Session Abstract

In recent years, historians of the 1960s have turned away from national histories to focus on the global dimension of the culture, social changes and political ideologies of the decade. Scholars have focused on the cultivation of transnational links and solidarities between geographically and culturally disparate groups, looking at how activists both imagined themselves as part of a global movement and worked to build relationships across borders and languages. Our panel, “Transnational Activism in the 1960s: A Global Perspective,” builds from and expands on the scholarship of the transnational 1960s. It shifts focus from studies of exclusively European and North American networks to look synoptically at 1960s student and activist communities in North America, the Caribbean and Africa, incorporating new perspectives and new locations into our understanding of the “Long 1960s.”

John Munro’s paper, “Legacies of the Anti-colonial Front,” looks at the efforts of American activists to link their struggles against white supremacy in the United States to the global anti-colonial movement in the Third World. Looking at meetings like the Pan-African Congress as well as the travels and exchanges of individuals, he traces the influence of anti-colonial activists in the Civil Rights movement, arguing that African American intellectuals possessed a transnational consciousness from well before 1960.

Andrew Daily’s paper, “Maoism in the French Caribbean: the 1968 GONG Trial,” traces the emergence and suppression of the Guadeloupean anti-colonial organization, the Guadeloupean National Organization Group (GONG). Black Guadeloupean student activists, organizing against French colonialism, harnessed the language of Maoism to build solidarity with white French radicals. Suppressed by the French state, their trial for subversion in 1968 attracted widespread interest in Paris and in Europe and demonstrated how local activists used radical language to frame their struggles in a global context of activism and revolution.

Louisa Rice’s paper, “Before Africa Ceased to be Colonized, It was already Neocolonized:” Students and Youth in French-Speaking West Africa,” examines how African students at the University of Dakar organized to “decolonize the University.” Arguing that the students both reflected global trends of youth activism and organizing, and reflected local concerns over the pace and substance of decolonization, she argues that Senegalese student activists, despite Senegal’s formal independence, mobilized the language of decolonization to criticize continued links between France and Senegal, and particularly continued French domination of the University.

The three panelists – assisted by the Chair and Commentator – build on work done on the transnational 1960s while expanding the geographical and theoretical scope of the “Long 1960s” and 1960s-era activism and youth culture. By incorporating perspectives from Africa, the Caribbean, Europe and North America, our panel demonstrates that the 1960s were not only transnational but also global, linking youth and activists across continents. This panel aims to present work by young scholars as well as to stimulate dialogue about the commonalities among, as well as the differences between, the varied experiences and geographies of a truly global 1960s.