The Pan-Africanists by Barrington Watson, OJ, completed in 1998.
This outstanding painting honours 17 global activists for African liberation and universal human rights who, by their heroic struggles and self-confident vision, have reshaped the development of Africa, its diaspora, and the world today.
The master painter, Jamaican-born Barrington Watson, had always felt that self-image is important for us to know ourselves and like ourselves.
His respect for the Pan-Africanists started in 1973 when he was a visiting arts scholar/professor at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. He immersed himself in research and the ideas of the visionaries whose individual characters together make up the 17 activists and nation builders portrayed in the final mural.
This mural is the first to be installed in The UWI WEST Ring Road Heritage Circle, which already houses the obelisk honouring THE ANCESTORS, erected there as part of the Mona-wide Heritage Markers placement, across the 600+ acre campus, the original site of the Mona and Papine Estates.
Born on the 9th of January, 1931, in Lucea, Barrington Watson attended Kingston College and went on to follow his artistic yearnings, enrolling at the Royal College of Art in London at the age of 20.
Watson also studied in Paris and in Amsterdam. After wide travel in Europe, he became the first Director of Studies at the Jamaica School of Art and co-founded the Contemporary Jamaican Artists’ Association (1964–74). He later served as a visiting professor at Spelman College, Atlanta. In 1967, he won a prize at the first Spanish Biennale in Barcelona. In 2000, he was awarded a Gold Musgrave Medal by the Institute of Jamaica.
Watson has exhibited widely and continuously throughout his artistic career, producing a vast oeuvre of masterful and unmistakable paintings which have enriched the world of Jamaican art, and art lovers worldwide, throughout his remarkable and distinguished career.
1. Patrice Lumumba, 1925 – 1961, Congo
One of Africa’s early idealists and independence fighters in the Congo, his party came to power, and he was named Prime Minister. His short-lived time in the copper-rich country of the Congo ended in a military coup engineered in Washington in 1961, when he was assassinated in Katanga, Congo.
2. Jomo Kenyatta, 1891 – 1978, Kenya
Kenyatta was an early political organiser against the colonial authorities in Kenya and led a rebellious Mau Mau uprising. In an activist protest in 1952, he was arrested as the ringleader, jailed, and later released in a sweeping victory by his party in 1963 to become Prime Minister. Kenya then became a Republic.
3. Julius Nyerere, 1922 – 1999, Tanganyika
Julius Nyerere was a champion of the African National Union and lobbied internationally with other African leaders, becoming Prime Minister and President of a United Tanzania, and a tireless opponent of dictatorship and Apartheid across Africa.
4. Emperor Haile Selassie, 1892 – 1975, Ethiopia
Emperor Haile Selassie was a high scholar and political strategist. He rallied Ethiopia with dreams of lasting peace and world citizenship. He was the icon of the African diaspora Rastafarian movement, who was a spokesman for African unity and a fierce opponent of racism, laying the basis in feudal Ethiopia of the 1920s for the modern nation-state of contemporary Ethiopia.
5. Paul Robeson, 1898 – 1976, USA
Robeson was the son of an ex-slave who escaped via the Underground Railroad. He worked tirelessly after his university years both as an activist and a professional singer, helping to draw world attention to the racial discrimination and violence prevalent across his native USA and the world.
6. Muhammad Ali, 1942 – 2016, USA
Muhammad Ali was a three-time heavyweight boxing champion and one of the greatest boxers to appear in the ring. Rising from the early years of poverty in the American South, he went on to become a political activist and voice for the Nation of Islam, changing his name from Cassius Clay. He was a radical nationalist thinker. Despite being hounded for his political activism and advocacy, he went on to live a life as an advocate for disadvantaged people and the dignity of the black man.
7. Frederick Douglass, 1818 – 1895, USA
An early and outspoken activist against slavery in the United States, Frederick Douglass became a highly recognised antislavery activist using his natural oratory to gain worldwide support for the abolitionist movement in the United States.
8. Marcus Mosiah Garvey, 1887 – 1940, Jamaica
Marcus Garvey made a worldwide inspirational impact, organising the largest ever mass movement of black people across the Pan-Africanist world. His writings, travel, and advocacy were tireless and influential, and the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) was the catalyst for self-governing independence across the world.
9. Harriet Tubman, 1822 – 1913, USA
Born into slavery in Maryland, Harriet Tubman had a fierce hatred for injustice and vast sympathy for her people. She pioneered the famous Underground Railroad, leading her black brothers and sisters out of slavery and into the free world of the northern states. She led 18 expeditions and fearlessly continued her work well into her 90s.
10. Kwame Nkrumah, 1909 – 1972, Ghana
A passionate advocate for the liberation and independence of his country, the Gold Coast, now Ghana. He was the earliest warrior for independence, leading his country, Ghana, to independence in 1957.
11. W.E.B Du Bois, 1868 – 1963, USA
An early intellectual and activist, Du Bois laid the intellectual foundation for organised anti-government radicalism and died in Ghana in 1963. Christened the Father of Pan-Africanism.
12. Nelson Mandela, 1918 – 2013, South Africa
One of history’s best-known and best-loved figures of the 20th Century, Nelson Mandela personified a lifelong struggle against injustice and for democracy.
13. Martin Luther King Jr, 1929 – 1968, USA
Arguably the most inspiring black American leader of the 20th Century, Martin Luther King devoted his life to ending segregation, advocating peaceful resistance and nonviolence as a way to achieve the Democratic dream for his country and his world.
14. CLR James 1901 – 1989, Trinidad
A multi-faceted intellectual whose historical analysis laid the groundwork for an understanding of the passionate need for political independence among the African diaspora.
15. Rosa Parks, 1913 – 2005, USA
Credited with being a catalytic spark for the rise for independence, Rosa Parks was a key figure in the US fight to end racial segregation.
16. George Padmore, 1902 – 1959, Trinidad
Known as the Father of Pan-Africanism, he devoted his writings and strategies for political change for a free and independent Africa all his life.
17. Malcolm X, 1925 – 1965, USA
An early, outspoken, and short-lived activist, Malcolm X embodied the call of militant black America in self-reliance, self-defence, and black power. He became a transformative thinker, joining the Nation of Islam in the 1930s and combining a spiritual and activist persona.
