1903: W. E. B. Du Bois publishes The Souls of Black Folk, declaring that the problem of our epoch is the problem of the "color line."

1928: Claude McKay publishes his novel Banjo, which champions Caribbean "folk" cultures and raises important issues about tensions between blacks in the Caribbean and Africans. The novel was intensely discussed among the African and Caribbean students in Paris, including the founders of the "Negritude" movement.

1934: Parisian poet-students Senghor, Césaire, and Damas found the journal L'Etudiant Noir (The Black Student), widely seen as the first important landmark in the Negritude cultural movement.

1916: Marcus Garvey arrives in Harlem from his native Jamaica and declares that the future of the black people of the world lies in rejecting the barriers to greatness set down by white society and entreats them to return to Africa. His Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) has...