Addie Hunton

The Pan-African Congress movement is almost entirely associated with the organising and intellectual brilliance of its prominent figurehead, WEB Du Bois. In practice, however, the congresses were organised by a diverse array of activists and individuals with Du Bois’s role varying significantly across them. One such figure was the race activist, writer, suffragist, and political organizer, Addie Waites Hunton (1866-1943). Hunton built a considerable career organising for social justice issues, initially as a secretary for the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), organiser for the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) and, latterly, as vice president of the America’s leading race group, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).  Hunton’s career became increasingly internationalist and focussed on questions of peace.  In 1926, she wrote a report condemning the U.S. occupation of Haiti and in 1927 Hunton, then the dynamic head of the women’s group the Circle for Peace and Foreign Relations, turned her hand to organising the Fourth Pan-African Congress in New York City.