The International Strategy of African American Women at the Columbian Exposition and Its Legacy: Pan-Africanism, Decolonization and Human Rights

The essay focuses on the international activism of African American women between 1893 and 1960 identifying it as an essential area of study and stressing the importance of the presence of African American women at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago for understanding the origins of that activism and reconstructing political networks that would endure many decades. It seeks to respond at least in part to some critical questions: how did African American women use Pan-Africanism as a resource in their battle for racial progress and gender equality? What roles did these women play in the various Pan African movements? To what extent could they hold leadership positions within these movements, at least during certain phases? To do this it analyzes the foreign policy views of different African American Women associations and the political experience of many of their leaders.