Pan-African Lives, Racial Politics, and Belonging in Africa with Jacqueline-Bethel Tchouta Mougoué

Institute for Research in the Humanities

University Club, Room 212

432 East Campus Mall

Madison, Wisconsin 53703

Limited space is available because of the room size; please, email Jacqueline at jmougoue@wisc.edu if you would like to attend the talk by this Monday, October 3 (presenters must formally provide a list of guests who plan to attend).

EVENT SUMMARY:

In 1953, three Ugandans set out in a Peugeot station wagon on a two-month mission trip across Africa. All were recent converts to Baha’ism, a religion founded in 19th century Iran. One stayed in the Republic of Congo, the second in the Central African Republic; 27-year-old Enoch Olinga continued to Cameroon. Once there, he quickly became the leader of a small community of Baha’i adherents, including local Africans and Black Americans; he later married a Cameroonian woman. With Baha’i theology and expansion a backdrop rather than a focus, Mougoué explores how Olinga and other adherents spread Baha’i and its teachings about racial harmony and human unity westward on the continent, from the 1950s to the 1970s, a period of global south activism and growing Pan-Africanism. Baha’i tenets of racial equity, combined with these larger political contexts, is the rich background in which Mougoué’s project’s subjects expanded understandings of a global Pan-Africanism uniting people of color, fostering optimism about Africa and imminent, lasting global harmony. Many made intracultural marriages, reflecting this flourishing, as well as distinct relationships, including with African presidents Kwame Nkrumah and William Tubman and jazz legend Dizzy Gillespie.

This project, which will result in a monograph, draws from history to contribute to scholarship on the African diaspora, Pan-Africanism, and racial politics. It provides essential historical insights into contemporary discussions about global (racial) harmony, diasporic experiences, transnational living, and global belonging in our increasingly connected world. In today’s context of global Black Lives Matter activism, looking to the racialized experiences and relationships that sprang up during the decolonization and civil rights movements of the mid-20th century invites significant reflection about global racial equity and harmony. Against the backdrop of today’s mass racial violence in the Global North and international conflicts, the story of the people Mougoué focuses on offers one historical viewpoint of how individuals of color proposed an alternative message and avenue toward racial equity and international peace, one that went beyond their religious stance and across racial boundaries.