Civil Rights Mouvements in Transnational Perspective

Africa-Americans and the “darker races” in the 20th century.

Thursday 16 October 2014
14:00  Centre for Indian Studies in Africa, University of Witwatersrand, 36 Jorissen Street, Johannesburg

Pap Ndiaye
Professor of history at Sciences Po Paris.

By contrast with US-centered studies of the Civil rights movement, my presentation will highlight the interactions between the US movement and a number of social and political movements in colonized areas of Africa (including South Africa) and the Caribbean. In other words, I bring into the same historical framework the fight by African Americans to end segregation and disenfranchisement in the US and the fight by other groups to end colonization – or make it more egalitarian — and various forms of colonial / racial domination. The 20th century can thus be seen, through the lenses of « contre-histoire » as the century of a multi-faceted challenge to white supremacy throughout the world by the “Darker Races” (Du Bois).

Pap Ndiaye is Professor of history at Sciences Po Paris. He is specialized in US history and the political history of people of African descent. He has recently published La Condition noire. Essai sur une minorité française (2008), les Noirs Américains, en marche vers l’égalité (2009) and une Histoire de Chicago (2013).