened from 2226 June 1960 at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, had as its main agenda, Africa Unites and Pan-Africanism. The
Society, which was established in 1957, was composed of black scholars, artists, and writers.
The 1960 conference was prompted by the independence movement in Africa, which by the
1960s was already in full bloom. The conference sought to lend its voice to the campaign
for independence by bringing together black scholars to discuss issues pertinent to Africas
independence.
19. Ali Mazrui, Toward a Pax Africana (Chicago, 1967), 3.
20. The emergence of two opposing blocs, the Casablanca group of nations and the Brazzaville-Monrovia-Lagos group, represented different approaches to Pan-African unity as most
African countries attained independence in the 1960s. This division underscored the problematic of transcending different attitudes toward the attainment of Pan-African goals.
21. Adeleke, UnAfrican Americans, 8.
22. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folks, 16.

26

THE HISTORIAN

society, his words might well have been applied to the relationship between the
Western black and Africa, a continent to be heralded as either a proud ancestral
home or derided as a wilderness of savagery and primitivism. To be sure,
such epithets reflected Euro-American stereotypes about Africa and Africans that
were reinforced largely by the pseudo-scientific racist theories that continued to
permeate academic and popular discourses in Europe and the United States well
into the first half of the twentieth century. Thus it is not surprising that many
African Americans and Afro-Caribbeans, in relating to Africa and Africans, faced
the kind of dilemma Du Bois affirmed about his twoness in American society.
This predicament would have a profound impact on the psyche of most blacks
in diaspora. In this connection, Tunde Adeleke suggests, There has to be a distinction between the rhetoric of mutuality and the reality of contradiction and
distance that informed black American perception and treatment of Africa.23
Thus, in encountering Liberia, Du Bois and Garvey epitomized the multi-faceted
dilemma of being black in a racist American society: Pan-Africanists evincing
emotional ties to a remote ancestral land, while also being alienated African
Americans or Afro-Caribbeans with a strong cultural affinity to a EuroAmerican world.
Against this historical background, Liberia, because of its history as a settlement established for the repatriation of free blacks and ex-slaves from the United
States, became a significant reference point for diasporan blacks.24 In addition to
its traditional moral support, the United States offered financial support to
the Americo-Liberian ruling elite.25 By the end of the First World War, however,
the Liberian government, on the brink of bankruptcy, was forced to request

23. Adeleke, Black Americans and Africa: A Critique of the Pan-African and Identity Paradigms, The International Journal of African Historical Studies 31 (1998): 522.
24. Prior to the Liberian case, Sierra Leone took a similar developmental path. Under the
auspices of philanthropists like Granville Sharp, a settlement that came to be known as
Granville Town, and later Freetown, was established along the Atlantic coast in Sierra
Leone in 1787 for blacks to be repatriated from abroad. Three groups arrived at intervals
between 1787 and 1803 from Nova Scotia, Jamaica, and England. For a detailed account
of the early history of Sierra Leone, see Christopher Fyfe, A History of Sierra Leone (London,
1962).
25. Americo-Liberians are descendants of the settler community of ex-slaves and free blacks that
were repatriated from the United States to West Africa by the ACS in the 1820s. They dominated Liberian politics until the 1980s when Master-Sergeant Samuel Doe, an indigenous
Liberian, headed a coup detat that overthrew the Americo-Liberian government of President William Tolbert. For more on this, see J. Gus Liebenow, Liberia: The Quest for Democracy (Bloomington, Ind., 1987).

W. E. B. D U B O I S , M A R C U S G A RV E Y , A N D P A N -A F R I CA N I S M

27

additional formal financial help from the United States government.26 Though a
proposed $5,000,000 loan by the United States State Department failed to gain
approval from the U. S. Senate, it did pave the way for the Firestone Rubber
Company, a private American company, to grant the Liberian government a
$5,000,000 loan.27 In return, Firestone received generous concessions in 1926 to
set up rubber plantations in Liberia that, in a bid to contest British monopoly of
the international rubber market, would supply rubber to the then expanding
American automobile industry.28 This increasing penetration of American financial capital in Liberia coincided with an upsurge of interest in that countrys
affairs among diasporan Pan-Africanists. Du Bois, like Garvey, watched keenly
as the U.S. government became increasingly involved in Liberias financial crisis.
The intervention of Firestone in Liberia, supposedly to salvage the countrys worsening economy, caused concern among some Pan-Africanists and their sympathizers in North America and the Caribbean islands. Indeed, there was a general
apprehension among Pan-Africanists about American imperialism in Liberia. The
dollar diplomacy endorsed by President William Taft since his inauguration in
1909 had made it possible for risky foreign governments to secure loans
through U.S. private banks by accepting American financial advisers. This
Taft-era policy continued until the late 1920s, and by the time Du Bois and
Garvey engaged Liberia, the countrys treasury was already under the supervision
of an American receivership. Notwithstanding these general fears, however, the
idea that American capital was necessary to help Liberia modernize was anathema to neither Du Bois nor Garvey. In any case, Du Bois and Garvey separately
faced the daunting task of transcending the rhetoric of Pan-Africanism and establishing a solid foundation for mutual understanding and meaningful cooperation
between Americo- and indigenous Liberians and diasporan Africans.

