Rayford W. Logan: the evolution of a Pan-African protege, 1921-1927.
Reed, David L.
The African diaspora is a triadic relationship linking a dispersed
group of people to the homeland, Africa, and to their host or adopted
countries. Diasporas develop and reinforce images and ideas about
themselves and their original homelands, as well as affect the
economies, politics, and social dynamics of both the homeland and the
host country. Diasporas are therefore significant factors in national
and international relations.
--Joseph Harris, The African Diaspora
This investigation covers Logan's involvement and development
as a Pan-Africanist during the formative years between 1921 and 1927
from his perspective, which he recorded in his personal diaries, an
un-published draft of an autobiography, public speeches, and his
analysis of the Treaty of Versailles. Other relevant secondary sources
are included for context.
Rayford Whittingham Logan's evolution into one of the most
formidable and yet lesser known of the 20th Century Pan-Africanist began
in earnest when he met W.E.B. Du Bois in Paris, France in 1921 at age
twenty-four. At the time Du Bois was for black America arguably the most
learned man of the era. Having graduated with a liberal arts education
from Fisk University in 1888, Du Bois went on to graduate with honors
from Harvard University in 1890 with a degree in philosophy. After
Harvard, Du Bois studied sociology and economics in the early 1890s at
the University of Heidelberg in Germany before returning to the U.S. to
finish his doctorate in history from Harvard in 1896. Du Bois already
showed interest in Africa with a doctoral dissertation on the
trans-Atlantic slave trade. (1) In addition to being well educated and
having traveled Europe it was Du Bois in 1903 who prophesized with
poetic clarity that "The problem of the 20th century is the problem
of the color line, the relation of the darker to the lighter races of
men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea." (2)
Rayford Logan was thirty years Du Bois' junior and he too was
well educated considering his liberal arts education from the renowned M
Street High School in Washington, D.C. and he finished valedictorian
from the prestigious William's College in 1917 giving the
commencement address. At twenty-four, Logan was also a war veteran that
had lived in Paris and traveled Europe for two years giving him valuable
experiences about European and world culture. (3) Although Logan was
budding into a cosmopolitan thinker himself he was not yet actively
engaged in any movement or struggle outside fighting military racism as
a second lieutenant in the U.S. army. As revealed later in his life he
did make observations about race and race culture, normally ending in a
negative assessment of the racist attitudes of white Americans traveling
abroad.
Logan's evolution as a Pan-Africanist involved his assessment
of world politics and movements from the end of the 19th century through
World War I. To be sure, both Du Bois and Logan were not only
professionally trained historians but serious students of current events
and modern world history. In fact, Du Bois had recognized as early as
1915 in a provocative essay entitled, "The African Roots of
War," that the entire conflict of World War I lay in which European
power would dominate and control African [and Asian] land and resources.
Logan believed that when Germany sought to expand its empire and sent
the battleship Panther to the coast of Morocco in 1911, this was a
precursor to Du Bois' thesis that the industrialized European
powers would fight over Africa. (4) Du Bois had also given his
valedictorian address on Otto Von Bismarch the German chancellor most
responsible for the unification of Germany in the late 19th century.
After the Berlin Conference of 1885 it seemed that Africa increasingly
received the attention of the major European powers for economic and
political reasons that were very clear by the end of the century. Du
Bois deplored European imperialism in Africa and wrote forcefully:
The methods by which this continent has been stolen have been
contemptible and dishonest beyond expression. Lying treaties,
rivers of rum, murder, assassination, rape, and torture have marked
the progress of Englishmen, German, Frenchmen, and Belgium on the
Dark Continent. The world has been able to endure the horrible tale
by deliberately stopping its ears while the deviltry went on. (5)
He continued by using modern historical events to strengthen his
argument,
consider a moment the desperate flames of war that have shot
up in Africa in the last quarter of a century: France and England
at Fashoda, Italy at Adua, Italy and Turkey at Tripoli, England and
Portugal at Delagoa Bay, England, Germany and the Dutch in South
Africa, France and Spain in Morocco, Germany and France at Agadir,
and the world at Algecirus. (6)
And although Britain and France controlled the lion's share of
colonial possessions in Africa, after the Berlin Conference of 1884-85,
they both took heed of the potential German threat along Africa's
north coast. According to one authority, "Many Germans demanded a
colonial empire simply because other great powers had colonial empires
reinforced by the simple dogma give Germany colonies and the Germans
will be as prosperous as the English." (7) In addition, Du Bois
argued that the economic aspects of the current world war could serve as
the basis for future conflicts between the European powers. Even the
United States was not exempt from this process as the U.S. marine corps
by the end of World War I sang, "From the halls of Montezuma to the
shores of Tripoli ..." encompassing Central America and North
Africa in their previous military record over the centuries.
Considering Germany's demand of its pre-World War I colonies
at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 and with Italy invading Ethiopia
in 1935, there was merit to Du Bois' thesis that Africa would be
the basis of future wars including possibly world war. This background
is significant. In 1921, Jesse Faucet, Logan's former French
teacher at M Street High School and then editor of Crisis Magazine,
wrote to Logan in Paris to meet Du Bois. This contact would forever
change Logan's evolving views of race and the possibilities for
Africa in the future world.
Logan's development as a Pan-African thinker, therefore, began
with the activism and scholarship of Du Bois within this broad
international context. As a disgruntled World War I veteran, one could
argue that Logan saw an opportunity to strike back at racism through an
organized and intellectual medium. After graduating from Williams
College, Logan enlisted in the 1st Separate Battalion, District of
Columbia National Guard in 1917. He served as a second Lieutenant and
the unit became part of the 93rd Infantry Division that saw combat.
Continuous racism from fellow white American soldiers embittered Logan
who remained in France for five years after being discharged in 1919.
A full twenty years before he became a journalist for the
Pittsburgh Courier in the 1940s, Logan already had firm views of the
European encroachment in Africa. His initial orientation began
officially with the Pan-African Congress of 1921. At the time, Paris was
the location for the Peace Conference between the Allied powers that won
the war and the Central powers that lost the war. The Treaty of
Versailles that officially ended World War I also began the terms of the
peace process, especially effecting Germany's African colonies and
the former territories of the Ottoman Empire which became the Middle
East. (8) Logan witnessed this process and as Du Bois'
protege' became a Pan-Africanist that used his talents to fight on
behalf of Africa.
The efforts by black intellectuals outside Africa to organize on
behalf of African peoples on the continent had a tragically recent
history. According to Clarence Contee,
The agitation had started as far back as 1897, when a group of
educated and prosperous concerned Africans living in England had
formed an organization called 'The African Association.' ... a
series of events had caused alarm about the rule of the British
over the Africans; these events included the number of Africans
killed in the Matabele and Bechuanaland Wars; the continued
existence of slaves and slave trading in Pemba and Zanzibar; the
compound system in use in the mining areas of South Africa; the
uprising of Africans in Sierra Leone; and the havoc wrought by a
hurricane and sugar crisis to inhabitants of the British West
Indies. Africans were rejecting the authority of their masters. (9)
At the same time, Marcus Garvey's United Negro Improvement
Association (UNIA) was well established in Harlem, New York City
attracting a large following, particularly from the working class
segments of black America. Garvey's UNIA, however, was markedly
different that Du Bois' Congresses. Garvey was asking a different
set of questions about the solution to the problems that Africans were
facing, perhaps more grandiose. Garvey queried,
Where is the black man's government? Where is his king and kingdom?
