The Universal Race is concerned with interwar pan-Africanism especially through the lens of Garveyism, the largest black mass movement. Drawing on the idea of the "Universal Negro” from the Universal Negro improvement Association, this lecture takes up the question of Garveyism’s practices of mass politics. The turn to practices—to the ‘how” of movement politics is an effort to move beyond the question of identity, the “who” of a particular politics. Attention to practices, I argue, allows us to consider how attachment, affiliation, and identification are generated.
The talks are sponsored by the Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere, UF International Center, Samuel Proctor Oral History Program, Center for Latin American Studies, and Department of Political Science.