About this Guide
For this guide, Pan-Africanism is defined as the idea that peoples of African descent have common interests and should be unified. Pan-Africanism can take shape as political, cultural, artistic, and literary movements.
This guide provides information on the Pan-Africanist Movement and its influence on Black History, with an emphasized focus on art. This guide links to resources such as books, websites, articles, and media pertaining to the topic. The people highlighted in this guide are related to Pan-Africanism in a myriad of ways including, but not limited to, being a member of a Pan-African organization, noting Pan-African intellectuals as inspiration, or participating in a movement that formed because of Pan-African Unification theory.
This guide does not represent a comprehensive list of all the important artists, figures, and texts of the Pan-African Movement and the movements it influenced. The highlighted people and resources were selected using library materials, popular press articles, and museum websites; these sources are included in the Further Research page. If you need help finding additional information or would like to nominate an individual or group to be included in this list, please email us.
Guide created and augmented by individuals at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign as part of the #FromMargintoCenter initiative at the Ricker Library of Architecture and Art. Edited for use by Indiana University-Bloomington by graduate assistants, Loesje Krabbe and Caroline Scheving.