MARCUS GARVEY IN SOUTH AFRICA

In the 1920s and 1930 black men and women in segregationist South Africa–including leaders and members of the African National Congress, the party now governing South Africa–appropriated Marcus Garvey’s ideas of “… racial pride, pan-Africanism, and modernity to sustain themselves and to propel South Africa?s struggle for freedom,” as historian Robert Vinson (he teaches at the College of William and Mary) explains in this podcast with my mate Peter Alegi on Michigan State University’s monthly “Africa Past and Present” audio broadcast (presented by Peter and fellow historian Peter Limb). Vinson has written a book and edited a second on Garveyism and black political struggle in South Africa.

Fascinating story about the role of West Indian sailors who settle in Cape Town, black South Africans re-imagining themselves as African-Americans, and some surprises about who (Walter Sisulu for example) attended their sermons and schools.