26. Liberias financial crisis can be traced back to the late nineteenth century, but its problems
became acute during World War I when, in deference to its long-standing relationship with
the United States, Liberia declared war on Germany, its most important trading partner, and
suffered a massive drop in exports as a result. See Jo Sullivan, The Kru Coast Revolt of
19151916, Liberian Studies Journal 14 (1989): 5171, 59.
27. For a more detailed treatment of the Firestone loan agreements, see Raymond Leslie Buell,
The Native Problem in Africa, vol. 2 (New York, 1928); George W. Brown, The Economic
History of Liberia (Washington, D.C., 1941).
28. See Arthur Knoll, Harvey Firestones Liberian Investment (19221932), Liberian Studies
Journal, 14 (1989): 1333; Harvey S. Firestone and Samuel Crowther, Men and Rubber:
The Story Business (New York, 1926); Alfred Lief, The Firestone Story: A History of the
Firestone Tire and Rubber Company (New York, 1951).

28

THE HISTORIAN

Analyzing the separate Pan-Africanist ventures of Du Bois and Garvey in

Liberia necessitates looking at their different socio-cultural backgrounds to determine how these influenced their conceptualization of Pan-Africanism.29 The cultural distinctions between Du Bois and Garvey help us understand that although
the two leaders were descendants of African slaves in the Americas and had an
unquestionable commitment to their ideals of Pan-Africanism, their different
approaches and worldviews were rooted in their different formative experiences,
including encounters with racism and social classes. Long before Liberia drew the
attention of the two black leaders, their exposure to certain socio-cultural influences affected how they would relate to different groups of black people.
Du Bois was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, on 23 February 1868,
almost two decades before Garvey. Raised by his mother after his father left while
he was still a young boy, Du Bois grew up believing that education and hard work
were the keys to wealth and success. Barringtons small African American community was for the most part spared the blatant racial discrimination and segregation afflicting American society at the time. In fact, Du Boiss first encounter
with racism and segregation was at Fisk University in Tennessee, a traditionally
black college, which he attended on an academic scholarship after graduating
from high school.30 Du Bois himself ruefully comments: I was tossed boldly
into the Negro Problem. . . . I suddenly came to a region where the world
was split into white and black halves, and where the darker half was held back
by race prejudice and legal bonds, as well as by deep ignorance and dire
poverty.31 Despite this revelation, Du Bois continued to mingle with both
African Americans and liberal white students.
By contrast, Du Boiss years at Harvard University, which he also entered on
a scholarship, saw him restrict his interactions to African Americans in Boston.
In his own words, he enmeshed himself in a completely colored world.32 It was
29. See, among others, E. David Cronon, Black Moses: The Story of Marcus Garvey and the
Universal Improvement Association (Madison, Wis., 1955); Amy Jacques, Garvey and
Garveyism (Kingston, Jamaica, 1963); Tony Martin, Race First: The Ideological and
Organizational Struggles of Marcus Garvey and the UNIA (Westport, Conn., 1976);
Theodore Vincent, Black Power and the Garvey Movement (Berkeley, Cal., 1972); W. E. B.
Du Bois, The Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois: A Soliloquy on Viewing my Life from
the Last Decade of its First Century (New York, 1968); Frederick McKissack, W. E. B. Du
Bois (New York, 1990); Emma Gelders Sterne, His Was the Voice: The Life of W. E. B Du
Bois (New York, 1971).
30. McKissack, W. E. B. Du Bois; Sterne, His Was the Voice.
31. Du Bois, Autobiography, 108.
32. Ibid., 136.

W. E. B. D U B O I S , M A R C U S G A RV E Y , A N D P A N -A F R I CA N I S M

29

also during his years at Harvard that Du Bois strengthened his belief that education was the key to improving the lot of African Americans. Du Boiss notion
of the Talented Tenth germinated as he became increasingly convinced that a
vanguard of educated blacks from their knowledge and experience would lead
the mass.33 In essence, the Talented Tenth would provide leadership for civilizing and uplifting the benighted and irrational masses of ordinary blacks
both within American society and elsewhere in the world. Du Bois firmly believed
that this was the way forward if African Americans were to achieve equality with
their white counterparts.
The organizations Du Bois formed, such as the Niagara Movement (1905) and
the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP),34
reflected his pacifist approach to racial problems. Significantly, they appealed
mostly to educated and middle to upper class African Americans and mirrored
Du Boiss own middle-class background and perhaps his cynicism toward lowerclass African Americans. As he bluntly stated, Wealth was the result of work
and saving and the rich rightly inherited the earth. The poor, on the whole, were
themselves to be blamed.35 As historian Cornel West phrased it: [Du Bois] certainly saw, analyzed, and empathized with black sadness, sorrow, and suffering.
But he didnt feel it in his bones deeply enough, nor was he intellectually open
enough to position himself alongside the sorrowful, suffering, yet striving ordinary black folk.36 Little wonder therefore that most poor and working-class
African Americans would readily embrace Marcus Garvey as the champion of
their cause.
Garvey was born on 17 August 1887, in St. Anns Bay, Jamaica. In contrast to
Du Bois, he was still attending school when he began to work as an apprentice
printer at the age of fourteen. Garveys parents were full-blooded Africans
descended from the Maroons, a group of slaves who fled slavery to set up their
own community in the hills of Jamaica. The Jamaican society in which Garvey
grew up was highly stratified and hierarchically arranged along color lines. At
the apex of society were whites, followed by a middle class of mulattos, while
33. Ibid., 123.
34. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was inaugurated in 1909 when the National Negro Committee, which convened to advance the cause
of black civil rights, changed its name. The program adopted by the NAACP was more or
less the same as that of the Niagara Movement, a brainchild of Du Bois that brought together
black intellectuals.
35. Du Bois, Autobiography, 80.
36. West, W. E. B. Du Bois, 1967.