Where is his president, his country, and his ambassador, his army,
his navy, his men of big affairs? I could not find them, and then I
declared 'I will help make them. (10)
Though Marcus Garvey was a Pan-Africanist, Logan viewed him as a
demagogue and did not agree with his ideas, especially his glorification
of all things black, his well-known belief in black separatism nor his
plan for a mass exodus to build a so-called black empire in Africa. (11)
Logan's first important contact with organized Pan-Africanism
began with the Pan-African Congresses of 1919, 1921, 1923, and 1927.
This experience of Logan's participation as a translator, organizer
and lecturer at the latter three consecutive congresses began the
process of his orientation to the international plight of the black
struggle. Logan learned a great deal from the first hand experiences of
African and West Indian leaders who spoke about the political, economic
and social conditions in their respective locations. Though Logan had
read about Africa and the West Indies, it was the Pan-African Congress
movement at the behest of W.E.B. Du Bois that ultimately shaped his
career as a scholar, activist and journalist.
Pan-African Congresses, 1921-1927
Besides Logan's extensive research about the mandate system
and European colonialism, the major factor in his political development
was the Pan-African Congresses. The Pan-African Congresses (PAC) were an
organized intellectual response of black leaders from the United States,
Europe, the West Indies and Africa to influence the Allied Powers on
behalf of Africa and the diaspora at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919.
(12) With no invitation to black leaders to speak at the peace
conference, it was clear that the decision to control African land and
resources was being made without the consent of the Africans through a
structure called the mandate system. With no standing armies or weapons
the fight against European hegemony in Africa, activism came in the form
of investigations, public criticism and organizational protest. By the
1970s, Logan's analysis of the Pan-African movement was unique
because only he and a small handful of eyewitnesses were still alive to
explain what actually happened in terms of the mood, temperament, and
meaning of the congresses within a historical context.
Pan-Africanism meant different things to different people usually
reflecting the vantage point and orientation of the individual using the
term. In this study Pan-Africanism will be used the way that Logan
defined the term. To Logan Pan-Africanism meant "self-government or
independence of African nations south of the Sahara." (13) To this
basic premise he would add the extension of rights to all persons of
African descent throughout the African Diaspora. Logan was particularly
impressed with Du Bois' Address to the Nations of the World which
was an essay he wrote on behalf of Africa produced at the Pan African
Conference in London, England in 1900:
Du Bois made a plea for the inclusion of Negroes in all parts of
the world in the great brotherhood of mankind urging
self-government or independence for at least some Africans hence in
my judgment; this Address to the Nations of the World includes the
first modern published exposition of my definition of
Pan-Africanism. (14)
Therefore, Logan's evolving definition of Pan-Africanism was
based on his belief in the eventual freedom of Africa from European
control but also on the immediate circumstance of whether Africans could
govern themselves based on modern world standards of the industrialized
West. The exact origin of the term is difficult to pin-point
historically unless one adopts a narrow definition such as Logan's.
To be sure, there has always been general and specific African
resistance to European hegemony for centuries. What is clear is that by
the end of World War I the term Pan-Africanism had been in use
sporadically for at least a quarter century but was not in common vogue
for a key reason. Professor Clarence Contee points out that if anyone
was going to bring about the revival of the Pan-African idea it almost
had to be W.E.B. Du Bois. He writes:
In a real sense, Du Bois had to be the one of the early
Pan-Africanist to restore the vibrant heartbeat of the movement;
new leaders were not yet ready. Death had claimed the lives of
Henry Sylvester Williams (1911), and Dr. Edward Wilmot Blyden the
leading Pan-Negroes of the nineteenth century (1912); in 1915
Bishop Henry McNeal Turner, Booker T. Washington and Benito Sylvain
died. Also, later Bishop James Johnson a Nigerian nationalist and
Bishop Alexander Walters, Black Afro-American President of the
Pan-African Association of 1900 died; so did Reverend Majola
Agbedi, another Nigerian nationalist and a person who knew Du Bois.
(15)
Contee makes the important observation that for the 1919 Congress,
Du Bois felt the First World War provided an opportune time to
politicize the plight of Africans throughout the world. In the aftermath
of the war the idealism of democracy would hopefully benefit activist
like Du Bois, who believed in the democratic process. Hence, Contee
says, "Du Bois felt that conferences and discussions were
legitimate vehicles to effect social, economic, and political changes in
the oppressive conditions of the African and the Afro-American. Perhaps
the "power-brokers and decision makers" at the Paris Peace
Conference would listen to ideas that could benefit the Africa and the
African Diaspora. Du Bois advocated for the formation of "a Central
African state composed of the former German colonies and the Belgian
Congo such a state was what Africans wanted and [was] in the best
interest of world civilization. (16) From the vantage point of this
study, the Pan-African Congress of 1919, which Logan did not attend, was
significant for its intentions if not it's limited results.
According to the January 1919 issue of the NAACP's magazine, The
Crisis, Du Bois had traveled to France with a three-fold mission: to
collect first hand material for a history of American blacks in the
recent world war, to serve as special representative of the Crisis at
the actual peace conference, and to 'bear all pressure possible on
the delegates at the peace table in the interest of the black people of
the world by calling a Pan-African Congress'. Although Du Bois was
not permitted to attend the peace conference, he did collect data
concerning black soldiers who fought in the war and as reported in the
April issue of the Crisis "the congress had met, [established] an
executive committee, and maintained a hotel in Paris with regular hours.
(17)
Logan and the Second Pan-African Congress (1921)
Logan was still in the army when the first Pan-African Congress
took place in 1919. However, it was this background that provided the
structure and momentum of the subsequent congresses in which he played
an important role. In fact, the details of the second, third and fourth
congresses in which Logan participated are necessary to situate his
evolving views based on his exposure to the key issues and topics
discussed. Also important are the leaders from African and West Indian
territories which Logan met allowing him to see the broader implications
of what became a worldwide movement to uplift African peoples.
The second Pan-African Congress took place in the late summer going
into the early fall of 1921 with an August and September session in
London and Brussels and a September session in Paris, France where Logan
became involved. The London session met on the 27th of August at Central
Hall in the shadow of Westminister Abbey. There were representatives
from such places as South Africa, the Gold Coast (Ghana), Sierra Leone,
Lagos, Nigeria, Liberia, Grenada, Martinique, and the United States.
Each delegation had a particular set of problems. For instance, the West
African's main concern was the problem of no political power and
segregation while East and South Africans could not vote, had been
denied the "best portions of the land," and faced the problem
of East Indian influx. A Grenadian delegate, Mr. Marryshow, pointed out
that "actions not words were needed," while a Nigerian
delegate, Mr. Augusto, stressed that the congress should
"accomplish something very concrete, such as the financial
development of independent Liberia." (18)
At the Belgium session, following London, Fauset observed a marked
conservatism by the Congolese delegate Paul Panda who did not criticize
Belgium. The well-known brutal atrocities committed by the Belgians
against the Congolese through forced labor to produce sugar cane,
coffee, and palm oil were not spoken of by Panda but not without reason.
