The power of Pan Africanism: Tanzanian/African American linkages, 1947-1997

Reconstruction of the fifty-year Tanzanian/African American relationship from the engagements of Pan-Africanism enhanced through black internationalism exposes the cross-cultural fertilization of Tanzanian nationalism with the US black community’s self identity in the 1960s. By examining the interactions of black networks and the extension of hospitality between Tanzanians and African Americans in the black hubs of the late 1940s and 1950s, the formation of linkages from diasporic African anti-colonial and antiracist solidarity comes forth. Archival records of Pan-African, human rights, labor, and civil rights organizations, as well as interviews with those who participated in the Tanzanian/African American linkages, illuminate the function, growth, and challenges of black networks that collaborated in the international quest for total black liberation from the 1950s through the 1970s. Language serves as the marker that identifies this African/African diaspora linkage as more than a casual relationship, but one that enters into nation building in Tanzania in the 1960s. Tracing the introduction of Kiswahili into the US black community to its symbolic adoption by African Americans in their black cultural nationalism through black print exposes the transfer of influence of Tanzanian nationalism in the United States from the black elite to the masses. Expanding the parameter of African history to include the continent’s Atlantic diaspora illustrates the results of Tanzania’s multifaceted practice of Pan-Africanism that included African descendants from America into its extended family through the implementation of Ujamaa.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

History

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2015

Author dc:creator

• Tate, Lessie Burnita

Contributors dc:contributor

• Allman, Jean M.
• Todorova, Maria
• Monson, Jamie
• Roediger, David
• Brennan, James
• Maddox, Gregory
• Barnes, Teresa A.

• Black Internationalism
• Black hubs
• Pan Africanism
• hospitality

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2015 Lessie Burnita Tate

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/78446

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/78446