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Book Talk: Cross-Border Cosmopolitans: The Making of a Pan-African North America
Tues., Oct. 17 | 12:30 pm | 223 Philosophy Hall | RSVP
20th-century Black history cannot be understood without accounting for the influence of Pan-African thought. In the early 1900s, Marcus Garvey’s followers saw North America, particularly Canada, as a base from which to liberate the Black masses from colonialism. Then, after World War II, Vietnam War resisters, Black Panthers, and Caribbean students joined the throngs of cross-border migrants to denounce militarism, imperialism, and capitalism. As revolutionaries from Oakland to Toronto dreamed of an “African world”, the prospect of coalitions among the Black Power, Red Power, and Quebecois Power movements inspired U.S. and Canadian intelligence services to infiltrate and sabotage Black organizations across North America.
In his new book Cross-Border Cosmopolitans: The Making of a Pan-African North America (University of North Carolina Press, 2023), Dr. Wendell Adjetey explores how twentieth-century global Black liberation movements began within the U.S.-Canadian borderlands as cross-border, continental struggles. This work reveals the revolutionary legacies of the Underground Railroad and America’s Great Migration, and the hemispheric and transatlantic dimensions of this history.
Dr. Wendell Nii Laryea Adjetey is assistant professor of post-Reconstruction U.S. and African Diaspora history at McGill University, where he holds the William Dawson Chair. A first-generation high school graduate, he earned an PhD, MPhil, and MA from Yale University in history and African American studies. He completed his BA in history and political science at the University of Toronto (University of St. Michael’s College), where he also earned an MA in political science and ethnic, immigration, and pluralism studies.
This event is cosponsored by the Center for African Studies, the Center for Race and Gender, and the Department of African American Studies & African Diaspora Studies. |