4.8

• In the 1950s and 1960s, African American writers, leaders, and activists visited Africa to express solidarity and support for Africa’s decolonization. Some embraced pan-Africanism and advocated for the political and cultural unity of all people of African descent.
• The Republic of Ghana’s independence from British colonial rule in 1957 inspired visits from African American activists such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, writer Maya Angelou, lawyer Pauli Murray, and historian and sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois.
• Africans and African Americans endured similar struggles against anti-Black racism and oppression. The solidarity between Africans and African Americans brought international attention to Africa’s decolonization, and in 1960, also known as the “Year of Africa,” 17 African nations declared their independence from European colonialism.
• Diasporic solidarity bolstered the global reach of the Black Freedom movement, a period of activism from the mid-1940s to the 1970s marked by both the civil rights movement, which annulled Jim Crow laws and practices, and the Black Power movement, which heightened Black consciousness and pride.
• Diasporic solidarity continues to the present day. In 2019, Ghana’s government celebrated the Year of Return, an initiative to reunite African descendants in the diaspora to the continent.