An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States

international monopoly finance capital, working through the indigenous
bourgeoisie, attempts to secure an even tighter stranglehold over the
economic life of the continent than was exercised during the colonial
period.” 59
Nkrumah argued that revolution required unity across the African
diaspora. For him, African revolution was a part of the global movements
for decolonization. Wherever Black people lived, their resistance was a
move toward the end of colonialism. 60 Only through revolution and unity
across the African continent could true liberation occur. 61 Although he
often ignored religious and political differences among ethnic groups and
tribes, he deeply influenced the Pan-Africanist thought of Carmichael.
Carmichael’s idea of Pan-Africanism was a critique of settler
colonialism as well as a reclamation of Black people’s indigenous
connection to Africa. He understood that settler colonialism was a global
phenomenon, existing in the US, South Africa and Zimbabwe, and Israel.
He wrote, “Africans today, irrespective of geographical location, have a
common enemy and face common problems. We are the victims of
imperialism, racism, and we are a landless people.” 62 In regard to the
landless, he described two groups: “One group was taken from the land
(slavery), the second group had the land taken from them (colonialism).”
He continued, “We are Africans. Africa is our home. Even if a man cannot
return home it is his dying wish.” 63 Carmichael’s vision of returning home
was not just some blind, idealistic return to ancient Africa, or one that
erases the differences between Africans in the United States and those on
the continent. It identified a common ground between the two groups in the
global sphere of enslavement and dispossession, with the land issue being
the central thread.
Nkrumah believed that African unity rested on a common language and
land base. But those were not the only things that would hold together a
sustained revolution. 64 Nkrumah, like Carmichael, understood that the
African diaspora required new ideas of how people belonged to Africa, and
if Africa were to have total unity, they would have to include those on the
continent and those throughout the diaspora. 65 Nkrumah did not delve into
the major regional, cultural, and ethnic differences among tribal groups;
however, the economic component affected African peoples throughout the
diaspora in different ways.