Were Classical Pan-Africanist Eurocentric?

Classical Pan-Africanism, according to William Jeremiah Moses, is defined as an ideology whose goal was the creation of an autonomous Black nation-state with definite geographical boundaries somewhere in Africa. Classical Pan-Africanism, also known as Proto-Pan-Africanism, is considered to have originated during the drive for self-determination in the 1600s; moving on to the success of the Haitian Revolution at the turn of the 19th century; to its flourishing in the 1850s, its eclipse in the 1870s, and its renewal and apex in the Garvey movement. Nevertheless, the classical era of Pan-Africanism was based primarily in the United States, among the principal spokespersons were African Americans Martin Delany, Bishop Henry McNeal Turner, James T. Holly, and Anna Julia Cooper; the West Indian, Edward Wilmot Blyden; and the West African, Africanus Horton. Their works culminated with Henry Sylvester Williams coining the term Pan-Africanism in the late 1890s, as well as organizing the first Pan-African conference in London in 1900. The conference was organized with the assistance of Alexander Walters, a leader of Blacks in the United States and a Bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.

Additionally, Classical Pan-Africanist efforts were situated in a high culture esthetic that focused on racial uplift, Christian evangelicalism, and European cultural…