Pan Africanism The ideology and movement that aims to unify and uplift people of African descent, is also known as Pan Africanism. It encourages the solidarity of Africans worldwide, focusing on the belief that unity is vital to nationalism, independence, the political and economic cooperation, and historical and cultural awareness within Africans. Pan Africanism sought to eliminate the philosophy of that in which slavery and colonialism encouraged negative, unfounded categorizations of the race, culture, and values of the African people. Pan- Africanist ideals began in the 19th century in response to European colonization and exploitation of the African continent. Martin Delany, Edward Blyden and Alexander Crummell were early Pan African members. They believed that black people could not develop alongside whites and therefore advocated the creation of a black nation, suggesting that Africa was the best place to stay. Henry Sylvester-Williams, in 1897 formed the African Association in London, England to encourage Pan-African unity in British colonies. He organized the first Pan-African meeting in collaboration with several black leaders representing various countries of the African Diaspora. This conference introduced W.E.B. Du Bois, who is known as the father of modern Pan- Africanism, working to create a unified African nation where all Africans scattered from their ancestral home to different parts of the world, the Diaspora, can live. It was him who gave the “movement” to Pan- Africa. Starting out as a sequence of events which went from practice to concept to the term to the movement, Du Bois organized the Pan African Movement, initiated by the Paris Conference of 1919.