Collected for the first time, the foundational contributions
of a scholar and activist who shaped the study of Garveyism and
pan-Africanism
This
volume brings together Robert A. Hill’s most important writings for the
first time, highlighting his intellectual contributions to the history
of pan-Africanism. A pioneering scholar and activist, a groundbreaking
builder of pan-African archives, and the editor of the multivolume
Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, Hill
remains underacknowledged for his influence on the field. This
collection is a long-overdue testament to his legacy.
Adam
Ewing showcases Hill’s groundbreaking writings on Garveyism, the
pan-African, anticolonial movement that spread across the globe
following World War I. Hill’s essays trace Marcus Garvey’s evolving
thought and illuminate the resonance of the movement in the Caribbean
and its diaspora, in the United States, and across sub-Saharan Africa.
The volume also includes Hill’s writings on diverse aspects of
pan-Africanism, including the impostor figure in diaspora history, Cyril
Briggs’s African Blood Brotherhood, the Rastafarian movement, the
fiction of George Schuyler, George Beckford and the Abeng collective in
Jamaica, the theories of Walter Rodney, the life and thought of C.L.R.
James, and the music of Bob Marley.
This volume not only
demonstrates Hill’s intellectual praxis and its roots in his academic
influences and personal experiences but also reveals the breadth,
diversity, complexity, and centrality of the pan-African tradition in
African diasporic politics and thought.
Publication
of this work made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the
American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the
Humanities.
