The experience of and struggles against colonialism and racism generated multiple strands of political
thought and debate. African anticolonial struggles involved a set of debates about questions of race,
culture and liberation which spanned several decades and continents – Africa, Europe, America and the
Caribbean. These contributions and debates took place in the pages of journals such as Présence
Africaine, Mensagem, Souffles and Transition, and in a series of meetings and festivals, including the
First International Conference of Black Artists and Writers in Paris,1956; the Second Congress of Black
Artists and Writers, in Rome 1959; the First World Festival of Black Art in Dakar, 1966; the
Tricontinental Conference of Solidarity of the Peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America, held in
Havana, 1966, at which Cabral made his famous speech ‘The Weapon of Theory’; and the Pan African
Festival in Algiers, 1969. This paper follows the relationships and interventions of the liberation
movements of Portugal’s African colonies as a central thread to explore how anticolonial thought was
forged through debates and practice. The paper focuses in particular on the contested and much debated
question of the role of culture in decolonization and national liberation, theorized in different ways by
Senghor, Fanon, Neto and Cabral.