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THE HISTORIAN

the majority black population was at the bottom.37 Garveys sensitivity to the
blackness of his skin color was, in a sense, a direct response to the superior
posture the mulatto class adopted in Jamaican society.38 He developed a deepseated revulsion for mulattos, which to a certain degree may explain his social
distance from Du Bois.
From an early age Garvey identified with the plight of black workers, although
he developed an acute disdain for labor organizations after the workers union
at the printing firm failed to back him when his employers blacklisted him.
Like most black Jamaicans of his generation, Garvey believed that Jamaican
society had nothing positive to offer him, and thus felt the need to travel abroad.
During his extensive travels in Central and South America, Garvey visited Costa
Rica, Ecuador, Venezuela and Columbia and experienced firsthand encounters
with black victims of exploitation, racial discrimination, and persecution. In
1912, Garvey traveled to England, where he met the Sudanese-Egyptian journalist and actor Duse Mohammed Ali, who had a profound impact on his interest
in Africa.
By the time Garvey returned to Jamaica in July 1914, he had resolved to seek
practical ways of improving the conditions of blacks at home and abroad. This
vision crystallized into his founding, in 1914, the Universal Negro Improvement
and Conservation Association and Africa Communities League. Not too long
after, Booker Washington, with whom Garvey was corresponding, apparently
encouraged him to travel to the United States. When he did so in 1916 he
relaunched the organization he had founded two years previously. Now known
as the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), but professing the same
goals, the movement was targeted at a much wider audience and indeed gained
widespread support from the African American community, especially poor
blacks who had migrated from the rural South to seek a better life in the urban
North.
In spite of their different backgrounds, both Du Bois and Garvey, by instilling
pride in peoples of African descent, sought to restore black dignity, and to negate
the indignities of slavery and racism. To this end, they both identified with the
aspirations of contemporary black activists, artists, and writers whose activities
37. Mulatto refers to an offspring of a black and white parent. In Jamaica, this light-skinned
(colored) group discriminated against darker-skinned Jamaicans and believed they should
succeed the British colonialists. At the time of emancipation, mulattos numbered about
thirty-five thousand, almost equaling the number of whites, but overwhelmed by the 310,000
black slaves.
38. Stein, The World of Marcus Garvey, 2437.

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reflected the unique realities of the black experience. Claude McKay of the
Harlem Renaissance movement of the 1920s, for example, wrote about the fortitude and hopes of African Americans as well as their vulnerability and frustrations, thereby giving the struggle of blacks a distinctive intellectual flavor.39 To
the extent that various artists and writers articulated the thinking of an oppressed
black people in a society divided along strict racial lines, their ideas resonated
with the aspirations of both black leaders. Du Bois, like Garvey, also drew inspiration from the sentiments expressed by Negritude poets and activists like Aim
Csaire and Leopold Senghor, who portrayed blackness as an antithesis to
whiteness.40 Similarly, both leaders in their different ways affirmed the idea of
the African Personality, which, first propounded by Edward W. Blyden and later
popularized by Kwame Nkrumah, was intended to refute European claims about
African inferiority. Blyden believed that each of the major human races was
endowed with distinct inherent attributes. Thus, the African race possessed its
own individuality, which its own members should develop for the ultimate good
of humanity. Blyden believed that it was in the spiritual and cultural realms that
Africans would make their greatest contribution to humanity. The African personality, according to Blyden, revolved around a spirit of cooperation to serve, a
love of nature, and simple and cordial manliness, among other things.41
Though these points of convergence may suggest the compatibility of Du Bois
and Garvey, the two leaders manifested fundamental differences in their approach
to achieving their Pan-African goals. Among other things, Garvey did not share
Du Boiss optimism that blacks could live harmoniously with whites in a whitedominated American society. Rather, Garvey believed, The white man of
America will not, to any organized extent, assimilate the [black man] because in
so doing, he feels he will be committing suicide.42 For Garvey, therefore, it was
necessary that blacks should live apart from whites and continue to work toward
political and economic emancipation. This conviction influenced him to strive for
the improvement of the socioeconomic conditions of black people in the United
39. See, for example, D. L. Lewis, When Harlem was in Vogue (New York, 1981); W. Cooper,
ed., The Passion of Claude McKay: Selected Prose and Poetry, 19121948 (New York,
1973).
40. J. L. Hymans, Leopold Sedar Senghor: An Intellectual Biography (Edinburgh, 1971); Aim
Csaire, Return to My Native Land (Paris, 1971).
41. Hollis R. Lynch, Edward Wilmot Blyden: Pan-Negro Patriot, 18321912 (London, 1967);
Kwame Nkrumah, Revolutionary Path (London, 1973).
42. Amy Jacques Garvey, ed., Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey (New Jersey,
1967), 21.

