In April 1966, thousands of artists, musicians, performers and writers from across Africa and its diaspora gathered in the Senegalese capital, Dakar, to take part in the First World Festival of Negro Arts (Premier Festival Mondial des arts nègres). The international forum provided by the Dakar Festival showcased a wide array of arts and was attended by such celebrated luminaries as Duke Ellington, Josephine Baker, Aimé Césaire, André Malraux and Wole Soyinka. Described by Senegalese President Léopold Sédar Senghor, as 'the elaboration of a new humanism which this time will include all of humanity on the whole of our planet earth', the festival constituted a highly symbolic moment in the era of decolonization and the push for civil rights for black people in the United States. In essence, the festival sought to perform an emerging Pan-African culture, that is, to give concrete cultural expression to the ties that would bind the newly liberated African 'homeland' to black people in the diaspora. This volume is the first sustained attempt to provide not only an overview of the festival itself but also of its multiple legacies, which will help us better to understand the 'festivalization' of Africa that has occurred in recent decades with most African countries now hosting a number of festivals as part of a national tourism and cultural development strategy.

This thesis explores The First World Festival of Negro Arts, which took place in Dakar, Senegal in April of 1966 through the lens of American Journalism. Founded by Leopold Senghor and slated as the first of its kind, The First World Festival of Negro Arts brought together Black literature, music, theater, visual arts, film and dance. As one of the founding fathers of the Negritude movement, Senghor defined this movement as affirmation or consciousness of the value of Black or African culture, heritage, and identity. However, the first World Festival of Negro Arts promoted static notions of "Africanness." Through analysis of the Pan-African and Negritude movements, which were very popular among Africans and the people of the African diaspora during the 1960's, both domestically and abroad, I will investigate the shortcomings this festival encountered. Utilizing personal narrative, I will challenge notions of shared Black solidarity, heritage, and kinship between Africa and the peoples of its diaspora as suggested through Senghor's Negritude. In this thesis, the First World Festival of Negro Arts serves as the stage on which the disparities between African and African American experiences during the 1960's converge. These contradictions traverse mere differences in opinion of art and music; rather they exemplify the vastness and depth of Africa, and the African Diaspora. As a result, the World Festival of Negro Arts ultimately dashed the dreams of global Black consciousness and solidarity that it hoped to stimulate. Because of this, I have used my research on Negritude and this festival as a tool to further challenge the discourses around ideas of a "traditional" Africa, its art, its economy, and the notion of solidarity between African and African American people as presented through the ideas of Negritude. This research has very much informed my search for self, for identity and for home. However, I have wondered if my interest in and perceived connection to Africa perpetuate the very static notion of belonging that I have criticized so heavily through Senghor's Negritude? Unfortunately, I am not yet able to answer this question helping me to further realize that this thesis is merely the first step in the right direction of unpacking ideas of Blackness and identity.

William Greaves is one of the most significant and compelling American filmmakers of the past century. Best known for his experimental film about its own making, Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One, Greaves was an influential independent documentary filmmaker who produced, directed, shot, and edited more than a hundred films on a variety of social issues and on key African American figures ranging from Muhammad Ali to Ralph Bunche to Ida B. Wells. A multitalented artist, his career also included stints as a songwriter, a member of the Actors Studio, and, during the late 1960s, a producer and cohost of Black Journal, the first national television show focused on African American culture and politics. This volume provides the first comprehensive overview of Greaves’s remarkable career. It brings together a wide range of material, including a mix of incisive essays from critics and scholars, Greaves’s own writings, an extensive meta-interview with Greaves, conversations with his wife and collaborator Louise Archambault Greaves and his son David, and a critical dossier on Symbiopsychotaxiplasm. Together, they illuminate Greaves’s mission to use filmmaking as a tool for transforming the ways African Americans were perceived by others and the ways they saw themselves. This landmark book is an essential resource on Greaves’s work and his influence on independent cinema and African-American culture.

This volume is the first sustained attempt to provide an overview of the First World Festival of Negro Arts, held in Dakar in 1966, and of its multiple legacies.