African politics meets journalism meets high art at an exhibition at Rivington Place in Shoreditch: “The Fifth Pan-African Congress”. The main display, of black-and-white photos by John Deakin (curated by Mark Sealy of Autograph), fills the ground-floor space at the David-Adjaye-designed centre for visual art in the City. It relies as much on writing as it does on images: right from the entrance, plain black text set against white walls gives the background to the Congress and lists names, origins and designations of delegates. Some of them went on to change history.
The pan-African congresses had begun in 1919: the first one was on the sidelines of the Paris Peace Conference, with 57 black delegates led by W E B DuBois, the American philosopher, pioneer of urban sociology, editor of the Crisis magazine, prophet of black diasporan liberation and co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
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