Two striking aspects of the first half of the twentieth century concern the large-scale and widespread circumventions of the African-descended throughout the Americas, and their persistent efforts to reconnect in meaningful ways with Africa. The former was in response to economic need and incentive; the latter was motivated by political, philosophical, and religious considerations. Whatever the motive, people were not forgetting their African ancestry, but endeavoring to remember and sustain it. In these ways, they were reversing sail in their minds and hearts, if not with their bodies.

While reconnecting to Africa, those of African descent were also redefining themselves as a series of communities related yet distinct from each other, a consequence of differing local circumstances and histories. Reconnections and redefinitions took place during periods of rapid industrialization, organization and theorization of labor, emerging struggles against empire, world war, women's rights movements, the rise of allegedly scientific racism, and the division of the world into eastern and western camps. Members of the African Diaspora played significant roles in all of these developments.

From this complex period of interpenetrating influences and experiences arose a cultural efflorescence throughout the African Diaspora. Notable works of art, literature, and scholarship, as well as political and religious innovations, resulted from this intercontinental cross-fertilization of ideas and experiences. The components of the African Diaspora were therefore in extensive dialogue, a conversation reverberating to the present day.