Tribute to Professor Locksley Edmondson: His Contribution to Pan African Connections

GOFAD's focus  on Professor Locksley Edmondson this week  is as much to pay tribute to him as an   internationally  recognized scholar of Pan- Africanism as  to highlight  the launching of a volume of essays edited by Professors  Carol Boyce Davis and N'Dri Therese Assie Lumumba of the Africana Studies and Research Center Cornel University in his honour. 
 
Pan African Connections published by African World Press, 2021 is a fitting title for the book dedicated to Locksley Edmondson, a Jamaican, that   emerged out of a symposium   held four (4)  years ago with contributions from a wide range of Pan African Scholars from the African Continent, the USA and the Caribbean. They assembled at Cornell University  to pay homage to  Professor Edmondson on the eve of his retirement. I was privileged to  participate  in the  event to honor this  distinguished scholar, gentleman and friend with whom I have been associated for over four (4) decades. We overlapped as colleagues at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona where he spent 7 years. His impact on the scholarly endeavors and the rearrangements of the programmatic and administrative directions include Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, Coordinator of the exercise establishing the UWI Center of Tourism in The Bahamas and Co-chair of the symposium of regional and international scholars out of which emerged the renowned Consortium Graduate School of  the Social Sciences in the Caribbean whose Directors included Professor Donald Harris, and the late Professors Raymond Smith and Norman Girvan.    The voluminous  tributes to  Professor Edmondson's contributions are not confined to the institutions he served  including  University of West Indies (UWI), Jamaica, Makerere University,  Uganda, Waterloo University, Canada and  in the USA,  Southern Illinois University, Carbondale  and  Cornell University. His academic tributaries spawned connections with thousands of students, hundreds of colleagues-professors and researchers, and multitudes of public servants, political leaders,  practitioners and community activists across the global arenas. These have contributed to his  massive legacy that will surely remain undiminished.See Professor  Edmondson's biography https://africana.cornell.edu/locksley-edmondson
 
 
Sketches of the Book 
 
The essays in the volume explore  important aspects of Professor Edmondson's enormous intellectual contributions. However, from among the labyrinth of his extensive body of work, I thought that it would be useful to provide a flavour of the book   by confining  my  review  to sketches  of its contents with special reference to:

• Some of the pathways  to his  Africa, African American and Caribbean connections.
•  Related challenges and triumphs resulting from these connections. 
• Speculations on the directions that his scholarship may lead current and future     generations of scholars and practitioners to chart.

 
 
 
Some Pathways associated with his Work 
 
First,  the links between Trans-Atlantic Slavery and Racism. These provide the internationalization of race  and underscore the philosophical moorings of Professor Edmondson’s interpretations that Africans, African Americans and the Afro Caribbean are united in ancestry, history of oppression and suffering under their European conquerors. He believes that the modern systems of slavery evolving from the Trans-Atlantic slave trade had cumulative impact on racial, economic and religious factors and ultimately on white world/ black world relationships. This led  secondly, to his thesis,  that Racism is a  Consequence of slavery. In this respect, he draws conclusions from critical reviews of  the analysis and advocacy from among others, including  Marcus Garvey, W.E B  Dubois,  Carl Degler, Winthrop Jordan, and CLR James. He is of the view that “when all is said and done,  the common conclusion which may be adduced from these assessments is that in the absence of slavery, through which racial prejudice and discrimination were systematized, matters of race and color would not have been destined to play so important a role in modern political and socio economic thought and policy."
 
A third pathway  establishes the  view that  The African Diaspora, Pan Africanism and the location of the African Diaspora in North America constitute a dynamic demographic group from Anglophone, Francophone, Portuguese and Spanish Africa. This is intricately linked fourthly to the Rise of Capitalism integrally related to racial exploitation.  He draws on Eric Williams' historical treatise,  Capitalism and Slavery and Walter Rodney's  How Europe underdeveloped Africa to support his views  of  the role of slavery in capitalist exploitation and economic growth reinforced by religious considerations. These accordingly gave impetus to ‘racial slavery’ and ‘the development of racism’.  He aptly sums up the balance of opinion on this issue: “Thanks to the Atlantic slave trade the formalization of the economic exploitation, dependence and underdevelopment along racial lines assumed international proportions hither unknown. For once slavery linked to the ongoing predominating transitions in the international economic system, was sustained by major actors in the emerging political system --- the stage was set for the internationalization of the linkages of race, economics and politics"
  