The stronghold that Belgium had on the Congo was immense and there was
an intense feeling of awe when the Congresses convened at the Palais
Mondial. In Belgian museums Fauset observed such artifacts as furs,
gold, copper, mahogany wood and elephant tusk which indicated the vast
wealth acquired by King Leopold from Central Africa. (19) Perhaps Panda
knew that the Belgians were not going to give up this fortune and
therefore chose not to criticize Belgium for fear of a brutal response
on the native population still living in the territory. When the
congress met it became evident to Fauset that Belgium's economic
interests were so centered in the Congo that the government watched the
congress with a careful eye. There were Belgium officials that attended
each meeting of the congress and some even addressed the delegates
formally. One Spanish official at the Brussels meeting even spoke about
the problems of race mixing. But, Faucet found it most interesting that:
For three days we listened to pleasant generalities without a word
or criticism of colonial government, without a murmur of complaint
of black Africa, without a suggestion that this was an
international congress called to define and make intelligible the
greatest set of wrongs against human beings that the modern world
has known. (20)
There were also very few black people that lived in Brussels as
compared to London, which made the meeting even more conspicuous. When
Fauset suggested to Panda that perhaps some colored teachers might be
induced to visit the Congo Panda quickly replied, "No, the Belgian
authorities would never permit that because the colored Americans are
too 'malins' (clever)." (21) The Belgian authorities were
very much concerned with the NAACP who some thought were paid by
Bolsheviks. According to the Belgian newspaper Neptune,
The association [NAACP] has already organized propaganda in the
lower Congo, and we must not be astonished if some day it causes
grave difficulties in the Negro village of Kansasha, composed of
all the ne'er-do wells of various tribes of the colony aside from
some hundreds of laborers. (22)
The "grave difficulties" as voiced in the above Belgium
newspaper in 1921 was a continuation of fear over black leaders meeting
to discuss problems throughout the African world. Previously, the 1919
congress nearly did not take place except that Blaise Daigne the
representative from French West Africa showed loyalty to French Premier
Georges Clemenceau, who used Senegalese troops to fight in the late war.
Logan learned this background when Du Bois asked Logan to serve as
secretary and interpreter of the 1921 Paris session of the Congress,
which met at the Societe des Ingenieurs Civil 19 Rue Blanch. Logan
accepted Du Bois' invitation to serve as he had been well prepared
to translate French and English based on his training at M. Street High
School with Faucet and his military career in France during the recent
war.
Logan was not only a translator but a mediator between the French
and English speaking factions when the meeting convened in Paris. Had it
not been for Logan's diplomacy and mediation skills it is very
possible that the Second Pan-African Congress would have fallen apart
over a very critical issue. When Du Bois' resolutions were read in
English proposing a return of African land to the community, Daigne, who
spoke as poor English, as Du Bois spoke French, only recognized the word
"commune". To Daigne commune meant Communism, which meant an
overthrow of the current French republic. Logan pointed out that the
word commune to Frenchmen also meant the revolutionary
'commune' that took over the French government in Paris after
the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871 still within memory. With
Bolshevism on the rise in Russia, the black French leader could not
agree with any resolutions that sounded too radical or could be
interpreted as threatening to French control of French North and West
Africa. At the urging of William Stuart Nelson, a colleague and friend,
Logan sought to mollify the tempers of both men through crafty
paraphrasing. "By translating only a bit of the acerbic remarks to
each other," Logan later wrote, "I obtained an agreement
between the two or what Daigne viewed as a temporary compromise."
(23) The congress moved forward with its agenda and Daigne became the
presiding officer. As if to set the record straight, lest Du Bois'
radicalism dominate the congress, Daigne exclaimed unequivocally,
"I'm a Frenchman first and a Negro afterward!" (24)
Daigne's allegiance to France above the interest of Africans
in the diaspora seems to have hinted at an eventual rift between the
objectives and the ultimate direction of the congresses, particularly
between the Francophone versus Anglophone Africans. According to
Logan's recollection, Du Bois saw an opportunity for the colonial
possessions that Germany lost during the war in Southwest Africa, to be
returned to the native Africans to whom the land originally belonged
before the Berlin Conference of 1885. However noble Du Bois'
intentions, the return of African land to the native African population
was something Daigne thought would upset the French government.
Even after Logan's timely mediation between Daigne and Du
Bois, the former "leapt to his feet in his role as presiding
officer and jammed through a set of resolutions that the American and
English Negroes only partially grasped." (25) The implication was
that Logan thought the resolutions of which there is no comprehensive
record, was of a conservative nature and more closely aligned with the
wishes of the French to maintain control of African land. Logan believed
this allegiance of the French speaking Negroes was because at the time
France was the only country in the world that had conferred national
citizenship upon natives in Africa; moreover France allowed Blaise
Daigne to sit in the French Chamber of Deputies he also served as
Chairman of the Committee on Colonial Affairs.
By the time the Congress delegation reached war-torn Paris'
Salle des Ingenieurs building the agenda was once again underway. Faucet
remarked,
On that platform was, I suppose the intellectual efflorescence of
the Negro race. To American eyes and, according to the papers, to
many others, Dr. Du Bois loomed first, for he had first envisaged
this movement and many of us knew how gigantically he had toiled.
Then there was M. Bellgarde, the Haitian minister to France and
Haitian delegate to the assembly of the League of Nations. Beside
him sat the grave and dignified delegate from the Liga Africana of
Lisbon, Portugal, and on the other side the presiding officer, M.
Daigne and his colleague, M. Candace, French Deputy from
Guadeloupe. A little to one side sat the American Rayford Logan
assistant secretary of the Pan-African Congresses at Paris and our
interpreter. His translations, made offhand without a moment's
preparation, were a remarkable exhibition. (26)
The great challenge of this leadership was how to address the broad
range of concerns affecting the Black world. Each delegate came from a
different place geographically; their political, social, and even
economic views were divergent although there were some obvious common
denominators. It became clear that each group had a different
relationship with their respective colonial power. These differences
manifested themselves as the meetings proceeded. As Americans, Faucet,
Du Bois, and Logan "were somewhat puzzled as the floor was
repeatedly given to Blacks from French colonies who dwelt on the glory
of France and the honor of being Frenchman." (27) Logan remembered
the report that the Africans at the Brussels session were uncritical of
their mistreatment in the Belgian Congo. There appeared to be a clear
ideological split between what each of these various groups of African
people actually wanted to accomplish by the end of the Congress.
The Africans from the French colonies identified with the
metropolis and felt part and parcel of the French Empire much more
closely than the Black delegation from the United States and Haiti felt
for their homelands. They wanted improved conditions for Africans but
not at the expense of upsetting the colonial powers. Faucet reported,
"Messieurs Daigne and Candace of Guadeloupe gave us fine oratory
and magnificent gestures, but platitudes, while Du Bois, E. Franklin
Frazier, Walter White of the United States, Dr. Jackson, a young fiery
Jamaican, and M. Dantes Bellgarde of Haiti, gave "facts and food
for thought." (28)
One reason for the frankness of the delegates reporting on
conditions in their respective countries at the Paris session was the
difference in the audience compared with mostly white Brussels. Faucet
recalls that the Paris population contained a larger number of Blacks
who had suffered and therefore could relate to Du Bois'
straightforward resolutions. At the conference the mostly Black audience
felt that "here at last was the fearless voice of long stifled
desires of their hearts, at last comprehension, here was the translation
of hitherto unsyllabled unuttered prayers." (29) Logan remembers
the Paris session as the most largely attended though most delegates
were from non-African countries. (30) While serving as Deputy Secretary
and translator, Logan saw Blaise Daigne, resign as President of the
Pan-African Association and Gratien Candace, a delegate from French
speaking Guadeloupe became president.
