Russell Rickford, associate professor of history in the College of Arts and Sciences, is writing a book about Guyana and its role in Pan African thought during the 1960s and 1970s, when Pan Africanism was sweeping the world. He’s titled the book "A Proxy Africa," after Pan Africanists’ vision for Guyana, which emerged as a focal point for Pan Africanism in South America, and their emphasis on African cultural retention.
“These African American thinkers believed Pan Africanist ideas and practices—the linking of liberation forces throughout the Black world, among African descended people—were the essential way to elevate and fulfill the Black struggles of the 1960s,” Rickford says in a profile by Cornell Research. “In this moment, there’s a convergence between a set of African American political actors—who are looking for ways to practice their Pan Africanist politics in a more concrete, engaged, and effective way—and the desire of the Guyanese government to position Guyana as a Third World, Pan Africanist stronghold.”
