Pan-African Congress - 5th Pan-African Congress

5th Pan-African Congress

The Fifth Pan-African Congress was held in Manchester, United Kingdom, 15-21 October 1945. It followed the foundation of the Pan-African Federation in Manchester in 1944.

Africans again fought in World War II. After this war, many felt that they now deserved independence. This Congress is widely considered to have been the most important. Organised by the influential Trinidadian pan-Africanist George Padmore and Ghanaian independence leader Kwame Nkrumah, it was attended by 90 delegates, 26 from Africa. They included many scholars, intellectuals and political activists who would later go on to become influential leaders in various African independence movements and the American civil rights movement, including the Kenyan independence leader Jomo Kenyatta, American activist and academic W. E. B. Du Bois, Malawi's Hastings Banda, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, prominent Jamaican barrister Dudley Thompson and Obafemi Awolowo and Jaja Wachuku from Nigeria. It also led partially to the creation of the Pan-African Federation, founded in 1946 by Nkrumah and Kenyatta.

There were 33 delegates from the West Indies and 35 from various British organizations includings the West African Students Union. The presence of 77-year-old Du Bois was historic, as he had organized the First Pan-African Congress in 1919.

The British Press scarcely mentioned the conference. A number of resolutions were passed such as the criminalization of racial discrimination and the main resolution which decried imperialism and capitalism.