This book examines the interaction between the Communist International (Comintern) and the global struggle for the liberation of Africa and the African Diaspora during the inter-war period. In particular, it focuses on the history of the International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers (ITUCNW), established by the Red International of Labour Unions (Profintern) in 1928 and its activities in Africa, the United States, the Caribbean and Europe.

The first survey of the Pan-African movement this century, this book provides a history of the individuals and organisations that have sought the unity of all those of African origin as the basis for advancement and liberation. Initially an idea and movement that took root among the African Diaspora, in more recent times Pan-Africanism has been embodied in the African Union, the organisation of African states which includes the entire African Diaspora as its 'sixth region'. Hakim Adi covers many of the key political figures of the 20th century, including Du Bois, Garvey, Malcolm X, Nkrumah and Gaddafi, as well as Pan-African culture expression from Négritude to the wearing of the Afro hair style and the music of Bob Marley.

"This book tells the story of the struggles of West African students in Britain, and their battles to articulate a coherent, anti-colonial politics. Hakim Adi documents the emergence of the West African Students' Union (WASU), and its alliances with political organisations in Britain - including both the CPGB and the Labour Party - as well as with organisations in Africa. WASU was an immensely vibrant organisation, and its members helped to pave the way for the successful independence movements later to influence so many African states. In West Africans in Britain 1900-1960, Hakim Adi charts the achievements of the student movement in combating racism and the 'colour bar' in Britain, and shows how the hostility of British society served only to create a sense of unity amongst the students. This allowed WASU the ideological and political space to form its critique of colonial rule. Based on extensive research, the book is valuable for the light it sheds on the lives of black people living in Britain before the second world war. But the book is more than a simple account of Africans within the context of British society - it shows the influence these pioneers have had on a world scale." -- Publisher's description

Originally published in London in 1931 by the R.I.L.U. (Red International of Labour Unions) Magazine for the International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers, this publication had three purposes: "To briefly set forth some of the conditions of life of the Negro workers and peasants in different parts of the world; to enumerate some of the struggles which they have attempted to wage in order to free themselves from the yoke of imperialism; and, to indicate in a general way the tasks of the proletariat in the advanced countries so that the millions of black toilers might be better prepared to carry on the struggles against their white imperialist oppressors and native (race) exploiters, and join forces with their white brothers against the common enemy-World Capitalism."

Brings together Pan-Africanist thinkers and activists from the Anglophone and Francophone worlds of he last two-hundred years.

In this intellectual history, Minkah Makalani reveals how early-twentieth-century black radicals organized an international movement centered on ending racial oppression, colonialism, class exploitation, and global white supremacy. Focused primarily on two organizations, the Harlem-based African Blood Brotherhood, whose members became the first black Communists in the United States, and the International African Service Bureau, the major black anticolonial group in 1930s London, In the Cause of Freedom examines the ideas, initiatives, and networks of interwar black radicals, as well as how they communicated across continents. Through a detailed analysis of black radical periodicals and extensive research in U.S., English, Dutch, and Soviet archives, Makalani explores how black radicals thought about race; understood the ties between African diasporic, Asian, and international workers' struggles; theorized the connections between colonialism and racial oppression; and confronted the limitations of international leftist organizations. Considering black radicals of Harlem and London together for the first time, In the Cause of Freedom reorients the story of blacks and Communism from questions of autonomy and the Kremlin's reach to show the emergence of radical black internationalism separate from, and independent of, the white Left.