Most books about Black Power address the US-American story of the 1960s and 1970s. Comparatively less attention has been paid to Black Power in the Caribbean, including Trinidad and Tobago's 1970 February Revolution and Jamaica's 1968 Rodney Riots. It is to Kate Quinn's credit that she has sought to widen exploration of the topic to these and other Caribbean islands. However, this book does not fully address this agenda, as it completely ignores Black Power in the Hispanic and French Caribbean. Indeed, there are many redundancies regarding the role of Black Power leaders, in particularly Stokely Carmichael, Walter Rodney, and Eusi Kwayana. And while the anthology purports to limit Black Power to the “Classic Period”, many contributors indulgently immerse themselves in long discussions of earlier periods.
Quinn's own lengthy introduction (pp. 1–24) focuses disproportionately on Rodney and Jamaica and misses the opportunity to provide for contributors an overarching discussion of the period and the region. Still, one strength lies in its consideration of smaller islands, such as Bermuda, Antigua, the Virgin Islands, and Curaçao. This allows us a clearer understanding of the common desire of the islands’ inhabitants for radical political change and a hastening of the slow-moving decolonization process across the region. At the same time, the introduction sets the tone for a more fundamental shortcoming of the book in general: being conceptualized primarily around race-based discourses, for the most part the contributors are blind to issues of class as well as to those scholarly approaches that center on “revolution”, including the discourses of revolution.
Quinn's “Black Power in Caribbean Context” (pp. 25–50) amounts to a second introduction to this phenomenon. Quite rightly she sees Black Power not as a “singular ideology but a heterogeneous movement that encompassed a range of convergent and divergent political positions and concerns”. In the Caribbean, the black population constituted a demographic majority. For Quinn this forms the “primary contextual difference” between the US and the Caribbean, where the movement was directed against “local governments whose members were primarily black”. Here again she focuses almost solely on Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago.
The impact of racial issues in “Black Power in Caribbean Context”, particularly its attack on the “myth of multiracialism”, is well elaborated, although this leads Quinn, who focuses much of her elaboration on Rodney, to misrepresent his critique on class as one on race. Quinn discusses the formation and activities of the National Joint Action Committee (NJAC) in Trinidad and Tobago, which attempted to unite people of both African and Indian descent in a struggle against the “continuation of ethnic cleavage”, and to neuter the organization's image of anti-multiracialism. Yet here again, neglect of the class dimension makes it difficult to situate the country's revolutionary process in a materialist context, and one that went further than race. Going beyond Trinidad and Tobago, Quinn, in her conclusion, rightly states that Caribbean Black Power was a mix of influences, but she misses noteworthy differentiations within the orientation and evolution of the movements in the different islands.
Part 1 opens with Rupert Lewis's “Jamaican Black Power in the 1960s” (pp. 53–75). Lewis starts with the labor revolts of 1938 led by Alexander Bustamante and recalls Rodney's claim that Bustamante's generation of radicals subsequently acceded to power as “representatives of metropolitan-imperialist interests”. Although Lewis was a contemporary witness and political activist in the 1960s, the reader learns little about the more specific details of the Jamaican Black Power movement. While the ban on activists by the establishment under the pretext of the Cold War is referred to without mentioning further circumstances, the overlap between class and race issues in Black Power discourses in Jamaica is again only touched upon. Also, his account of Garveyism, on which he is an expert, is rather fragmentary. Despite these omissions, readers will benefit from his description of the often undervalued impact of Black Power on Rastafarianism (especially its rural aspect) and vice versa.
The contribution by another Jamaican Black Power activist, Anthony Bogues, seems more refreshing. His “The Abeng Newspaper and the Radical Politics of Postcolonial Blackness” (pp. 76–96) discusses “black solidarity” within the working and lower classes in urban Jamaica. After the Rodney Riots in October 1968, an anonymous group of editors published the Abeng. Bogues describes its wide ideological spectrum, and the editorial policy and structure of the newspaper. Articles about socialism, the right to economic development, women's liberation, and the African liberation struggle were common. Finally, Bogues gives an account of the demise of the Abeng in 1974, making “ideological currents” responsible.
In his well-structured chapter “The February Revolution (1970) as a Catalyst for Change in Trinidad and Tobago” (pp. 97–116), Brinsley Samaroo portrays the emergence of Black Power as a consequence of early union activities linked to the oil and sugar industries. Black Power was inextricably connected to the ownership and control of the rich natural resources. For Samaroo, to understand the complex events of the “February Revolution” of 1970 it is necessary to analyze the country's oil and sugar economy. Samaroo, of course, also acknowledges other factors. Thus, the drama of the “February Revolution” is vividly portrayed: how it was triggered by the Sir George Williams University Riot in Montreal, its demonstrations and marches, the declaration of a state of emergency, and the formation of a guerilla organization. In Samaroo's view, the “Revolution” led not only to a more pronounced African identity and consciousness but also to greater self-awareness among those of Indian descent. But, almost symbolically, at the end of the protestation the government yielded to Black Power demands for the nationalization of industries.