The Pan African Association was a panel of the key leaders from the
French and English speaking delegation namely Du Bois, Logan, Blaise
Diagne and Gratien Candace. Since the Congress met every other year the
Pan-African Association kept in contact with one another and planned the
location and agenda for the subsequent meetings. This Association began
to slowly drift apart after the 1923 Pan-African Congress. Logan felt
that part of the reason for the deterioration of the Congresses was
Blaise Daigne. Daigne in Logan's estimation was a self-made man
from Senegal, tall, blue-black in skin color and married to a white
French woman. He was both conservative and shrewd but saw the
possibilities of the Congresses as an opportunity to "make steps
toward eventual self-government," slowly. (31) This conservative
leadership on the part of Daigne, however, was in direct contrast to the
other great leader of French speaking Blacks, Dantes Bellgarde of Haiti.
Bellgard was the Haitian minister to France and in Logan's
estimation he was "polished, elegant, modest and one of the most
able men he ever met." (32) Bellgarde evidently saw the possibility
of Negroes coming together under the Pan-African Congresses to help
Blacks in the Caribbean as well. Certainly, all participants from the
Pan-African world, although differing in their respective opinions of
what could be done, at least learned much more intimately of each
others' plight.
Despite the difficulties of the various delegates agreeing on one
agenda, Faucet believed the results of the 1919 and 1921 Congresses were
progressive. First, it was clear that the Pan-African Congresses were a
permanent organization. Though there was always the language barrier (at
least two languages had to be spoken) and a limit to free speech on the
part of the African delegations on their respective colonial situations
there was a better knowledge of the overall plight of Africans from a
more global perspective. (33) Each African group knew more about the
plight of the others. Secondly, Faucet felt that "organization on
our part arrests the attention of the world." In other words, the
European and American press took note of the Congresses and gave them
world-wide publicity showing the important relationship between
organization and influence, even if modest. The third accomplishment of
the Congress was "the realization that there is an immensity of
work ahead of us." (34)
To Logan the second Pan-African Congress of 1921 was by far the
most successful of the four held between 1919 and 1927 because of the
large number of delegates and the quality of the resolutions that were
passed. Of the approximately one-hundred and ten delegates in attendance
forty-one were from Africa, thirty-five from the U.S., twenty-four were
Africans living in Europe and seven were from the West Indies. (35) The
strategy of the Congress was similar to the previous one's which
strove to influence the newly formed League of Nations by first sending
Du Bois to Geneva to interview officials at the Permanent Mandates
Commission on African affairs. Faucet stated that a thousand resolutions
and petitions were being presented at the Geneva Convention by delegates
of many nations. (36) Logan remembered "There was a petition which
was published as an official document of the League urging eventual
self-government in Africa and the appointment to the Permanent Mandates
Commission of a man of Negro decent properly fitted in training and
character as soon as a vacancy occurs." (37) This appointment would
have been instrumental because that individual would be in direct
contact with those who were making decisions about Germany's lost
territory. Also, the International Bureau of Labor was included in the
petition to address the "shameless exploitation of Negro labor in
all the colonial territories." (38) The petition of the Second
Pan-African Congress was presented through the very able Haitian M.
Dantes Bellgarde. Logan learned from Bellgarde himself that a man named
M. Rappard director of the Mandates section of the League "promised
him to work for his appointment." (39)
While Bellgard attempted to gain an appointment at Geneva, Du Bois
made his presence known. On September 13, 1921, Du Bois spoke to a group
called the English Club of Geneva to "convey some idea of what the
Black world was thinking, feeling, and doing in regards to the Negro
problem." (40) This was important because Du Bois had no direct
voice into the Geneva convention himself so he had to persuade and
convince sympathetic white men who did have access. Du Bois also met
with Rene' Claparede an executive member of the International
Society for the Protection of the Natives and William Rappard head of
the Mandates Commission of the League of Nations.
Both of these men endorsed the proposal to at least appoint a Negro
man to the Mandates Commission in charge of native affairs. The United
States interestingly enough did not have a delegate at the League of
Nations (and never did join) and so there was no ear or voice to listen
and speak on behalf of African people throughout the world. Bellgarde
finally was given a chance to speak at the debate on the mandates
commission with apparent success but this assessment is hazy at best,
because Logan spoke with Bellgarde who told him that despite vacancies
and Rappard's promise there wasn't a person of Negro decent
appointed to it.
Results of Paris Session
Regardless of the varying interpretations of the successes and
failures of the Pan-African Congress of 1921 countries like England,
France and Belgium--all colonial powers--that took notice of Black
intellectuals and leaders organized on behalf of African peoples. A few
newspapers articles illustrate the point. One historian wrote concerning
the reaction of Europeans to this 1921 congress saying,
It was a mixed one. The fact that so many Black men of consequence
from remote corners of the globe were exchanging ideas on
disabilities imposed by white arrogance and intolerance not
surprisingly aroused suspicion of a revolution and fear of Black
domination. As Walter White related, there were secret agents of
the British Colonial Office at the London sessions and the same
surveillance was encountered in Belgium and France. (41)
The historian also notes that an English newspaper the Manchester
Dispatch commented that the white people did not naturally look forward
with joyful; emotions to the day when a prolific Black race would rise
to power but the time may come when we shall have to submit ourselves to
the tender mercies of our dusky conquerors." (42) He goes on to
record another reaction in the Public Opinion that,
No white man could have attended the conference and retained his
smug complacency; the days of the super race were numbered; the
theory of the permanent and necessary inferiority of the Negro
seemed then to be untrue from a practical, as it had always been
from a Christian standpoint. (43)
According to The Daily Graphic, another English newspaper,
The delegates [of the Pan-African Congress] were so earnest both
the men and women, so absolutely convinced of the justice of their
cause, their right to a citizen's franchise, to representation in
the world's counsels [League of Nations] to everything, in fact,
that civilized humanity offers to the sons regardless of race,
color or creed. (44)
The British were not the only ones concerned about the meaning of
the Pan-African Congresses. The French were also very much aware of what
the congresses meant. The Humanite of Paris recorded the views of some
who felt that "the black and mulatto intelligentsia proved by its
very existence that the Black race was not inherently inferior. How
could Europeans consider inferior to white men these orators with their
clear thought and their ready words? (45) Perhaps the last word on the
Second Pan-African Congress should be the manifestos that Logan helped
to translate. Again the Congress addressed their request to the League
of Nations:
1. That an International Bureau of Labor set aside to deal
particularly and in detail with the conditions and needs of native Negro
labors especially in Africa and in the Islands of the Sea,
2. That the spirit of the modern world moves toward self-government
as the ultimate aim of all men and nations and that consequently the
mandated people have the right to have a Negro appointed a member of the
Mandates Commission,
3. The League of Nations has vast moral powers of world public
opinion to take a firm stand on the absolute equality of the races and
form an International Institute for the study of the Negro Problem and
for the Evolution and Protection of the Negro Race. (46)
Logan's observation about the decline in the movement was more
evident by the time the Third Pan-African Congress convened in 1923.
