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Press Release:
First
World Conference, Aswan Egypt July 21-23,
2006
Re-educating the African in the 21st
Century: Through Balance, Peace and
Justice (Ma'at).
The John Henrik
Clarke&endash;C. L. R. James African World
Research Institute, a not-for-profit
organization, was founded 1999
in response to the imperative to
advance the Pan-Africanist ideal. John
Henrik Clarke (1915-1998) and Cyril Lionel
Robert James (1901-1989) are among the
venerated Pan-Africanists of the twentieth
century, and as such, we saw it
appropriate to dedicate our work in honor
of these two personages.
According to John
Henrik Clarke (1991), in 1881 Edward
Wilmot Blyden (a prominent Caribbean
activist and a theologian from the Virgin
Islands) called for Africans all over the
world to reclaim their Africanness. Early
in the twentieth century, people of the
African world were searching for a
definition of themselves and their
relationship to the rest of the world.
African people in the United States of
America were still recovering from the
Civil War and the subsequent
disappointment and betrayal of the
Reconstruction period.
1900
witnessed the first Pan-Africanist
Congress, which was a response to
Blyden's call, referred to as the African
Consciousness Movement by Caribbean
activists. H. Sylvester Williams, a
young Trinidadian lawyer, was the
major convener of the first
Pan-Africanist Congress held in
London. He assigned a name to the
effort by calling
it Pan-Africanism. At this
meeting Williams and others concluded that
the struggle in the Caribbean, Africa and
the United States of America was basically
the same, the struggle for direction and
definition.
At the first
Pan-Africanist Congress and subsequent
ones Pan-Africanists were trying to answer
questions such as: Whom do we need and who
needs us? They were attempting to regain
what slavery and colonialism had taken
away. In many ways Clarke tells us that
the Pan-Africanist Movement opened the
pathways for the struggle of civil rights
in the United States of America, for the
federation of the islands in the
Caribbean, the end of colonialism, and for
the independence and unification of all of
Africa. At later Pan-Africanist
Congresses, W.E.B Dubois, George
Padmore, C.L.R. James, Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo
Kenyatta, Sekou Toure and others became
the seminal voices and world leaders of
the African Liberation Movement. In
like manner, we expect that future world
leaders and ambassadors of the African
World will emerge from this conversation
to change the course of our history.
Against this backdrop, the John Henrik
Clarke&endash;C.L.R. James African World
Research Institute will host its First
World Conference. The theme is:
Re-educating the African in the 21st
Century: Through Balance, Peace and
Justice (Ma'at). In this regard, we must
refocus our attention on the lost concept
of nation, the essential selfishness of
survival, and self-reliance propagated by
personages like the Barbadian born Prince
Hall, Peter Odgen of Antigua, the
Jamaicans Robert Campbell and Marcus
Garvey, Ghanaians, Joseph P. Danquah and
Francis Kwame Nkrumah, Toussaint
L'Ouverture and Dessalines,
Haitian-born, Patrice Lumumba of the
Congo, Nigerian Nnandi Azikiwe, and of
course the educational and political
programs of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B
Dubois, African Americans.
Central
Problem
What are the reviews
and implications of the United Nations'
Decade for the Eradication of Poverty
(1997-2006)? This First World
Conference brings together a slate of the
foremost African-descended thinkers,
scholars, artists and activists to lead
the conversation about what this
UN Decade has meant for Africa and
the African Diaspora. Participating
delegates will have opportunity to
exchange information about
the implications of this UN Decade
and the re-education of African and
African descended people in the 21st
Century.
Response
Our delegates
will come from Africa, Asia, England,
Europe, the Americas, the Pacific and the
Caribbean. They will interact with
our featured speakers: Dr. Asa Hilliard,
III (Georgia State University), Dr.
Andrée-Nicola McLaughlin
(Coordinator of International
Cross-Cultural Black Women's Studies
Institute and Medgar Evers College), Dr.
Abdulalim Shabazz (Lincoln University),
Dr. Lily Golden (Founding Director,
Alexander Pushkin Foundation, Russia), Dr.
Ernie Smith (Drew University of Medicine
and Science), Dr. Marta Vega (Founding
Director of the Caribbean Cultural
Center), Dr. Oba T'Shaka (San Francisco
State University), and Dr. Vimbai Chivaura
(Zimbabwe University) as they share their
thoughts and expertise on the topics of
economic development in relationship to
the family, health, culture, politics,
religion, gender, intergenerational
relationships, science and global
technological strategies to connect and
maintain the global African
family. Selected panelists will also
join the conversation on each day of the
conference. (We are encouraging
interested persons to respond to our Call
for Papers at
www.sankofaworldpublishers.com)
Activities
include general assembly presentations,
plenary sessions, workshops, and
explorations of partnerships with
organizations in Africa and the African
Diaspora, international cultural
events featuring Deadprez, P.O.W.,
AJA, Nubian performers, and
more.
The 3-day
conference is followed by a 14-day Egypt
Study Tour which begins with the first
site at Abu Simbel, a 4-day 5 star luxury
cruise up the Nile, visits to
the rest of sites on the historical
route, museums, Nubian villages,
shopping and more.
Delegates attending the
Conference only will depart from JFK, NY
on July 19 and returning July 25, 2006,
Conference and Tour July 19 to August 5,
2006, and those attending the Tour only
depart from JFK July 22 and returning
August 5, 2006.
For further
information, contact Conference
Coordinator (USA):
Dr. Clinton Crawford,
Information Headquarters,
P.O. Box 473592,
Brooklyn, NY 11247.
Phone: (718)
756-8904. Hours: 9:00 am
to 9:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time
(EST)
E-mail:
sankofawp@netscape.net &
firstwc2006@netscape.net
Visit us at
http://www.sankofaworldpublishers.com
http://www.sankofaworldpublishers.com/sankofawponline/sankofawp-worldconference06.htm
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