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THE HISTORIAN

States and, to a lesser degree, the Caribbean. Garveys concern over the plight of
poor blacks in the New World had a profound impact on his brand of PanAfricanism.43 His movement generated a lot of interest among the mass of impoverished working class African Americans and Afro-Carribeans living in urban
ghettoes in American cities, with very little hope of breaking free from the vicious
circle of poverty that surrounded them. Garveys appeal to race pride and his
vision for the liberation and development of Africa, which he believed would
transform the continent into a great nation or empire, resonated among blacks
in the United States, Caribbean, and parts of Africa.
To be sure, Garveys idea of black commercial links with and emigration to
Africa was part of a diasporan tradition with a long history. Advocates of black
political and economic emancipation like Paul Cuffe, Martin Delaney, and Bishop
Henry McNeal Turner, all at different periods during the nineteenth century,
had urged their black compatriots to return to Africa, where it was believed they
stood a better chance of improving their lot.44 The flamboyant Garvey, however,
launched his scheme with much more aplomb and fanfare, hoping to use Liberia
as a bridgehead for the eventual liberation of the rest of Africa from European
colonialism.45
In addition to seeking African liberation as an end in itself, Garvey also firmly
believed that the struggle for racial equality in the United States would succeed
only if it were recognized as part of a larger struggle of all black peoples, including those in the colonized world. His rejection of Du Boiss gradualist approach
to African self-determination translated into a more radical alternative, which
posited an independent Africa as an instrument of liberation for blacks in North
America and the Caribbean. Garvey articulated his objective quite bluntly: And
why do I say Africa when you are living in the West Indies and America? Because
in those areas you will never be safe until you launch your protection internally
and externally.46

43. Marcus Garvey started the Black Star Line Steamship Company not only to establish commercial links between Africa and the New World, but also to help blacks eventually emigrate to Africa when circumstances warranted it. He also formed the Universal Negro
Improvement Association (UNIA) to coordinate and promote the activities of his movement.
44. For more on this theme, see W. J. Moses, The Golden Age of Black Nationalism (London,
1988).
45. Amy Garvey, Philosophy and Opinions.
46. The Negro World, 5 April 1919, cited in The Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro
Improvement Association Papers, ed. Robert Hill, vol. 1 (Berkeley, Cal., 1984), 397.

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In contrast to Garvey, Du Bois objected to the return of African Americans

to Africa, believing that blacks had a stake in American society, having made
remarkable contributions to its development, however much the dominant white
population downplayed their efforts. Not only was Du Bois skeptical about the
feasibility of Garveys flamboyant schemes, he also believed that African Americans were better off in the United States, where they had to learn to deal with
the color line. The only way blacks could compete with whites on a level
playing field, Du Bois argued, was for the black community to prepare itself adequately with the right kind of education under the leadership of the Talented
Tenth.47 With this elite vanguard at the helm, blacks would achieve their goals
and eventually gain the kind of recognition they deserved from their white
compatriots.
Reflecting on Du Boiss elitist disposition, Cedric Robinson argues that he not
only represented black middle-class values, but that he also portrayed the arrogance of the intellectuals of his class.48 This black middle class, comprised of
ambitious bureaucrats, educators, and professionally- and technically-trained
men, was, according to Robinson, striving to carve a niche for itself at the same
time as the United States was beginning to flex its muscle as an imperial power.
Under these circumstances this group would fall prey to American imperialism
because its existence and status hinged on its performance in the apparatus of
domination.49 This perspective perhaps explains why Du Boisunlike Garvey
refrained from pushing the call for self-government for Africans too far during
the Pan-African Congresses he organized between 1919 and 1927. Instead, he
advocated reforms within the colonial establishment, believing that until Africans
were fully modernized Europeans should govern them.50 Pushing this argument
further, Du Bois also insisted that the principle of self-determination did not apply
to uncivilized people who needed Euro-American tutelage at some point in
their history to map out their destiny. Mimicking his calls for the Talented

47. W. E. B. Du Bois, The Talented Tenth and The Talented Tenth Memorial Address,
reproduced in Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Cornel West, The Future of the Race (New York,
1996), 13377; Herbert Aptheker, ed., The Education of Black People (Amherst, Mass.,
1973).
48. Cedric Robinson, Du Bois and Black Sovereignty: The Case of Liberia, Race and Class 2
(1990): 3950.
49. Ibid., 3940.
50. Quoted in Alexandre Mboutou, The Pan-African Movement, 19001945: A Study of
Leadership Conflicts among the Disciples of Pan-Africanism, Journal of Black Studies 13
(March 1983): 277.

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THE HISTORIAN

Tenth to lead in the United States, Du Bois suggested that a group of talented
African Americans should act as an enlightened vanguard for Africans.51 Little
wonder therefore that Du Bois was quick to dissociate himself from any movement considered radical or that appeared poised to threaten or destabilize the
status quo. Affirming his position, Du Bois unequivocally declared: The PanAfrican Congress is for congress, acquaintanceship, and general organization. It
has nothing to do with the so-called Garvey movement and contemplates neither
force nor revolution in its program.52
As firmly as Du Bois believed that Africans were incapable of self-government,
so did he reject the notion that blacks in the United States should opt for an existence completely divorced from white America. Despite articulating the conservation of races in the 1890s and his vision of Pan-Negroism, which insinuated
some form of black separatism, Du Bois believed that the future of African
Americans would largely depend on their ability to integrate into mainstream
American society. In this connection, George Fredrickson succinctly sums up Du
Boiss dilemma: Du Bois was in fact walking a tightrope between the view that
blacks were a permanently distinct people with a destiny apart from white Americans and the seemingly contrary notion that white and black should work
together to create a more inclusive American nationality.53 In effect, Du Boiss
double consciousness in a way encapsulated his belief that rather than face the
choice of being either an American or black, he should have the right to be both
at the same time without any inherent contradictions.
Against this backdrop, Du Boiss 1915 publication The Negro,54 a history of
the black race, provides some insights into his conception of Pan-Africanism.
Du Bois envisaged a new unity of man that would evolve out of a unity of
the colored races and a unity of working classes everywhere.55 According to
historian William Toll, Du Bois attempted to fuse race consciousness with class
analysis, and by so doing, to put the struggle for racial equality among blacks
in the United States within a wider framework of universal struggle against

51. Langley, Pan Africanism and Nationalism, 60.

52. Herbert Aptheker, The Correspondences of W. E. B Du Bois, Volume 1: Selections,
18771934 (Boston, 1973), 251.
53. George M. Fredrickson, Black Liberation: A Comparative History of Black Ideologies in
the United States and South Africa (New York, 1995), 107.
54. Du Bois, The Negro (Millwoood, N.Y., 1915), 24142.
55. Cited in William Toll, The Resurgence of Race: Black Social Theory from Reconstruction
to the Pan-African Conferences (Philadelphia, Pa., 1979), 14853.

