ABSTRACT
Ras T. Makonnen spent his whole life devoted to securing rights for Black peoples around the world, whose ‘wrongs arise from the world’s neglect of certain fundamental truths and whose hope of redress depends on the building of a world community in which those truths will be accepted in practice’. (Pan-Africa, 1/2, 1947)
George Thomas Nathaniel Griffith was born in the village of Buxton in British Guiana; his father, who Makonnen claimed was of Ethiopian descent, was a miner of gold and diamonds. After (probably) graduating from Queen’s College in Georgetown, he seems to have gone to Texas to study mineralogy. A part-time involvement with the YMCA in Beaumont, Texas soon became a full-time post, which included establishing services for the Black population of the town, including services to businessmen – and even a brass band for the 60,000 Black workers of the Magnolia Petroleum Company. This resulted in speaking engagements around the USA and attendance at YMCA international conferences. At one of these Griffith met Max Yergan, who had been a YMCA ‘missionary’ in South Africa; this was probably Griffith’s introduction to Africa.