With Daigne's allegiance to France and Candace's
"marriage and close personal and financial relations with high
banking and industrial circles," the Congresses seemed doomed. (47)
In Logan's opinion Candace, at one time the president of the
Pan-African Association, was in fact, corrupted. Logan wrote, "It
was reported at the meeting of the Pan-African Association that Candace
received financial support for his re election in Guadeloupe from the
then famous mystery man of Europe, Basil Zaharoff." (48) Logan
admits not being able to verify the absolute truth of this statement. He
clearly remembered that Candace rarely attended the meetings of the
Pan-African Association held in an office at Avenue Du Maine. In
Daigne's case he withdrew support after a French newspaper
Intransiegn published an article accusing Du Bois of being a disciple of
Marcus Garvey which frightened the French government. (49) It was known
that Garvey wanted all Whites out of Africa which he felt should be
governed by Africans. Though the rumor about Du Bois being Garvey's
disciple was, of course, untrue, the French delegation was not as
supportive of the movement after this false report.
Another problem that inhibited the Congresses was dwindling
financial contributions. The North American delegation headed by Du Bois
had been the main financier of the First and Second Congresses but by
1923 the NAACP, the main source of the revenue, had to decrease its
expenditures. (50) Most of the expenses in terms of living quarters,
food, and travel accommodations for Logan came out of his own limited
resources. Logan remembered "The NAACP, moreover, finding its
resources dwindling after the high mark of enthusiasm during and
immediately after the war, had to reduce its expenditures. I never
received a salary." (51)
Third Pan-African Congress: London, England
Although by 1923, the organization, purpose and goals of the
Pan-African Congresses had been well established, there was a
considerable decline in both enthusiasm and participation as compared to
the previous two congresses. (52) Nevertheless, the third Pan-African
Congress convened in London on November 7th, and 8th with delegates from
thirteen countries on the African continent, the West Indies, and the
U.S. In both locations Logan helped to lead discussions following the
programs. (53) The London meeting took place at Denison House which was
an old headquarters of England's Anti-Slavery Society. The chief
speakers were Harold Laski of the London School of Economics, Ida Gibbs
Hunt, the wife of a U.S. Consul at St. Etienne, France, who spoke on the
topic, "The Colonial Races and the League of Nations," Kamba
Simango who spoke about Portuguese East Africa, Bishop Vernon of the
African Methodist Episcopal Church and Chief Amoah III of the Gold
Coast. (54)
Though the third Congress was not as well attended as the second,
the resolutions which it produced, were as demanding as in previous
Congresses. They were as follows:
1. Voice in government,
2. The right to the land and its resources,
3. Trial by jury,
4. Free elementary education-industrial, and higher training,
5. The development of Africa for the benefit of the Africans and
not merely for the profit of Europeans,
6. The abolition of the slave trade and the liquor traffic,
7. World disarmament and the abolition of war,
8. Finally, the organization of commerce and industry so as to make
the main objects of capital and labor the welfare of the many and not
the enriching of the few. (55)
These demands for basic human as well as economic development of
African land and resources applied to all of colonial Africa although
each colonial situation was unique. Logan's exposure to the
consistency of the demands proved instrumental by 1923. It was the
London and Lisbon sessions where in addition to being the translator
between the English and French speaking delegates Logan was directly
involved in the shaping and planning of the sessions. All of the
resolutions were vital to the development of Africa and the diaspora but
the particular demands such as natives having a voice in government, a
free education and the right to the land would be ideas that Logan would
later articulate as a mature polemicist over twenty years later
following World War II. Analysis of the specific demands asked for in
various locations of the African and African Diaspora reveal an
interesting pattern. In the British West Indies and West Africa the
demand was for "civilized subjects to have home rule and
responsible government without discrimination as to race and
color." (56) In Nigeria and Uganda, under British rule as well, the
demands included "the development of Native law, industry,
education, and eventual economic independence." (57) In the French
controlled territories in West Africa the demands were similar but with
a slightly different emphasis. French speaking Africans wanted the
citizenship rights of voting, representation in the French Parliament,
by Senegalese and West Indian delegates. The demands from Kenya,
Rhodesia, and South Africa were equally straightforward. South Africa,
for example, demanded "a recognition of their right to a voice in
their own government and the abolition of the pretension of a white
minority to dominate a Black majority and even to prevent their appeal
to the world." (58)
The congress recognized that there had been no decisive change in
the Belgian Congo from a regime of profit making and exploitation to an
attempt to build modern civilization among human beings for their own
good will.
The three Black republics: Ethiopia, Liberia, and Haiti, all were
affected by European colonialism. The Congress stated that these
nations, which in a sense proved that Africans could rule themselves,
needed "not only political integrity but also their emancipation
from the grip of economic monopoly and usury at the hands of the money
masters of the world." (59) Though the European powers did not have
the overt control and physical presence in these independent nations as
they did in the rest of colonial Africa, the raw materials of these
independent nations were controlled by Europeans and in the case of
Liberia, the U.S. businessmen who invested heavily and made huge
profits. The Pan-African Congress made demands on behalf of Black people
in the U.S. such as recognition of full citizenship rights in spite of
color, the cessation of lynching, mob-rule, and caste distinctions, had
always been goals of the NAACP. This organization contributed most of
the financial support for the Black American delegates first three
Congresses, had even put forth the Dyer-Anti Lynch Bill in 1921 which
would have allowed the federal government to intervene in states where
mob-rule and the lynching of Blacks went virtually un-checked.
Though the bill was defeated in the House the NAACP's campaign
to popularize the fact that over thirty-four hundred Negroes had been
lynched from post Reconstruction to 1922 was now being published in the
resolution for an international audience. The intention was that the
various white nations would take heed to the thoughts and aspirations of
their colonial subjects. Rayford Logan's name along with Ida Gibbs
Hunt and Du Bois was signed at the bottom of the Third Pan-African
Congress's resolution.
The Lisbon session of the third Pan-African Congress took place on
December 1st and 2nd 1923. More noticeable was the strong presence of
Portuguese speaking blacks whose organization Liga Africana, was led by
their president Jose' do Magalhaes who represented Sao Tome'
in the Portuguese chamber of deputies. (60) Logan did his best to set up
the meeting at the request of Du Bois and felt the Lisbon session was
poorly attended although he gives no exact numbers. He did record that
there were fewer Portuguese Blacks in Lisbon as compared to Paris or
London and the few that lived there did not speak Portuguese very well.
Having discussed and debated the major issues that by 1923 had become
standard objectives the end of the meeting still found the French Negro
delegation once again at odds with the motives and objectives of the
congress. Du Bois, for one, felt the major problem was that the black
French leadership "thought of themselves as Frenchman first and
Negroes second," as that the leadership was "hanging back for
self-interest or political reason despite the fact that in Paris the
black French masses showed a keen desire to cooperate." (61)
Whether or not this analysis was completely correct the congresses,
normally held every other year, did not meet in 1925 because of these
internal conflicts and lack of financial resources from the NAACP which
turned to the local issue of lynching in the United States.
Fourth Pan-African Congress: New York City
The fourth and final Pan-African Congress of the 1920s did not take
place until 1927 and was unique in that it was the first congress held
in the Western Hemisphere and it was chiefly organized by black American
women. The New York Age reported that the Congress was scheduled to meet
between August 21st through the 24th 1927 in New York City and that
women of the Circle for Peace and Foreign Relations were working to
receive such notables as Dantes Bellgarde of Haiti, Georges Normail
Sylvain the son of a Haitian patriot, and Chief Amoah III of the Gold
Coast representing British West Africa. (62) It is interesting that
women from a large number of other cities were also "arousing
interest in the Congresses" all over the country. (63)
The long list of organizers were all women including an E.D. Canady
of Oregon, Maybell Baylor of Milwaukee, Percy Bond of Washington, D.C.,
Violet Johnson of Summit, New Jersey, and Nadine Lottie Cooper of
Orange, New Jersey and other women under the leadership of A.W. Hunton
who is said to have raised $3000. Without these women's fund
raising activities in their various locations the meeting would not have
taken place as scheduled.
