1941–1945: (The Atlantic Charter and African Political Awakening — Churchill and Roosevelt Proclaiming Self-Determination for All Peoples in August 1941, Chu…

1941–1945: (The Atlantic Charter and African Political Awakening — Churchill and Roosevelt Proclaiming Self-Determination for All Peoples in August 1941, Churchill Insisting This Did Not Apply to the British Empire, African Political Activists Sensing the Weakness and Moral Bankruptcy of Colonialism, Roosevelt Pressuring Britain on Decolonization, and the Fifth Pan-African Congress at Manchester in 1945 Demanding Unconditional Independence): The African voice was increasingly difficult to ignore or appease. African newsletters spread dramatically through the 1940s, reaching ever wider audiences even when debate was transmitted orally, and Africans were becoming politicized to an unprecedented degree. Many dwelt upon the supposed difference between fascism in Europe and colonial rule in Africa, particularly following the Atlantic Charter of August 1941. The charter, the work of Churchill and Roosevelt, proclaimed the fundamental right of all peoples to self-determination and protection against aggression — it caused quite a stir in educated African circles, for did this not also apply to them? Churchill felt compelled to insist that the peoples of the British empire were already being adequately looked after, but the damage was done as political activists across the continent sensed the weakness of the colonial system and the moral bankruptcy of the philosophies underpinning it. Roosevelt, anti-imperial by instinct, began pressuring his British ally to set a postwar timetable for decolonization. As the war drew to a close, a group of young educated Africans emerged — many living or educated abroad in Europe and the United States — galvanized by their wartime experience and dedicated to pan-Africanism. At the fifth Pan-African Congress in Manchester in 1945, they no longer talked of modifying the system or submitting polite petitions. The central theme was the unconditional dismantling of the colonial empires. The demand was total independence — the children of the colonized had learned the colonizer’s language well enough to use it as a weapon.