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white racial oppression sanctioned by capitalist imperialism.56 Du Bois, however,

never accepted radical change vis--vis Africans, as evidenced by his conviction
that Africans should have the right to participate in . . . government as fast
as their development permits in conformity with the principle that the government exists for the natives, and not the natives for the government.57 Du Boiss
view about the inability of Africans to govern themselves resonated with those
European colonizers who believed that Africans needed European tutelage to
learn the rudiments of proper governance. These differences in socio-cultural
background and philosophical outlook between Du Bois and Garvey provide a
window through which we could see the drama of their separate encounters with
Liberia unfold. As we shall see, there is a consistency and logic of thought,
however flawed, in the mental makeup of both Du Bois and Garvey, a logic that
had a significant bearing on how each black leader related to the situation in
Liberia.
Du Boiss link with Liberia was given formal recognition in December 1923,
when he was appointed envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary by the
U.S. State Department to represent the American government at the January 1924
inauguration of Charles D. B. King to a second term in office as president of
Liberia. Du Bois at the time was editor of the Crisis, a widely read NAACP publication within the African American community. While the State Department
hoped Du Boiss appointment would increase the chances that the Republican
Party would attract black votes in the forthcoming American presidential election, Du Bois saw his new role in Liberia as an opportunity to promote his
Pan-African cause. Indeed as historian David Kilroy suggests his Pan-African aspirations might have been the motive for his lobbying for the appointment from
the onset.58
While it is difficult to reconstruct the extent to which Du Boiss position as
emissary of the American government affected his plans, it is clear that despite
his support for Liberia, Du Bois demonstrated an obvious apathy toward local
politics, which were historically characterized by acrimonious relations between
Americo-Liberians and their indigenous counterparts. One may infer that either
Du Bois took the unequal relations of power between the governing Americo56. Ibid.
57. Herbert Aptheker, ed., A Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States,
19101932, vol. 2 (Secaucus, N.J., 1963), 251.
58. David Kilroy, Extending the American Sphere to West Africa: Dollar Diplomacy in Liberia,
19081926, (Ph.D. diss., University of Iowa, 1995), 248.

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THE HISTORIAN

Liberians and indigenous Liberians for granted, or he did not think there was
much he could do to effect changes in the situation.
During the 1920s, indigenous Liberians were a largely disenfranchised majority, and only a minute fraction of their entire population had access to political
privileges that were easily available to almost all Americo-Liberians. Indeed, only
a handful of prominent indigenous Liberians served in the higher echelons of government at the time: Henry Too Wesley, a Vai, was vice president under President King; Dr. B. W. Payne, a Bassa, educated in the United States, was secretary
of public instruction in the King Administration; and Momolu Massaquoi,
another Vai, was acting secretary of the interior, and later became Liberian consul
in Germany.59 The vast majority of indigenous Liberians, however, continued to
wallow in political oblivion. To be sure, extending the vote to the disenfranchised
indigenous majority would have swept away Americo-Liberian political dominance. The Liberian ruling elite therefore restricted voting rights to a relatively
small Americo-Liberian community. Meanwhile, the Government extorted
various taxes from the indigenous population and forced them to work on government projects, such as road building, and as farm hands on farms owned by
rich Americo-Liberian government officials. This harsh regime was enforced by
the Liberian Frontier Force, a veritable symbol of the oppressiveness of the ruling
elite that indicated its willingness to employ extreme measures in order to maintain its control over indigenous Liberians.60
Notwithstanding the Liberian elites exploitation of their compatriots, Du Bois
was apparently impressed by what he saw among the Americo-Liberian ruling
class in Monrovia. Thus, he described an Americo-Liberian senator who entertained him as a curious blend of feudal lord and modern farmer, and was
impressed by the senators trappings of aristocratic life.61 Similarly, Du Bois found
much to admire about a mansion of five generations with a compound of endless
native servants.62 These social exchanges were not extended to indigenous
Liberians, with whom Du Bois had little direct contact. In any case, upon his
return from Liberia in 1924, Du Bois adamantly defended the Americo-Liberian
59. Monday B. Akpan, Black Imperialism: Americo-Liberian Rule over the African Peoples of
Liberia, 18411964, Canadian Journal of African Studies 7 (1973): 21736; Liberia and
the Universal Negro Improvement Association: The Background to the Abortion of Garveys
Scheme for African Colonization, Journal of African History 14 (1973): 10527.
60. Akpan, Black Imperialism.
61. The Crisis 27 (6 April 1924): 24751.
62. Cited in Frank Chalk, Du Bois and Garvey confront Liberia: Two Incidents in the Coolidge
Years, Canadian Journal of African Studies 12 (1967): 137.

