By Sam P.K. Collins
What started out as an attempt to rebuff a notion that Marcus Garvey didn’t wield influence among a significant portion of college-educated Black people has turned into an endeavor to memorialize a 20th-century Nigerian nationalist who attended Howard University (HU).
On May 4, a group of Garveyites is scheduled to honor Hogan Edem Ani-Okokon during a ceremony at Lincoln Cemetery on Suitland Road in Hillcrest Heights, Maryland.
Ani-Okokon was a Nigerian man who, upon embracing Garveyism as a youngster, aspired to visit the United States to learn how the Americans gained their independence from the British empire. In 1925, Ani-Okokon matriculated to HU’s School of Law. He later assisted Nnamdi Azikwe, known to many as the father of Nigerian nationalism, in making the same journey to the United States.
In 1928, Ani-Okokon died from a lung infection, not long after Azikwe and others won a spring semester debate in HU’s political science department about the viability of Garveyism. Today Ani-Okokon is interred at Lincoln Cemetery in an unmarked grave.
Azikiwe and Wiliam Leo Hansberry, an Afrocentrist and HU faculty member, eulogized Ani-Okokon at HU’s Rankin Chapel. Azikiwe, who later became the first president of an independent Nigeria, acknowledged Ani-Okokon as a driving force in his racial and cultural consciousness. In his biography, “My Odyssey,” he even encouraged readers to pay tribute to Ani-Okokon for generations to come.
Ani-Okokon was one of the earliest pioneering Nigerian nationalists who attended HU.
Mwariama Kamau, historian at the Universal Negro Improvement ASSOCIATION – African Communities League
Mwariama Kamau, a historian in Division No. 183 of the Universal Negro Improvement Association – African Communities League (UNIA-ACL), has answered that call. He said the May 4 event will launch a campaign to purchase a headstone for Ani-Okokon.
Kamau and others coordinated a similar project for Henrietta Hinton Davis, a performer and Garveyite who’s interred at Harmony National Memorial Park in Hyattsville, Maryland. He said that his case study of Howard University unearthed Ani-Okokon’s on-campus contributions, including his membership in the Garvey Club as a critic and his role as associate editor of The Hilltop, HU’s campus newspaper.
Another aspect of the man’s life that Kamau said intrigued him was Ani-Okokon’s submission of an essay in the UNIA-ACL sponsored literary contest that was later published in The Negro World, the UNIA-ACL’s official newspaper.
“Ani-Okokon was one of the earliest pioneering Nigerian nationalists who attended HU. It was rare because the British government made it almost criminal and discouraged people [in their colonies] from attending American universities,” Kamau said.
“Part of Ani-Okokon’s determination was to learn about American democracy. Along with his relationship with Nnamdi Azikwe, I became quite impressed with Ani-Okokon’s life and legacy and how he influenced others.”
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