Political Events

The Second Pan-African Congress

 

The Second Pan-African Congress was organized in August and September 1921, with sessions held in London, Paris, and Brussels. The Pan-African Congresses are a series of conferences organized since 1900 to discuss strategies for establishing the independence of African and Caribbean countries and to end racism against Black people worldwide. To achieve this, the congresses aimed to cultivate unity among Black diasporas around the world. The participants included representatives from African and Caribbean colonies and African American delegations, with an important role played by W.E.B. DuBois. The manifestos concluding the Congresses presented economic, social, and political demands. Paul Panda Fernana and several members of the Union Congolaise participated. The Belgian colonial press portrayed these congresses as 'hidden communist and black nationalist gatherings, where the liberation of Black peoples, wherever they were in the world, from white oppression was claimed'. In 1919, Fernana also participated in the first Pan-African Congress, after which he, along with others, created the first Congolese association in Belgium, l’Union Congolaise, an association for mutual aid and moral development of Congolese in Belgium and for protest.