ABSTRACT
The National Liberation Movement (MLN), founded under the leadership of the historian Joseph Ki-Zerbo, came to be known through its Manifeste published in Dakar in August 1958 during the campaign on the constitutional reforms of the French Union. Defending its position against the proposed constitution, to be approved by a referendum scheduled a month later, the MLN advocated the idea of regional federalism that would lead to a pan-African project and the creation of the United States of Africa. The movement, whose core members were based in Senegal, Dahomey, and Upper Volta, was however reduced to underground activities on the advent of independence of these countries. The realization of the pan-African ideals was thus challenged by various national realities. This chapter explores the careers of the first members of the MLN using oral sources (interviews the author conducted with them), together with their published writings and the archives of the party. Although they played a key role in the decolonization process by mobilizing different social actors such as the youth, women, and farmers, they are barely mentioned in the historiography, which emphasizes, instead, the ruling elites. To shed light on the collective dynamics of the movement, the chapter retraces the individual careers of the members affected by social and political changes. The Pan-Africanist perspectives thus defended will help our understanding of the underlying tensions of the decolonization process, which gradually set Pan-Africanism against nationalism.