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government against the charge that it was unduly exploiting indigenous

Liberians through unequal taxation and forced labor.63 According to Du Bois it
was absolutely necessary for the Government to take a high hand with them
[indigenous peoples] in order to assure them that it really was a government; otherwise the tribal chiefs would take matters into their own hands.64 Remarkably,
Du Boiss insinuation that brute force should be used to coerce indigenous
Liberians into conforming to the demands of the Americo-Liberian leadership
was cast in a language typical of European colonial officials responding to what
they perceived as threats from so-called warlike natives. In all probability Du
Boiss insistence that the tribal chiefs would take matters into their own hands
derived from preconceived notions, derived from Western discourse, about
natives in Africa.
Perhaps even more revealing about Du Boiss thinking about Liberia, and the
conditions in place there, was the report on his visit to Liberia that he submitted
to President Coolidge and Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes. Du Bois
wrote that the Americo-Liberian elite extended her democracy to include natives
on the same terms as Liberians.65 He further claimed that Liberia had never
had a revolution or internal disturbance save a comparatively few cases, with
war-like native tribes.66 In this assessment Du Bois clearly downplayed the longstanding hostility between the two groups that had led to antigovernment revolts
in 1915 and 1919, led by the Kru and Grebo ethnic groups, respectively.67 In
Liberia, where the situation was not simply a matter of black against white,
the shortcomings of Du Boisian Pan-Africanism are clearly revealed.
The exchanges Du Bois had with the Firestone Company following the signing
of the 1926 loan agreements reveal yet more about the problematic nature of his
conflicting perspectives toward all people of African descent. After learning, while
in Monrovia, that Harvey Firestone had expressed interest in establishing rubber

63. Arnold H. Taylor, The Involvement of Black Americans in the Liberian Forced Labor Controversy, 19291935, in Afro-Americans and Africans: Historical and Political Linkages,
ed. Lorraine A. Williams (Washington, D.C., 1974), 62. For more discussion of AmericoLiberian taxation and administration of the Liberian interior in the early twentieth century,
see Yekutial Gershoni, Black Colonialism: The Americo-Liberian Scramble for the Hinterland (Boulder, Co., 1985).
64. Memorandum by W. R. Castle of conversation with W. E. B. Du Bois, 26 March 1924,
quoted in Taylor, The Involvement of Black Americans, 62.
65. Quoted in Chalk, Du Bois and Garvey Confront Liberia, 137.
66. Ibid., 138.
67. Sullivan, The Kru Coast Revolt of 19151916, 5171.

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THE HISTORIAN

plantations in Liberia, Du Bois contacted him to find out more about his investment plans. Du Bois, as indicated above, had supported the Americo-Liberian
government in his report to the United States government. Still, this did not
prevent him from forewarning Firestone that he must avoid . . . taking capital
into a small country and putting it under the control of officials who despised
the natives and organized ruthless exploitation.68 The conflict between this statement and the positive image of the Americo-Liberian leaders that Du Bois had
presented to President Coolidge has been explained away by historian Ibrahim
Sundiata as a result of Du Boiss intention to use Firestone in the interest of
African Americans, by lobbying for their employment in the companys holdings
in Liberia.69 To the extent that he saw the companys venture in Liberia as an
opportunity for his black compatriots to better themselves, Du Bois supported
the Firestone agreements with the Liberian government. At other times, however,
he shared the sentiments expressed by contemporary historian Raymond Buell,
who vehemently criticized the Firestone Company as an embodiment of white
American colonial exploitation of Africans.70 In other words, Du Bois shifted
between support and condemnation of Firestone, thereby demonstrating how
easily Pan-Africanism could be sidestepped when national interests were at stake.
In effect, and in spite of his Pan-African convictions, Du Bois was primarily an
African American promoting American interests abroad.
Despite this potential for conflict, however, Du Bois in many instances continued to offer moral support to the West African republic, even when it appeared
to be of no avail. This was most evident during the labor crisis of 1929, when
charges of slavery were brought against the Americo-Liberian government. On
the one hand, Du Bois and other Pan-Africanists, notably George Padmore and
Nnamdi Azikiwe, are perhaps to be praised for their criticism of the American
and European governments for treating Liberia differently from countries such
as the Belgian Congo, where worse atrocities were known to have been committed against Africans by European colonizers.71 On the other hand, however,
the act of defending Liberia despite evidence that Vice President Allen Yancy and
his associates were involved in the exportation of indigenous Liberian laborers
68. Quoted in Chalk, Du Bois and Garvey confront Liberia, 138.
69. Sundiata, Black Scandal.
70. See Buell, The Native Problem, vol. 2.
71. A fascinating narrative about the Congo under King Leopold is presented in Adam
Hochschild, King Leopolds Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa
(Boston, Mass., 1998).

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to work on the Spanish-controlled island of Fernando Po, off the Nigerian coast,
did not augur well for the credibility of Du Boisian Pan-Africanism.72
In retrospect, Du Boiss Liberian encounter underscored an essential difficulty
inherent in Pan-Africanism. As Imanuel Geiss wrote: Although it [PanAfricanism] is itself a product of the modern age, it has never been able to master
the tensions between modern and traditional society in a fruitful way, or even to
counter their dichotomous effect.73 Thus while Du Bois portrayed Liberia in a
favorable light in order to attract American capital investment to assist that
countrys development, at the same time, his self-contradictions and equivocation
did very little to promote the spirit of Pan-Africanism in the West African republic. Furthermore, Du Boiss words and actions make clear that culturally Du Bois
felt closer to the Americo-Liberian community than the indigenous Liberians. As
a result, while he was eager to solicit American economic and diplomatic support
to help modernize Liberia, which he hoped would help the country stave off
any attempts by Britain and France to colonize it, he was also hopeful that such
an economic boost would put the Liberian leadership in a better position to continue its political dominance in the country. Given Du Boiss gradualist approach
toward effecting political change in Africa, it seems unlikely that he would have
supported any political reforms in Liberia aimed at giving indigenous Liberians
a stronger voice in that countrys affairs.
While Garveys experiences in Liberia differed in practical terms from those
of Du Bois, they too revealed the bankruptcy of early-twentieth-century PanAfricanism as a platform for cooperation between diasporan and continental
Africans. When Garvey dispatched Elie Garcia and a Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) delegation to Liberia in 1920, his intention was to
acquaint President C. D. B. King with the aims of his organization and the various
schemes he hoped to implement as soon as he got approval from the Liberian
government.74 Among Garveys numerous goals were: to transfer the headquarters of his organization to Liberia, with the ultimate aim of using West Africa as
a base for his crusade against European imperialism; to launch a $2 million campaign to help Liberia repay its debts; to help raise funds for the government of
Liberia to build schools and hospitals; and to resettle New World blacks in

