APU-letter from Alcindor to Du-Bois
*This date in 1918 celebrates the founding of the African Progress Union (APU), which was founded in London as "an Association of Africans from various parts of Africa, the West Indies, British Guiana, Honduras, and America, representing advanced African ideas in liberal education."
The first president was John Archer. He was succeeded in 1921 by John Alcindor. Others involved as founders included John Eldred Taylor, Thomas Horatio Jackson, and Dusé Mohamed Ali. In 1919, the Union briefly merged with the Society of Peoples of African Origin (SPAO), founded in 1918. A short-term name change to the Society of African Peoples was followed by the founder of the SPAO, Felix Hercules, becoming Secretary of the Union.
Also, in 1919, the APU paid for Edward Theophilus Nelson as defense counsel in the Liverpool trial of 15 Black men in the aftermath of racially motivated communal violence. Alcindor died in 1924; Kwamina Tandoh succeeded him. For some years, he worked closely with John Barbour-James. Ethel Snowden and Gordon Guggisberg attended the Union's 1925 meeting. The APU was active until 1927.
