On July 21st 1969 five thousand people gathered in Algiers to celebrate the First Panafrican Festival (PANAF)—a cultural gala and political caucus. At symposiums, in concert halls and in art galleries the Black Panthers mingled with Tunisian musicians, Algerian activists and Senegalese filmmakers. Not only were representatives from forty African countries present, radicals from around the world flocked to Algiers to support the country’s fight against imperialism. In previous articles I have demonstrated how crucial this festival was in re-centering the conversation about political and cultural panafricanism on the continent, and in defying the colonial division of Northern and Sub-Saharan Africa. Not all in Algiers were enthusiastic supporters of the Algerian government’s bid for African leadership however. To Algerian writer and theater director Hocine Tandjaoui, just 19 in 1969, the PANAF was a masterfully conducted public relations move, smoke and mirrors that left only faint traces. He and his theater friends were in open rebellion against the Algerian government, as such they were not invited to participate in any of the official events. This piece is about what I call the Alt-PANAF, the group of radicals who participated in giving the festival its panafrican character from the margins. These young actors, revolutionaries and writers did not meet on the rue Didouche Mourad or in the Palais des Nations. Instead they gathered in Algerian poet Jean Sénac’s stuffy basement apartment where they received Moroccan poets and editors of the revolutionary poetry journal Souffles, Haitian poet René Depestre, Congolese writer Henri Lopès, and many more. Raised to the beat of Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, they were not enticed by the nationalistic promises of the ruling elite. Through personal interviews, critical reading of these writers’ fiction, and the material I have gathered in Jean Sénac’s archives in Algiers, I showcase the encounters that, though they did not occur in the spotlight, were just as crucial in building a community of radical artists committed to the project of African cultural unity. In this piece I tell the story of a handful of radicals from across the world who were looking to build a panafrican network that ran deeper than the ceremonious speeches their presidents and state-sponsored artists so often delivered.