As finances had previously hindered the progress of the movement in
previous years The New York Age recorded the name of Nadine Wright as
the first individual to send a check for $100 to the Pan-African
Congress headquarters at Grace Congregational Church on 308 W. 139th
Street in New York City.
When the congress convened at the church headquarters on Saturday,
August 20th, the discussion and presentations centered on the race
problem in the African Diaspora. Some of the presentations were
delivered at other Black churches throughout Harlem including St. Marks
Methodist Episcopal Church, Abbyssinia Baptist Church, and the 135th
Street Branch Library. (64) Each speaker was apparently prepared to
deliver an address based on their place of origin or familiarity with
their own local condition. Bellgarde, the Haitian delegate, was
"cordially received" on the 16th and gave the viewpoint of the
black condition in Europe, the West Indies, and America. Chief Amoah III
was said to have "authoritative knowledge of the condition [of
Blacks] in the English, French, and Portuguese colonies in Africa."
T. Augustus Toote from the Bahamas arrived to represent his region and
Rayford Logan arrived as "secretary and interpreter." (65)
Though Logan remembered speaking at the congress there is no
written record of the topic or text of his speech though he did continue
in his role as organizer and interpreter for the French speaking
delegations. Nonetheless, other notables were Ms. A. W. Dickerson of the
International Council of Women of the Darker Races, Eugene Kinkly Jones
of the National Urban League, and Charles Johnson who wrote for the
NUL's magazine Opportunity. In addition to James Weldon Johnson and
William Pickens of the NAACP, a Swedish born Professor of Anthropology
from Columbia University named Melville Herskovitz addressed a session
with the topic, "African and American Negroes." In total,
there were 208 delegates representing the U.S. and ten foreign countries
including Liberia, Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast, Nigeria, Haiti, the
Danish Virgin Islands, the Bahamas, Barbados, the Belgian Congo,
Portugal, and South America.
The topics were varied but all within the framework of the
Pan-African Congress' traditional demands for complete equality for
all African peoples regardless of location. Helen Curtis is reported to
have spoken on the topic "African Missions," Addie W.
Dickerson on "The Colored Women and Missions," while Charles
H. Wesley of Howard University along with Professor Hertzkovitz both
chose the topic, "The Dispersed Children of Africa." (66) The
goals of the Fourth Pan-African Congress were consistent with the
previous three which shows constancy in the movement as opposed to
redundancy hinted at by writers who question the growth of the
Pan-African Congress movement. (67) Namely, they demanded a voice in
their own government, the right to the land and its natural resources,
education for all children, the development of Africa for Africans and
not merely for profits for Europeans, the treatment of civilized men as
civilized regardless of birth, race, of color, the reorganization of
commerce and industry so as to make the main object of capital and labor
for welfare of the many rather than the enriching of the few. (68)
It is interesting to note that the Fourth Pan-African Congress was
originally scheduled to meet in the West Indies or in Tunis, North
Africa in 1925. While finances and internal problems between the French
and English speaking blacks were in evidence another hindrance to the
meeting was revealed. When the French authorities of Tunisia got news of
the conference they very politely but firmly told Du Bois that the
congress could be held in Marseilles or any French city but not in any
colony or protectorate of France in Africa [emphasis mine]. (69) It was
becoming increasingly clear that the metropolitan powers, especially
France, Portugal, and Belgium, were fearful that the Pan-African
congress movement could potentially spell disaster for their ability to
maintain control of their colonial possessions. Loss of colonies meant
loss of profits in commodities such as ivory, gold, diamonds, cocoa,
sugar and many other items that came from African land.
Results of the Pan-African Congresses 1921-1927
What were the results of the four Pan-African Congresses from
1919-1927 of which Logan played a role? Clearly, there are many answers
to this question both on and off the mark. One scholar considered an
authority of Pan-Africanism is Professor Immanuel Geiss of Hamburg, West
Germany. Writing about the results of the Fourth Congress Geiss states,
"the most important result of the Fourth Pan-African Congress was
perhaps simply that it took place at all" but saves himself from
almost total error by also stating that "[the members] had
established a certain tradition with the passing of time." (70)
This tradition is exactly the point of the long term significance of the
movement. C.L.R. James states the case more clearly in his masterful
study of the Haitian Revolution which the present writer thinks Geiss
has missed totally. James states that
Great men make history, but only such history as it is possible for
them to make. The freedom of achievement is limited by the
necessities of their environment. To portray the limits of those
necessities and the realization complete or partial, of all
possibilities, that is the true business of the historian. (71)
Professor Geiss seems to interpret the worth of the four
Pan-African Congresses based on an objective reality that could not and
did not exist because the conditions were not yet conducive. Great
social revolutions and upheavals are normally preceded by an ideology
that has taken years to ferment and develop over the passage of time. A
classic example would be the abolitionist's movement in the United
States in the 1830s which preceded the Civil War by thirty years. When
the conditions were right, the Union forces smashed the South to
preserve the union and the idea that slavery should be abolished and the
Black slave set free came to fruition by 1865. It would be preposterous
to evaluate the meaning and significance of the abolitionist crusade as
"slight or meager" because they could not persuade southern
slave masters or the white South to end slavery thirty years earlier.
That would be a misreading and a total misinterpretation of history
and even place into question the value of the historian which in part is
to make connections between people and events based on a reasonable
evaluation of the available primary sources. C.L.R. James demonstrates
this so well in his connection between the French Revolution's cry
of "liberty, equality, and fraternity" to the organization of
one half million slaves under Toussaint in San Domingo into a formidable
fighting force that eventually gained independence.
Professor Francis Broderick makes the same error when he writes,
"Du Bois' Pan-Africanism only touched a handful of
people--literate people who cared, affluent people who bought books,
dedicated people who made the fight against racial inequality an
important aspect to their lives." (72) This statement is only
partially true because it does not give the full weight to what the
Pan-African Congresses did in the long run. Closer to the truth is
Professor Manning Marable's statement that,
The [Pan-African] congresses at Paris in 1919 [and 1921] following
the conclusion of World War I; the congress held in London, Paris,
and Lisbon in 1923; and the New York congress of 1927 created the
context for [B]lack intellectuals, political leaders, and reformers
to challenge the prerogatives and power of [W]hite colonialism.
