汎アフリカ会議
In February 1919, the first Pan-African Congress was organized by W. E. B. Du Bois and Ida Gibbs Hunt, wife of US Consul William Henry Hunt, who was at that time working at the American consulate in Saint-Étienne, France. There were 57 delegates representing 15 countries, a smaller number than originally intended because British and American governments refused to issue passports to their citizens who had planned on attending.
In 1921, the Second Pan-African Congress met in several sessions in London, Paris and Brussels. There was an Indian revolutionary who took part, Shapurji Saklatvala, and a journalist from Ghana named W. F. Hutchinson who spoke. This session of the Congress was the most focused for change of all the meetings thus far. At the London session, Resolutions were adopted, later restated by W. E. B. Du Bois in his Manifesto To the League of Nations:
The only dissenting voice was that of Blaise Diagne, a French politician of African origin, who represented Senegal in the French Chamber of Deputies. He soon abandoned the idea of Pan-Africanism because he thought the London Manifesto declaration too dangerously extreme.
列強はアフリカ人の政治参加と職業選択に大きな制限を加えた。ヴェルサイユ条約の交渉に参加出来なかった事で、黒人の元軍人や高学歴都市階層は失望した。植民地主義は資本主義の上に成り立つ為、平等と国際協力を謳う社会主義はアフリカの革命を求める人々には魅力的に映った。
ジャマイカ人で社会主義文筆家のクラウデ・マッケイ(英語版)が1922年にレフ・トロツキーに送った手紙では黒人兵士の体験についてこう述べる。