72. The most comprehensive study of the Liberian labor scandal to date is Ibrahim K. Sundiata, Black Scandal: America and the Liberian Labor Scandal, 19291939 (Pennsylvania,
Pa., 1980).
73. Geiss, The Pan-African Movement, 426.
74. Elie Garcia was Garveys Haitian associate, who served as auditor-general of the UNIA.

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THE HISTORIAN

Liberia, who in turn would help the republic develop its agriculture and other
natural resources. In return, Garvey expected the Liberian government to grant
the Association enough land for its schemes, especially land for the resettlement
of blacks from the Americas.75
The Americo-Liberian leadership initially welcomed Garveys ideas and
promised to work closely with the UNIA to fulfill its ambitions, while hoping
that Garveys promise of financial support would sustain its strapped government.
In December 1923, another delegation led by UNIA secretary general Robert
Poston was sent to Liberia to finalize arrangements for the resettlement of about
twenty thousand black families from the United States and the Caribbean who,
as part of the resettlement program, were expected to emigrate during the next
two years.76 In May 1924, after receiving approval from the Liberian government, Garvey decided to send a team of engineers to assess the situation in
Liberia, especially the site earmarked by the Liberian government for the UNIA
resettlement project. However, in an unexpected turn of events, the engineers were
detained upon arrival in Monrovia and summarily deported by the Liberian
authorities on 31 July 1924. The Liberian News, a progovernment newspaper,
quoted President King as saying that his decision to proscribe Garveys movement
in Liberia showed his administrations reluctance to tolerate any movement
which tends to intensify racial feelings of hatred and ill-will.77 Assessing
President Kings rationale for proscribing UNIA, historian Monday Akpan perceptively remarks: Behind this policy, and behind the failure of Garveys colonization scheme, was the determination of the ruling oligarchy of earlier settlers
to defend their privileged position against any intruders. They were therefore
prepared to suppress ruthlessly any person or organization which threatened to
end this exploitation.78 As we have seen, relations between Americo-Liberians
and their indigenous compatriots were far from cordial, punctuated by recurring
hostilities and hinging on an unfair distribution of wealth and power that allowed
about five thousand Americo-Liberians to dominate nearly five hundred thousand
indigenous people. Adopting a similar line of reasoning, historian Frank Chalk

75. Amy J. Garvey, Philosophy and Opinions, vol. 2, 364.

76. Akpan, Liberia and the UNIA., 107. It is also possible that King proscribed UNIA in an
effort to prevent Britain and France from using Garveys presence, assumed to be revolutionary, as a pretext to encroach on Liberian territory.
77. Quoted in E. David Cronon, Black Moses: The Story of Marcus Garvey and the Universal
Negro Improvement Association (Madison, Wis., 1969), 12930.
78. Akpan, Liberia and the UNIA, 108.

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argues that the Americo-Liberian leaders believed that Garvey hoped to improve
the conditions of indigenous Liberians and therefore saw the UNIA as a potential threat to their political dominance. According to Chalk, Once the Liberian
elite understood Garveys aims [vis--vis indigenous Liberians], even if there had
been no threat from Britain and France, it was inevitable that Garveys
movement would be banned in Liberia.79 It seems likely that the AmericoLiberian leadership was enthusiastic about the Garvey project only because it
promised financial support. In the end, however, even the prospect of monetary
aid was outweighed by the suspicion that Garveys presence in Liberia might not
only inflame indigenous Liberians, but also give Britain or France an excuse to
interfere in Liberian affairs.
Was there any obvious indication that Garvey intended to improve the conditions of indigenous Liberians? Was the Liberian government so desperate for
financial aid that it did not initially think of the consequences of encouraging the
Garvey Movement? It is unclear how, as part of his plan to liberate Africa, Garvey
planned to implement his multifaceted project in Liberia without simultaneously
undermining the Americo-Liberian government. Since its inception, the Garvey
Movement had attracted a lot of attention from both admirers and detractors
because of Garveys radicalism and inflammatory rhetoric. Even before launching his Liberian project, Garvey, in his keynote address at the first UNIA Convention held in New York in August 1920, told his audience: We shall organize
the 400,000,000 [blacks] of the world into a vast organization to plant the banner
of freedom on the great continent of Africa. . . . If Europe is for the Europeans,
then Africa shall be for the black people of the world. We say it, we mean it.80
The convention then went on to elect Garvey unanimously as the Provisional
President of Africa and an eighteen-member executive council, which together
constituted the Provisional Government of a united Africa. Thus, by the time
Garvey began negotiations with the Liberian government, he had not only
aroused the suspicions of the U.S. government, but news about his movement as
a source of revolution was spreading in European colonial circles and many parts
of Africa. The ruling elite in Liberia indeed was perturbed by UNIA claims to
represent blacks worldwide. The last thing the leadership wanted from a movement like Garveys was the chance that its actions might undermine the status
quo in Liberia. Although the government may have realized that Liberia would
be relieved of aggressive colonial neighbors should Garveys anticolonialism
79. Chalk, Du Bois and Garvey Confront Liberia, 141.
80. Amy Garvey, Philosophy and Opinions, xviii.