(73)
Logan's own analysis of the results of the Pan-African
Congress were stated in a speech entitled, "The Historical Aspects
of Pan-Africanism, 1900-1945" delivered at the Third Annual
Conference of the American Society of African Culture in 1960. Logan
begins, "In the history of ideas it is frequently difficult to
determine origins, changes, continuity, discontinuity and revival and
influence." (74) Difficult though it may have been, Logan, the
historian later in life, traced the broad history of Pan-Africanism and
its impact on the world. The timing and success of Pan-Africanism, as an
idea, and as an organized body of men and women of African descent, was
of the utmost importance to Logan, at this time a seasoned historian at
the age of sixty-three. Some of the most important events in world
history, World War I and World War II, which Logan called "acts of
supreme folly on the part of the superior races," are his main
examples. Logan states, "without these two wars "it is
unlikely that in 1945 Pan-Africanism would have laid the foundation that
made possible its mighty leap forward." (75) It is equally true
that the more forthright demands of George Padmore, Kwame Nkrumah,
Nnamdi Azikwe and the other African nationalist by 1945 was only
possible because of the Pan-African Congresses of the 1920s even with
their "limited or meager immediate results." He further
reviewed the goals of the Pan-African Congress movement as an
opportunity to reveal "fascinating reciprocal relationships between
ideas and events, men and events." The aims of the Pan-African
movement were basically threefold,
1. to bring people of African descent throughout the world into
closer touch with each other,
2. to establish more friendly relations between the Caucasian and
African races and
3. to start a movement looking forward to the securing of all
African races living in civilized countries their full rights and to
promote their business interest. (76)
Persons of African descent did come into closer contact with other
Africans from the English, French, and Portuguese speaking world
throughout the Congresses. The Africans that participated learned about
the worldwide context of the struggle for human rights and freedom. The
second aim of friendly relations with Whites is more difficult to gauge
but as long as African land was controlled by Europeans and the U.S.
still practiced racial segregation and discrimination the relationship
did not improve much. Many African nations viewed Whites as colonizers
who took over their land making it virtually impossible to establish
friendly relations. During the 1920s the third aim of securing full
rights of all African people in their respective lands was not realized
but at least the idea of eventual African independence began a process
which was accelerated by the advent of World War II and eventually
realized.
Logan also recognized that Du Bois was mainly responsible for
taking H. Sylvester Williams' idea of Pan-African unity and
transforming it to mean self-government and independence for Africans.
(77) It was Du Bois in almost Garveyite fashion that advocated the
grandiose idea for the Congo region in central Africa to become a great
black state in world affairs and he demanded respect for the integrity
of Abyssinia, Liberia, and Haiti. To Logan, as Du Bois was developing
and refining the Pan-African idea at the Race Congress in London,
England in July 1911, an important yet little known event took place.
"The German [battle] cruiser Panther arrived at Agadir, Morocco in
July 1911 on the western coast of Africa! This event caused Lloyd
George, an English official, to "warn Germany not to re-arrange the
map of Africa without consulting England." (78) Logan goes on
further to state that the bickering between the European powers over
African lands, by a strange twist of fate, aided the cause of
Pan-Africanism that Du Bois had been developing since 1900. His premise
is based on the fact that as European nations fought over Africa in
World War I and later in World War II, the drain in finances in the
billions, as well as resources and men made it virtually impossible for
them to hold onto their colonial possessions. Logan summed up by
stating,
my major conclusion that these gravediggers aided Pan-Africanism
is, of course, not original. It is related to the well-known thesis
of Samuel Flagg Bemis that Europe's distress is America's gain with
the sale of Louisiana by Napoleon Bonaparte to the United States is
a classic example. (79)
In Logan's estimation the Pan-African Congresses between 1919
and 1927 could not ask for immediate independence. Logan states,
"The proposal for self-government or independence was pre-mature
since the colonial powers were not prepared to grant it and since the
concept of inherent inferiority of the Negro still prevailed." (80)
So then, the African colonies under European control were difficult to
manage and the belief that Negroes were not ready for independence flew
in the face of the basic goals and objectives of the resolutions passed
at the early Pan-African Congresses. Woodrow Wilson, the architect of
the Mandates System, did not himself believe in Black equality with
White Americans nor that Africans were ready for independence. The
Mandate System therefore reflected the views of the imperialist Whites
who created it--Wilson and Jan Smuts.
Logan concluded regretfully that "the Pan-African Congresses
after World War I had failed to achieve the ultimate aim of
self-government or independence of Black Africa" the only point
echoed by Professor Geiss' above essay. (81) Ironically, Logan was
not totally against the Mandates System in Africa nor European ideas
about government citing the influence of "great libertarian
principles" on many future African nationalist. Perhaps Logan felt
that the Africans under colonialism would learn these "great
theories." World War I and World War II, to Logan, "created
the failure of the colonial powers to make colonialism palatable which
drove a few nationalist to demand the abolition of colonialism itself.
Though European colonialism died a slow death the seeds of its
eventual collapse in the 1950s can no doubt be traced to the early
Pan-African Congresses which laid the foundation out of which future
Congresses would demand outright independence. So careful a student of
Pan-Africanism as Walter Rodney would write,
It was imperialism that was giving us permission to hold a
Pan-African Congress. Under those circumstances, the gains could be
limited. One could play off some of the contradictions between the
imperialist themselves such as the contradiction between the
British and French and the Germans at the end of World War I. (82)
An observation that Logan connected with the downfall of
colonialism that benefited the Pan-African movement was the destruction
of the "purity of white womanhood myth." When the Senegalese
troops in the war were accused of invading the German brothels, Logan
recalled that really these Africans were snatched up by white
women." (83) This is consistent with Logan's theory that the
context of the Pan-African movement should be viewed side by side with
World War I and World War II. Black people fought in both of these wars
and through all the death and destruction the White world could never
look at Black people in just the same light as they had before.
It is clear that what the Pan-African Congresses could not demand
in the 1920s it most certainly could demand in the 1950s as a direct
result of the foundation laid by the earlier congresses. The idea that
Africa should be governed by the Africans, that the economic resources
belong to the indigenous people of the land, that Black people are an
equal member to the human family and have the right to
self-determination are ideas that did not start in 1945. The African
independence explosion of the 1950s is an extension of the unfinished
Pan-African Congresses movement of the 1920s that provided both the
framework, the blueprint and the idea that Africans were not only ready
for independence but had the right to self-determination wherever they
lived.
The formative years of the great scholar and activist Rayford Logan
are a fascinating study in the forces that mold and shape men into what
they become. In Logan's case, he was born into a dignified Black
community in Washington, D.C., where manners and grace were as much a
part of daily life as church and school. His education at the
prestigious Williams College and his stern resolve to become something
great in life catapulted Logan into a role as an activist and organizer
on behalf of his race. While living abroad in Europe Logan became more
acutely aware of the international dynamics of racism and prejudice as a
result of European imperialism and colonialism. Logan's
participation in the Pan-African Congresses of 1921, 1923, and 1927 was
his first brush with organized protest in adult life and greatly
impacted the type of scholar he became at and his razor sharp political
analysis. It was all of the above factors that caused Logan to be a
Pan-Africanist, a scholar of colonialism in Africa and later a
polemicist writing for the Pittsburgh Courier after World War II. This
was the necessary preparation for Logan's way of fighting against
an international system of racism that classified Black people
throughout the African Diaspora as inferior.
by
David L. Reed, Ph.D.
dreed@bowiestate.edu
Assistant Professor of History
Department of History & Government
Bowie State University
Bowie, Maryland
(1) 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
(1968; repr., New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 83-114. Also,
see his The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States
of America, 1638-1870. (New York: Longmans Green, 1896).
(2) W.E.B Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903; repr., New York:
Dover Publications, Inc, 19934), 9.
(3) Apparently Logan was not only a Paris contact for famous
Americans such as W.E.B. Du Bois but another soon to be famous black
American poet named, Langston Hughes, who he helped get a job. See
Langston Hughes, The Big Sea: An Autobiography by Langston Hughes (New
York: Hill and Wang, 1993), 164-65.
