During the frenetic days of the late 1960s and 1970s, the English-speaking Caribbean was swept up in a regional revolt that toppled governments and spread creative grassroots experiments across the islands. Inspired by the far-reaching expectations of the Black Power and Pan-African movements and successful communist revolution in nearby Cuba, workers in the Anglo-Caribbean launched a profound assault on capitalism, imperialism, and the subjugation of Black people. We’ll examine this sequence beginning with the student and worker uprising in Jamaica in 1968/69 and finishing with the 1983 U.S. invasion of Grenada that put an end to the revolution led by the New JEWEL Movement. Throughout we’ll describe the insights produced by these pressure-filled years from some of Caribbean Black Power’s best theorists, including Walter Rodney, George Beckford, Andaiye, and Fundi. Black Power in the Caribbean had deep roots, always in conversation with Black struggle elsewhere, and we’ll provide this context with a brief discussion of W.E.B. Dubois, Marcus Garvey, George Padmore, and C.L.R. James. Central to our presentation of this history is a focus on those parts of the movement that emphasized the creative and independent spirit of the mass of Caribbean toilers, producing an ambitious synthesis of the Black freedom struggle and unabashed anti-authoritarian communism.

Required Readings:

“Black Power, A Basic Understanding,” from The Groundings with my Brothers, by Walter Rodney, 1968

“From Dubois to Fanon,” by C.L.R. James, 1970

"Guidelines: To Those Who ‘Discover’ (or Seize) Sugar Lands,” from The Bauxite Strike and the Old Politics, by Eusi Kwayana, 1973

“The Consequences to Rahtid,” from Introduction to Documents of the Caribbean Revolution, by Fundi (aka George Myers), 1974

7.1 Black Power in the Caribbean (3/22)

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