First Pan-African Conference

The First Pan-African Conference was held in London, England, from 23 to 25 July 1900 (just prior to the Paris Exhibition of 1900 "in order to allow tourists of African descent to attend both events"). Organized primarily by the Trinidadian barrister Henry Sylvester Williams, the conference took place in Westminster Town Hall (now Caxton Hall) and was attended by 37 delegates and about 10 other participants and observers from Africa, the West Indies, the US and the UK, including Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (the youngest delegate), John Alcindor, Benito Sylvain, Dadabhai Naoroji, John Archer, Henry Francis Downing, Anna H. Jones, Anna Julia Cooper, and W. E. B. Du Bois, with Bishop Alexander Walters of the AME Zion Church taking the chair.

Du Bois played a leading role, drafting a letter ("Address to the Nations of the World") to European leaders appealing to them to struggle against racism, to grant colonies in Africa and the West Indies the right to self-government and demanding political and other rights for African Americans.

On 24 September 1897, Henry Sylvester Williams had been instrumental in founding in London the African Association (not to be confused with the Association for Promoting the Discovery of the Interior Parts of Africa), in response to the European partition of Africa that followed the 1884-85 Congress of Berlin. The formation of the association marked an early stage in the development of the anti-colonial movement, and was established to encourage the unity of Africans and people of African descent, particularly in territories of the British Empire, concerning itself with injustices in Britain's African and Caribbean colonies. In March 1898, the association issued a circular calling for a pan-African conference. Booker T. Washington, who had been travelling in the UK in the summer of 1899, wrote in a letter to African-American newspapers:

When the First Pan-African Conference opened on Monday, 23 July 1900, in London's Westminster Town Hall, Bishop Alexander Walters in his opening address, "The Trials and Tribulations of the Coloured Race in America", noted that "for the first time in history black people had gathered from all parts of the globe to discuss and improve the condition of their race, to assert their rights and organize so that they might take an equal place among nations." The Bishop of London, Mandell Creighton, gave a speech of welcome "referring to 'the benefits of self-government' which Britain must confer on 'other races ... as soon as possible'."

Speakers over the three days addressed a variety of aspects of racial discrimination. Among the papers delivered were: "Conditions Favouring a High Standard of African Humanity" (C. W. French of St. Kitts), "The Preservation of Racial Equality" (Anna H. Jones, from Kansas City, Missouri), "The Necessary Concord to be Established between Native Races and European Colonists" (Benito Sylvain, Haitian aide-de-camp to the Ethiopian emperor), "The Negro Problem in America" (Anna J. Cooper, from Washington), "The Progress of our People" (John E. Quinlan of St. Lucia) and "Africa, the Sphinx of History, in the Light of Unsolved Problems" (D. E. Tobias from the USA). Other topics included Richard Phipps' complaint of discrimination against black people in the Trinidadian civil service and an attack by William Meyer, a medical student at Edinburgh University, on pseudo-scientific racism. Discussions followed the presentation of the papers, and on the last day George James Christian, a law student from Dominica, led a discussion on the subject "Organized Plunder and Human Progress Have Made Our Race Their Battlefield", saying that in the past "Africans had been kidnapped from their land, and in South Africa and Rhodesia slavery was being revived in the form of forced labour."

The conference culminated in the conversion of the African Association (formed by Sylvester Williams in 1897) into the Pan-African Association, and the implementation of a unanimously adopted "Address to the Nations of the World", sent to various heads of state where people of African descent were living and suffering oppression. The address implored the United States and the imperial European nations to "acknowledge and protect the rights of people of African descent" and to respect the integrity and independence of "the free Negro States of Abyssinia, Liberia, Haiti, etc." Signed by Walters (President of the Pan-African Association), the Canadian Rev. Henry B. Brown (Vice-President), Williams (General Secretary) and Du Bois (Chairman of the Committee on the Address), the document contained the phrase "The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the colour-line", which Du Bois would use three years later in the "Forethought" of his book The Souls of Black Folk (1903).

In September, the delegates petitioned Queen Victoria through the British government to look into the treatment of Africans in South Africa and Rhodesia, including specified acts of injustice perpetrated by whites there, namely:

The response eventually received by Sylvester Williams on 17 January 1901 stated:

Days later, Victoria responded more personally, instructing her private secretary, Arthur Bigge, to write, which he did on 21 January — the day before the Queen died. Although the specific injustices in South Africa continued for some time, the conference brought them to the attention of the world.

The conference was reported in major British newspapers, including The Times and the Westminster Gazette, which commented that it "marks the initiation of a remarkable movement in history: the negro is at last awake to the potentialities of his future" and quoted Williams as saying: "Our object now is to secure throughout the world the same facilities and privileges for the black as the white man enjoys."

Du Bois recorded in his report,

After the conference ended, Williams set up branches of the Pan-African Association in Jamaica, Trinidad and the USA. He also launched a short-lived journal, The Pan-African, in October 1901. Although plans for the association to meet every two years failed, the 1900 conference encouraged the development of the Pan-African Congress.

As Professor Tony Martin noted, "At least three of the Caribbean delegates later emigrated to Africa. George Christian of Dominica became a successful lawyer and legislator in the Gold Coast (Ghana) where he was a member of the Legislative Council from 1920 to 1940. Richard E. Phipps, the Trinidad barrister, returned home after the conference and emigrated to the Gold Coast in 1911. He remained there until his death around 1926. Williams himself lived in South Africa from 1903 to 1905, and died in Trinidad in 1911."

Under the Pan-African Congress banner, a series of gatherings subsequently took place — in 1919 in Paris, 1921 in London, 1923 in London, 1927 in New York City, 1945 in Manchester, 1974 in Dar es Salaam and 1994 in Kampala — to address the issues facing Africa as a result of European colonization.

A centenary commemorative event was held in London on 25 July 2000, attended by descendants of some of the delegates at the original conference (including Margaret Busby, granddaughter of George Christian, and his great-granddaughter Moira Stuart), as well as descendants of those at the 1945 5th Pan-African Congress in Manchester (such as George Padmore's daughter Blyden Cowart, and Samia Nkrumah, daughter of Kwame Nkrumah).

• The Exhibit of American Negroes at the Exposition Universelle (1900) in Paris
• Pan-African Congress
• Pan-Africanism
• First Universal Races Congress

• Peter Fryer, Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain, London: Pluto Press, 1984, pp. 284–86.
• Imanuel Geiss, The Pan-African Movement: A History of Pan-Africanism in America, Europe and Africa, Africana Publishing Company, 1974.
• Tony Martin, Pan-African Connection: From Slavery to Garvey and Beyond, Dover, MD: The Majority Press, 1985.
• Marika Sherwood, Origins of Pan-Africanism: Henry Sylvester Williams, Africa, and the African Diaspora, Routledge, 2011.

• The Pan-African Congresses, 1900-1945, BlackPast.org
• Dr. Mark Ledwidge, "Du Bois and Garvey: Foreign Affairs and Two Roads to Pan-Africanism"^{[permanent dead link]}, Politics, University of Manchester, Centre for International Politics Working Paper Series No. 39, February 2008.
• "Pages From History: DuBois Submission to the 1900 Pan-African Conference in London". Pan-African News Wire, 17 October 2009.
• Colin Legum, Pan-Africanism: A Short Political Guide, revised edition, New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1965.