Wednesday, February 14, 2018
12:30 PM - 2:00 PM (ET)
Old Main Room 0220 - Colloquium
Event Type
Sandwich Seminar
Department
President's Office
Link
http://calendar.cortland.edu/MasterCalendar/EventDetails.aspx?EventDetailId=1278639
Black History Month Sandwich Seminar: The
New Negro
Movement and Decolonization
in Africa, by Bekeh Ukelina,
Africana Studies and History departments, Brockway Hall Jacobus Lounge, 12:30
to 1:30 p.m.
The period
after the Great
Depression was a significant moment in Africa's
decolonization
movement. The
myths and
lies that
colonialism
is a
benevolent mission crumbled beneath the heavy
weight of the economic crisis. Many
colonial governments were
unable
to provide
essential social services even as
they continued
to expand and
intensify taxation.
African nationalists
were
no longer content
with accepting the status quo, and
they worked to
expose the illegitimacy
of colonialism and
to
demand full
rights,
including the
right to self-government. Two notable leaders in this
movement were
Nnamdi Azikiwe
of Nigeria and
Kwame
Nkrumah
of Ghana. Both nationalists had studied in
historically black
colleges and
universities in
the United
States and had embraced
the
New Negro protest movement and culture which emerged
in
the 1890s. The
ideas
of activists such as Marcus Garvey, Alaine
Locke,
W.E.B.
Dubois and Ida Wells Barnett were influential in shaping
their
activities.
Azikiwe
and Nkrumah
embraced the rhetorical
strategies of
the New Negro Movement
in
their decolonization mission.
They founded newspapers in
Africa and
adopted the style of African
American yellow journalism as a means
to mobilize the people
against British
colonial rule. This paper is a transnational intellectual history
and argues that
the Harlem
Renaissance
had far-reaching impact
beyond
the United
States and the Caribbean. It also
demonstrates that the
struggle of black
people to cross the color
line is a
nexus of ideas, dreams, and aspirations flowing between people of color in Africa and
the diaspora.