Related Challenges and Triumphs resulting from these Connections 
 
The contributions in this volume provide a range of insights  of Edmondson's triumphs and universal  impact as teacher, researcher and  mentor.   Among them are:

• Horace Campbell "Historical and Intellectual Context: Journey of a Quiet Pan Africanist"
•  Paul Sawyer, "The Professor and the World Teacher, Activist and Inspiration"  ,  
• Johnathon Jasen, "Pedagogy in Practice - In honor of a Teacher"; 
• Darryl Thomas, "Global Impacts: Scholarship and Activism in the African World" 

 
Other contributions portrayed the essence of challenges with which he  grappled:

• James Mittelman, "International Race Relations or the Politics of We and They" 
• Kanyinsola Obayan, "Challenging Africa's Single Story : Afropolitanism and the Politics of African Rising"  

 
 
 
Spin-offs from Professor Edmundson Research Beckons: 
 
This brings us to speculate on some of the spin offs from the connections to which the trail of Professor Edmundson's research beckons.  At the time of the Symposium, I was preoccupied with making the connections with some of the major policies challenging the UN System and therefore  in my contribution,  suggested the following: 

• Achieving the targets in the  2030 Sustainable Development Goals The focus for Pan Africanism is in particular on the umbrella SDG#16 Institutional strengthening to achieve Peace, Security and Social  Justice.   

 

• Strengthening  the regional integration systems.  This requires cooperation of the African Diaspora in  multilateral institutions such as the UN, WTO, World Bank  to secure global solidarity. 

 

• Coming to terms with the persistence of the Black American dilemma:  The lessons offered for policies within the African Diaspora is covered in the article  by Micere Githa Mugo "Pan Africanist Connectivity rooted in Black/African Studies"

 

• Highlighting Women and the Future of the Movement for equality and Human Rights: The lack of female leadership at the beginning of the Pan African Movement is  being  reversed as illustrated in three essays in the volume by:  Nicole Mensa "When Women Stand up: The Stories of Yea Asentawa and Leymah Gbowee"; Emma V. Kioko "On Beauty and the Possibilities of Feminist Pan Africanism in Una Marson's The Moth and the Star" and N'Dri Therese Assie-Lumumba "Students of Global Africa and Pan African Consciousness: Engagements for Changes in the 20th Century and Beyond" 

 

• Institutionalizing Pan Africanism. This  refers to the expansive nature and reach of the movement driven by some novel developments that engaged the collective vision of the African Diaspora. Two contributions in the volume provide  a useful starting point:             
  • Ayele Bekerie, "Adwa Pan African University: Conception and Implementation", an amazing case study by one of Edmondson's graduate students who played an important  role in the development of this higher educational institution named after the historically significant battle of Adwa, the victory of the Ethiopian troops over the Italian colonial army in 1896.  It was deemed to be the launching pad for Pan Africanism https://www.press.et/english/?p=30264
  • Anne Adams, Professor Emerita, served as Director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Memorial Centre for Pan-African Culture, in Accra, Ghana, 2005-2010, while also teaching as Visiting Professor at the University of Ghana, Legon. Her description of the evolution of this Center that exists opposite to the Marcus  Garvey’s International House is  poignant with  irony of  the thorny relationship between these two champions of Pan Africanism,  that symbolically now physically and spiritually coexist in such close proximity.

 

• Making the Case for Reparations. This   was initiated by the Caribbean delegation at the 2001 International Conference against  Racism Racial Discrimination and Xenophobia in Durban South Africa.   It is directly linked to Professor Edmondson’s articulation of processes that connect trans-Atlantic slavery, racism, and now resonates in the CARICOM Reparations Commission and  the Global Commission for Reparations.

 
Conclusions
 
We have provided sketches of the lessons learned from Professor Edmondson’s careful crafting of African- Afro Americans - Caribbean connections. There are so many underlining factors with which to grapple and so many directions in which his body of work leads us. The challenges and triumphs of this connection that his work identifies have established benchmarks for scholars, practitioners and policy makers. It is clear that this commemoration  of Locksley Edmondson’s magnificent career, ensures the legacy of yet another Caribbean scholar to the cause of Pan  Africanism  and to the role of the African Diaspora cultures  in international relations.
 

Eddie Greene