Beyond Garveyism: Accra Roots of Laura Adorkor Koffey's Pan-African Project

This online talk explores a hidden lineage of pan-African organizing in Ghana, one cut short by murder and accusations of fraud in the United States. 

In 1926, Laura Adorkor Koffey emerged as a pan-African leader in the Gold Coast, organizing for diasporic return in America. Widely considered a movement mother (called "Mother Kofi"), she was murdered by political opponents during a public lecture two years later. Suspects were drawn from the Garvey movement, who had launched a national campaign to discredit Koffey. 

Koffey's muder would have degraded the Garvey movement if her mission and identity were treated as evidence of a legitimate African invitation, one of seven that emerged from the Gold Coast between 1898 and 1928. Those invitations evolved from the experience of Brazilian return to Accra and early pan-African experiments that aimed to reinvent Africans' relationship to the global diaspora. 

This online talk will take place via zoom. No need to pre-register. 

Ebony Coletu is Assistant Professor of African Americn Studies, English, and African Studies at Pennsylvania State University. 

This online lecture is sponsored by African and African American Studies in conjunction with courses AAAS 88.16 Sovereignty, Race and Rights and AAAS 88.17 Filmmaking and Visual Culture