The 1945 Pan-African Congress
Witness History
BBC
4.5 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 5 November 2020
⏱️ 14 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The 5th Pan-African Congress was held in Manchester in 1945 to shape the post-war struggle against colonialism and racial discrimination. Prominent black activists, intellectuals and trade union leaders from around the world attended the meeting - among them Kwame Nkrumah and Jomo Kenyatta, the future leaders of independent Ghana and Kenya. We delve into the archive to hear from one of the delegates, the late ANC activist and writer Peter Abrahams, and we speak to the historian Prof Hakim Adi from Chichester University about the significance of the meeting.
Photo: The 5th Pan African Congress, 1945 (Manchester Libraries)
Transcript
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| 0:30.9 | Hello and |
| 0:35.0 | the BBC World Service with me Alex Last. |
| 0:40.0 | And today we take you back 75 years to 1945 when around 200 people attended the |
| 0:46.2 | 5th Pan-African Congress, held in the town hall in Manchester, England, a meeting that would help |
| 0:52.2 | define the battle to end colonialism. |
| 0:55.0 | On a blustery day in the bomb damaged British city of Manchester in October 1945 |
| 1:05.9 | Peter Abraham, Sir Black South African activist and writer, arrived at a special meeting |
| 1:12.2 | that would shape the struggle against colonial rule. |
| 1:16.0 | I was in a dream. I was seeing something I had not thought of before. I was seeing the possibility of a three continent and remember |
| 1:29.6 | all of Africa still belonged to the white people. It wasn't until then that Pan-African |
| 1:36.4 | Congress that I saw the way ahead clearly anew. One day all of Africa would be free. |
| 1:47.0 | Abrahams was one of around 200 people, many from Africa and the Caribbean, who'd gathered to attend the fifth Pan-African Congress |
| 1:55.6 | being held in a town hall in Chilton, Manchester, just months after the end of the Second World War. They were there to discuss common problems, |
| 2:05.0 | racism, discrimination, economic inequality and how to win independence for the colonies. |
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