Maghreb Noir

Upon their independence, Moroccan, Algerian, and Tunisian governments turned to the Global South and offered military and financial aid to Black liberation struggles. Tangier and Algiers attracted Black American and Caribbean artists eager to escape American white supremacy; Tunis hosted African filmmakers for the Journées Cinématographiques de Carthage; and young freedom fighters from across the African continent established military training camps in Morocco. North Africa became a haven for militant-artists, and the region reshaped postcolonial cultural discourse through the 1960s and 1970s. Maghreb Noir dives into the personal and political lives of these militant-artists, who collectively challenged the neo-colonialist structures and the authoritarianism of African states. Drawing on Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and English sources, as well as interviews with the artists themselves, Paraska Tolan-Szkilnik expands our understanding of Pan-Africanism geographically, linguistically, and temporally. This network of militant-artists departed from the racial solidarity extolled by many of their nationalist forefathers, instead following in the footsteps of their intellectual mentor, Frantz Fanon. They argued for the creation of a new ideology of continued revolution—one that was transnational, trans-racial, and in defiance of the emerging nation-states. Maghreb Noir establishes the importance of North Africa in nurturing these global connections—and uncovers a lost history of grassroots collaboration among militant-artists from across the globe.

"Maghreb Noir takes us from Rabat to Algiers to Tunis to demonstrate how 1960s North Africa was an epicenter of pan-African thought and Black radicalism. Showcasing a region too long left out of histories of pan-Africanism and Black internationalism, Paraska Tolan-Szkilnik has written a meticulously researched, effortlessly transnational work."—Hisham Aidi, Columbia University, author of Rebel Music, "Maghreb Noir is a much-needed addition to North African studies. Rich, archivally informed and subtly argued, it captures the voices and footsteps of a generation of Pan-African militants and artists who chose the Maghreb as their stage of contestation. An essential read for anyone interested in Pan-African revolutionary politics."—Aomar Boum, UCLA, author of Undesirables: A Holocaust Journey to North Africa, "Stimulating and convincing, Maghreb Noir renews our perspectives on both the Africanity of the Maghreb and its wider history."—Jocelyne Dakhlia, École des hautes études en sciences sociales

Paraska Tolan-Szkilnik is Assistant Professor of History at Suffolk University.