Richard Drayton's article “Secondary Decolonization: The Black Power Moment in Barbados, c.1970” (pp. 117–135) focuses on the political life of Prime Minister Errol W. Barrow. Although Barbados has always been considered conservative, Drayton highlights a Barbados arm of a “pan-Caribbean solidarity with South Africa and India, a decade before Bandung”. However, he bypasses the island's political silence during the Black Power heyday by offering a description of Barbados history from 1918 to independence in 1966. Barrow's decision to nationalize some sectors in 1970–1971 to keep pace with the demands of Black Power is seen as a “struggle for (secondary) decolonization”, although Drayton fails to discuss this top-down measure in the context of the local and regional dynamics of radical movements and social conflict.
Quinn's description of Forbes Burnham's Guyana during the “Classic Period” is undoubtedly her best contribution to this volume. “Sitting on a Volcano” (pp. 136–158) describes relations between Burnham's Afro-Guyanese People's National Congress and the local Black Power movement (ASCRIA) led by Eusi Kwayana in the quest for control of Guyana. Quinn's sharp analyses of the relationship between Burnham and Kwayana touch almost every level of collaboration and confrontation between them.
Nigel Westmaas's biographical contribution “An Organic Activist: Eusi Kwayana, Guyana, and Global Pan-Africanism” (pp. 159–178) does not appear to have been adapted well to the concept of the volume, and there are notable blurs and misconceptions. Minor factual and formal mistakes aside (many quotations, for example, are not cited), he uses the terms “Pan-Africanism” and “Black Power” synonymously and interchangeably.
“Black Power in the Political Thought of Antigua and Barbuda” (pp. 181–196) is the first of four chapters in Part 2. Paget Henry provides more of a general history of Antigua, neglecting, at the same time, Barbuda almost completely. His analysis of Vere Bird's early black democratic socialism is excellent, and he discusses also the influences that led Leonard Hector to found the Antigua Caribbean Liberation Movement (ACLM) in 1968. Henry links the ACLM Black Power discourses to C.L.R. James's insurrectionary socialism. However, Henry does not sufficiently connect the ACLM's activities to Antigua's and Barbuda's independence process.
Quito Swan's “I & I Shot the Sheriff” (pp. 197–218) is concerned with Black Power and decolonization in Bermuda, 1968–1977. The discussion is well structured. He has drawn on Black Power leader Pauluu Kamarakafego's activities to analyze Bermuda's twentieth-century history. Swan's detailed exploration of the Progressive Labour Party, its activities, motivations, and achievements, are enthralling, especially when dealing with the 1969 Black Power Conference in Bermuda and the actions of the more militant group of the Black Beret Cadre.
It is not clear why Derick Hendrick's “Youth Responses to Discriminatory Practices: The Free Beach Movement, 1970–1975” (pp. 219–238) is included in the volume. His explanation that some members worked together with different Black Power movements on the US Virgin Islands is not enough without an in-depth explication of the broader local movement itself.
Gert Oostindie's “Black Power, Popular Revolt, and Decolonization in the Dutch Caribbean” (pp. 239–260) concludes Part 2. As with Trinidad, it is the strong oil industry that makes the case of Curaçao particular. The May 1969 riots on Curaçao and Suriname's independence in 1975 bear the stamp of Black Power, but, as Oostindie rightly suggests, do not conform to a simple heroic narrative of emancipatory Black Power in both colonies. Oostindie focuses on the labor riots in Curaçao and the decolonization process that ensued. He also examines the consequence for Afro-Curaçaoan empowerment and concludes that full emancipation remained elusive. Brian Meeks's conclusion to the text makes interesting reading, but is partly a personal narrative. And, like so many of the volume's contributions, it is characteristically oblivious to class issues.
In most cases of Black Power in the Caribbean and the US, universities were the center of radical, often outright revolutionary ideas and resistance. As always, an important question is how an intellectual avant-garde sought to reach the workers and peasants for a project of radical change. Although the contributions to this volume give valuable insights into many facets of 1960s and 1970s Caribbean radicalism, most of the contributors fail to discuss this decisive question. Despite its merits, the volume thus falls short of any deeper understanding of the history of broader social struggles.
