Pauline Hopkins' "back to Africa" plot was a unique narrative, but it was also in keeping with a worldwide intellectual movement prominent at the turn of the 20th century. Pan Africanism was a movement whose aims were to strengthen solidarity between people of African descent and to assist in the "crucial formation of a Universal black identity, derived from a consciousness that all Black people emerged historically from Africa"  (Oloruntoba-Oju 1). The movement was supported by prominent figures such as W.E.B. DuBois, whom Hopkins considered a source of inspiration, and was seen as a way of combating slavery, racism, and colonialism (Falola 71).