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succeed, the governments priority was to preserve its hegemonic relations with
the indigenous people. Garveys ambition of liberating blacks from racism and
colonialism could have had a boomerang effect, causing a disturbance in these
relations that the Americo-Liberian elite might have been unable to contain.
In all probability, Garvey never gave the peculiar circumstances of Americoand indigenous Liberian relations any serious consideration. As a result, his
use of race as an umbrella to garner support for his Pan-African goals failed
to strike the right chord in Liberia. Although the modalities of Garveys supragovernmental apparatus had yet to be worked out, one may speculate that
they would have reduced the Americo-Liberian elite to a minor factor in Garveys
grandiose scheme of things. To be sure, Garvey couched his vision in a language
echoing Euro-American Christian traditions that earlier black diasporan
leaders such as Alexander Crummell had also employed in the late nineteenth
century. Thus, Garvey firmly believed his mission was one sanctioned by God
and destined to occur at an opportune moment: Surely the time has come for
the black[man] to look homeward. He has won civilization and Christianity
at the price of slavery. The blackman [in diaspora] who is thoughtful and serviceable, feels that God intended him to give his brothers still in darkness, the
light of civilization.81 Garvey believed that he was engaged in a double-edged
crusade aimed at not only dethroning European colonialism, but also at spreading Christianity in Africa. Africa, as he understood it, was in dire need of
Euro-American redemption from backwardness and an unchristian way of life.
Despite these ambitions, however, Liberia, which he had hoped to use as a launching pad for his plans, proved to be unsuitable for the vociferous Pan-Africanist,
and, as a result, Garvey was forced to focus his efforts elsewhere. Indeed Garveys
enthusiasm for Liberia lasted only so long as that country seemed willing
to promote his plans.82 Consequently, he would accuse Du Bois of complicity
with the Liberian government to thwart his schemean accusation Du Bois
repeatedly denied.83
Certainly, blacks in diaspora were genuinely concerned about Liberia in particular and Africa in general. On one level, Liberia represented for most African
Americans and Afro-Caribbeans a symbolic expression of their desire to be
liberated from an Anglo-Saxon racism that denied blacks certain rights they
81. Ibid., vol. 2, 42.
82. Geiss, The Pan-African Movement, 127.
83. Robinson, Du Bois and Black Sovereignty, 45.

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considered inalienable, especially in a society built on the principles of freedom

and democracy. Pan-Africanism therefore emerged out of the dire need to vent
their frustrations within a society that continued not only to denigrate blacks,
but to stifle every effort to reclaim their lost dignity. At another level, blacks in
diaspora were products of Western acculturation that bequeathed to them the
same set of assumptions about Africa and Africans employed to legitimate slavery,
racism, and colonialism. Naturally, Du Bois and Garvey, like other New World
black leaders before them, were caught up in a situation where their national
interests and cultural values conflicted with, and often undermined, their PanAfricanist aspirations. Thus, as Kobina Sekyi, the Ghanaian lawyer and nationalist, pointed out early in the twentieth century, What Marcus Garvey and any
other leader of Afro-American thought has first to appreciate before he can
present a case sufficiently sound for Africa to support in the matter of combination or co-operation among all Africans at home and abroad, is the peculiar
nature of the African standpoint in social and political institutions.84
What the Liberian case reveals about Pan-Africanism in the early 1920s is that
the problems of race, nationality, and colonialism were too complex to deal with
by merely professing ideals, which faltered on a practical level. The visions of Du
Bois and Garvey were to a certain degree clouded by their desire to promote the
collective interests of blacks in a world that had been polarized by over three centuries of negative Western perceptions of Africa and Africans, perceptions that
had been internalized by most blacks in diaspora. Thus, although New World
Pan-Africanisists tended to downplay this aspect of their Euro-American heritage,
it poses a dilemma for Pan-Africanism that calls for serious rethinking. This
article has endeavored to illustrate that Pan-Africanism, at different times and
sites, has been used to serve the needs of specific groups of blacks while overlooking the peculiar circumstances of others. This dilemma in the black experience is perhaps best expressed by Cornel West, who writes: The tragic plight
and absurd predicament of Africans here and abroad requires a more profound
interpretation of the human conditionone that goes far beyond the false
dichotomy of expert knowledge versus mass ignorance, individual autonomy
versus dogmatic authority, and self-mastery versus intolerant tradition.85 Thus,
early twentieth-century Pan-Africanism was largely influenced by contemporary
racial experience, which, though pervasive, was far from monolithic. As a result,
84. Quoted in Langley, Pan-Africanism and Nationalism, 99.
85. West, W. E. B. Du Bois: An Interpretation, 1969.

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blacks in Jamaica, African Americans, Americo-Liberians, indigenous Liberians,

African-English, and African Canadians all understood race, racism, and
indeed the concept of blackness quite differently. By glossing over these differences, and by assuming an essentialist element to race, Pan-Africanism,
though perhaps a noble vision, was condemned to be a flawed project.