(4) Viscount Grey of Fallodon, Twenty-Five Years, 1882-1916 (New
York: Stokes, 1925), 216. 5
(5) W.E.B. Du Bois, "The African Roots of War," Atlantic
Monthly 115 (May 1915): 707-714.
(6) Ibid., The locations listed by Du Bois were all conflict areas
between the European colonizing powers directly inside or near
continental Africa: Fashoda in the Egyptian Sudan, Adua in North Africa,
Turkey in the Middle East bordered the Mediterranean Sea, Black Sea and
Aegeatic; Tripoli lie in Lybya, North Africa bordering the
Mediterranean, Delagoa Bay was in Southeastern Mozambique, Agadir was in
Southwest Morocco in North Africa and Algecirus was a port city in
southern Spain opposite the rock of Gibraltar in North Africa.
(7) A.J.P. Taylor, "Bismarck's Accidental Acquisition of
African Empire," in Problems in European Civilization: The Scramble
for Africa, Causes and Dimensions of Empire, (Boston: D.C. Heath and
Company, 1966), 19-22. Although older yet still informative see also the
essay by Sybil E. Crowe in the same work entitled, "The Scramble
and the Berlin West Africa Conference" concerning the rivalries
between France, Germany, England, Portugal and Belgium of the fourteen
countries represented.
(8) Alan Sharpe, The Versailles Settlement: Peacemaking in Paris,
1919. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991), 159-170.
(9) Clarence Contee, "The Emergence of Du Bois as an African
Nationalist," Journal of Negro History 54 (January 1969): 49.
(10) George Frederickson, Black Liberation: A Comparative History
of Black Ideologies in the United States and South Africa (New York:
Oxford press, 1985), 153.
(11) See Amy Jacques Garvey, Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus
Garvey (New York: Arno Press, 1968).
(12) Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem, Pan Africanism: Politics, Economy and
Social Change in the Twenty-First Century, ed. Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem
(New York: New York University Press, 1996), 1-5. See also Imanuel
Geiss, The Pan-African Movement: A History of Pan-Africanism in America,
Europe and Africa (New York: Africana Publishing Co, 1974), 1-15.
(13) Rayford W. Logan, "The Historical Aspects of
Pan-Africanism, 1900-1945," in Pan-Africanism Reconsidered, ed.
American Society of African Culture (Connecticut: Greenwood Press,
1962), 37.
(14) Ibid, 39.
(15) Clarence Contee, "Du Bois, the NAACP and the Pan-African
Congress of 1919," Journal of Negro History 27 (January 1972),
13-14. See also W.E.B. Du Bois, "The Pan-African Congress,"
Crisis 17 (April 1919): 271.
(16) Ibid., Contee, "Dubois, the NAACP and the Pan-African
Congress of 1919," 14.
(17) The Pan-African Congress of 1919 is not a focus in this study
beyond the establishment of the Congresses themselves. For details
regarding the 1919 congress see Du Bois' first-hand account in the
April edition of Crisis magazine 1919 or Clarence Contee's article
cited in the above footnotes.
(18) Jesse Faucet, "Impressions of the Second Pan-African
Congress," Crisis 23 (November 1921):12-13.
(19) Ibid.
(20) Ibid., 14
(21) Ibid.
(22) Elliot P. Skinner, "The Dialectic between Diasporas and
Homelands," in Global Dimensions of the African Diaspora, ed.
Joseph Harris (Washington D.C: Howard University Press, 1982), 31.
(23) Rayford Logan, undated chapter, "Lessons From My Life in
Europe," Rayford W. Logan Papers, 166-32 #5, Moorland Spingarn
Research Center, Howard University, Washington D.C.
(24) Ibid. Rayford Logan, undated chapter VIII entitled, "The
Pan-African Congresses."
(25) Ibid. Rayford Logan, Rayford Logan Papers, Box 166-32, #5
"Lesson From My Life in Europe," Moorland Spingarn Research
Center.
(26) Jesse Faucet, "Impressions of the Second Pan-African
Congress," 15-16.
(27) Ibid.
(28) Ibid.
(29) Ibid., 16.
(30) Rayford Logan in taped interview by B. Aronson and T. Goethals
entitled, "Regarding Additional Information for the article
"The Historical Aspects of Pan-Africanism, 1900-1945." No date
available.
(31) Ibid.
(32) Ibid.
(33) Jesse Faucet, "Impressions of the Second Pan-African
Congress," Crisis 23.
(34) Ibid., 17.
(35) Ibid., 166-32 #7.
(36) Jesse Faucet, Crisis, 16.
(37) American Society of African Culture, Pan Africanism
Reconsidered (Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1962), 44.
(38) Ibid.
(39) Rayford Logan Papers, Box 166-32, #7.
(40) Ibid.
(41) P. Olisanwuche Esdebe, Pan-Africnism: The Idea and Movement,
1776-1963 (Washington DC: Howard University Press, 1982), 90.
(42) Ibid., 90-91.
(43) Ibid.
(44) Ibid.
(45) Ibid.
(46) Ibid.
(47) Ibid., 19.
(48) Ibid.
(49) Logan interview, "Additional Aspects" by Aronson and
Geothals.
(50) Ibid.
(51) Ibid., Logan, "The Pan-African Congresses."
(52) Ibid.
(53) Jesse Faucet, "The Third Pan-African Congress"
Crisis 27 (January 1924): 120-122.
(54) Ibid.
(55) Ibid.
(56) Ibid.
(57) Ibid., 121.
(58) Ibid.
(59) Ibid.
(60) Ibid., 122. Sao Thome' was a small Portuguese island
colony off the coast of Central Africa's west coast.
(61) Ibid.
(62) Editorial entitled, "Pan-African Congresses" New
York Age, 6 August 1927.
(63) Ibid.
(64) Editorial "The Forth Pan-African Congress," The
NewYork Age, 20 August 1927.
(65) Ibid.
(66) Ibid,
(67) Logan's name is recorded on the New York Committee
created to sustain the movement by planning for the next congress which
did not meet until 1945 mainly because of the depression that emerged
with the stock market crash in 1929 throughout the 1930s. Logan was an
important link in this process.
(68) Kwadwo O. Pobi-Asamani, W.E.B. Du Bois: His Contribution to
Pan-Africanism (San Bernardino: The Borgo Press, 1995), 48.
(69) Ibid., 49.
(70) Immanuel Geiss, "Du Bois and the Pan-African Congress
Movement," in The African Diaspora Experience_ ed. Glenn Phillips,
254.
(71) C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L' Ouverture
and the San Domingo Revolution_(New York: Vintage Books, 1989), x.
(72) Francis Broderick, "The Gnawing Dilemma: Separatism and
Integration, 1865-1925," in Key Issues of the Afro-American
Experience_ (New York: Harcourt Brace Javanovich, 1971), 105.
(73) Manning Marable, Speaking Truth to Power: Essays on Race,
Resistance, and Radicalism_(Boulder: Westview Press, 1996), 207.
(74) Logan, Pan-Africanism Reconsidered, 39.
(75) Ibid., 37.
(76) Ibid.
(77) Ibid., 38.
(78) Ibid., 40.
(79) Ibid., 42.
(80) Ibid.
(81) Ibid., 44.
(82) Interview of Walter Rodney entitled, "The Black Scholar
Interviews: Walter Rodney," in The Black Scholar: Journal of Black
Studies and Research, 6 (November 1974): 41.
(83) Ibid., taped interview "Additional Aspects of
Pan-Africanism."