Copyright 2015 Lessie Burnita Tate THE POWER OF PAN AFRICANISM: TANZANIAN/AFRICAN AMERICAN LINKAGES, 1947–1997 BY LESSIE B. TATE DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2015 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Professor Maria Todorova, Chair Professor Jean Allman, Director of Research Associate Professor James Brennan Associate Professor Theresa Barnes Professor David Roediger Professor Jamie Monson Professor Gregory Maddox ii Abstract 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 anti- racist 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. iii Acknowledgments During my long period of matriculation there have been many wonderful people who have knowingly and unknowingly enriched my pursuit of scholarship as well as my life. As a non-traditional student returning to the university in middle age, it was Professor Kairn Klieman’s African History classes and the opportunity to travel to Ghana in 1999 through her study-abroad program at the University of Houston that drew me to the critical study of Africa. Professor Klieman gave me the tools to distinguish between preconceived beliefs established in popular American black culture and the historical analysis of African history. Under the guidance of Professor Gregory Maddox, I began my exploration of Tanzania with my first study-abroad trip to the country in 2000. It was on this trip that I became acquainted with the University of Dar es Salaam and Professors Isaria N. Kimambo and Yusuf Q. Lawi in that university’s history department. The University of Dar es Salaam served as a base, and Professors Kimambo and Lawi were great support in my continued research on my return trips to Tanzania. Yet the most important aspect of this trip was spotting a dhoul with the name Marcus Garvey painted on its side on a beach in Bagamoya. Sighting this symbol of early global Pan-Africanism sparked my continued interest in Tanzania that resulted in this dissertation. Attending The Center for African American Studies Summer Institute at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and the Research Program in 2001, I began to explore the connection between Tanzania’s practice of Pan-Africanism and the US black community under the mentorship of East African historian Professor Edward Alpers. Time spent at UCLA was a tremendous boost to my research. Professor Alpers was in Tanzania at the height of nation building and talked with me at great length about his experiences in the country, notably his time spent with Walter Rodney. The UCLA Graduate Library is where I began to trace the threads of Kiswahili political language in US black print. On a return trip to Tanzania in 2002, I met African American expatriates Edie Wilson, Elaine Wamba, and Pete and Charlotte O’Neal, among others still living in the iv country. It was also the period I began my research in the East Africana Archives, where I explored Tanzanian newspapers for evidence of African American activity in the country. I am extremely grateful for Tanzanian and African American expatriate friendships and their sharing of their memoirs with me. From this research I wrote my thesis, which completed my Master of Arts in history at Texas Southern University. With me at the time I sighted the dhoul Marcus Garvey was Professor Gregory Maddox. “You will write about his one day,” he said at the time. His words fed my resolve to continue my research. I began doctoral studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 2004. During my years of coursework, I benefitted greatly from the wonderful seminars taught by Don Crummey, Fanon Wilkins, Maria Todorova, Charles Stewart, Jean Allman, and David Roediger. Moreover, I can never express the depth of my gratitude to my dissertation committee members, Jean Allman, Maria Todorova, David Roediger, James Brennan, Jamie Monson, and Gregory Maddox, who generously gave of their time in reading the numerous drafts of this dissertation. Words are insufficient to express how grateful I am to Jean Allman who directed my research and patiently waited for me to complete this task. Of course this research could not have been accomplished without the support and help from the staffs of the numerous archives I visited. I would especially like to thank Christopher Harter of the Amistad Research Center at Tulane University, where I made many return visits and was the cause of their many trips to the warehouse for my exploration into Pan-African and human rights archival records. I owe gratitude, too, to all twenty-one of my classmates who entered historical doctoral studies at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign with me in 2004. It has been stated many times that the process of writing a dissertation is a lonely one. I have been fortunate to have friends and colleagues to assist me in this journey. I owe a great deal of gratitude to Alvia Wardlaw and Janice Stensrude who edited this work in its roughest form. Doretha Smith Henderson and Virginia Rowe Franklin, who began this journey with me, are remembered at this time. I am thankful for the hospitality v of Jim and Blandina Giblin on my trips to Tanzania. In addition, I feel endlessly grateful for the support of Alyce Coffy and Janell and Akwesi Agyeman, as well as the faculty and staff of Texas Southern University’s History and Geography departments. Most of all, I would like to remember my parents, grandparents, and blended family, who did not live to see this accomplishment but whose shoulders I stood on nonetheless. I lovingly acknowledge my son Johnathan for keeping me grounded and sane. And to the many more close friends and colleagues not named who encouraged and supported me throughout this long process, I thank you. vi Table of Contents Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter One: The Tanzanian/African American Linkage: A Product of Black Hubs, 1947–1960 ................................................................................................ 32 Chapter Two: An African/Diaspora Linkage at the Dawn of African Independence ...... 83 Chapter Three: Tanzanian National Building in Africa and Abroad, 1967–1974 .......... 148 Chapter Four: Lessons from the Combination of African Continental and Diaspora Pan-Africanism in Tanzania, 1974–Onward ............................................. 184 Bibliography ...................................................................................................................... 231 1 Introduction Defining that space that constitutes the black world is critical for understanding how Africans and the African diaspora functioned within it and how information flowed outside it. Black consciousness carved space from within the Western metropolis for the creation of black hubs and networks. Black hubs were the gathering places, outside Africa, of racially conscious Africans and African descendants. The dispersal of large numbers of Africans to Brazil, colonial America, and the Caribbean, through the transatlantic slave trade, created the phenomena of black space.1 It was this institution of slavery that seeded the first black hubs that formed wherever black slavery had flourished. In the middle twentieth century the opportunity for a better life, usually through the pursuit of higher education or employment, served as a vehicle in the Western world to nourish the flourishing hubs. Whereas Sterling Stuckey professed that “slave ships were the first real incubators of slave unity across cultural lines” of different African ethnic groups, in this instance from the World Wars onward the subordination of colonialism, created through the institutions of Jim Crow and apartheid restructured a global African unity through black solidarity in pursuit of total black liberation.2 It is from within the black hubs that the narrative of this African/diaspora