Revolutionary Roots

He who answers before listening; that is his folly and his shame.[1]

Thunderclap Newman in the U.K. had a Number One Hit in 1969:[2]

The following disclaimer, on the other hand, applies universally. It was aptly expressed by writer Bryan Palmer: [3]

The aim of this piece is to present the influence upon the worlds of those who were interested in revolutionary change. The assumption shall take the voice of “we” and what affected us.

Points of information are indicated in this chapter as take-off referrals to the accumulation of events that occurred previous to the detailed history of the Grenada Revolution.

The call to “revolution” brings to mind the question of its meaning. A study of the concept makes for a fascinating venture.[4]

Is “revolution” a form of social change? Is “revolution” also a “coup d’état”? A revolt? An uprising? An internal war? A class rebellion? Is “revolution” a war, essentially against one leader? Is it a battle, in essence, to set a charismatic leader as replacement for a demonized opposition leader?

Clusters of revolutionary groups grew out of social and academic communities. We had, to put it simply, the desire to change the world and we felt we could do it. We thought we knew how the system worked and we wanted to abolish unemployment and poverty. We wanted to make the world a better place. Essential to our way of thinking, “The System” was to blame.

Social Change and International Solidarity

There was that general feeling that if you worked within your surroundings for social change, you were working towards the larger revolutionary movement yet to come.

One felt poised on the brink of a conversion. One felt the call for one’s youth to be active. One had a sense that one’s own personal sacrifices in making change could affect society. One even had a hope of revolution in the United States. The leap in one’s thought of a sense of international solidarity from where one was located was, indeed, a faith based in boundless hope.

If your radical group, for example, drew fire from authorities and it cost the powers that be money to contain your group, kudos to your radical community for aiding world revolutionary movements. You gotta do what you gotta do to get done what needs to get done. There was a kind of out of bad-comes-good mode of thinking.

The experience during 1968, a key year for example, was personally overwhelming and led towards a positive life-changing manner for many.

As many of us were young, we thought we lived in a world of infinite means. We had a definitive attitude that all could be solved and in the most principled way. We thought we spoke and knew the truth, and often felt unwanted for our opinion. We scorned those who accepted a trade-off; and quietly accused our elders of “selling out.”

We were intellectually inclined, but few were part of academia. We were not really part of the working class, but we reasoned that if we had regular jobs, we were working; a part of the working class.

We had unique social lives, we thought. We had a sub-culture that was lived outside the norm. Our sub-culture, we were sure, knew more about how society worked than most others of the greater society. Our consciousness and our analysis of issues were right on target in our youthful view.

Little did we realize our innocent start towards maturity was a journey with potholes leading, in most cases, to the same place our elders stood. But we did not see it then, and that made all the difference

A fundamental reasoning held by many people during the time of the Civil Rights struggle, was put into words, in an unknown speech, by Dr. Martin Luther King:[5]

Internationally, the shift in thinking had begun at the Asian-African Conference, called the Bandung Conference. The gathering of many countries was held in Indonesia in 1955.[6] According to Nigel Westmaas:[7]

Among the many attendees were Adam Clayton Powell[8] and Richard Wright[9] from the United States.

The Two Decades of the Fifties-Sixties into the Seventies

It was an exhilarating time, a phase in our lives of much intensity. It was a time of extremes - the uplift of hope and the despair of rock bottom. We had basic human needs for safety, security and survival. We also looked for moving our financial freedom into a sustainable income because we were wise enough to avoid starvation. We were at the age when we were highly interested in sex and intimate relations with another.

We had a need for doing good, being involved in something outside our Self. The concept of power as a need was way off our map. Some people were sure they could levitate, and some were stuck in the mud. Young people of unique common traits, black and white, were on the move. And they were viewing their path on an international basis.

The decade of the 1960s was a special time from which countless have not recovered with scores of people who know they will never rid that spirit from their bloodstream. Even those on the radical right carry over harsh and bitter feelings from what happened during those years into how they approach current issues.

Getting Information

Whether we were in London, Boston, Hamburg, or Saint George’s, there were multiple ways we could follow the threads of events around the world.

There were our libraries; local public, elementary school to high school. We had enough money to buy newspaper, magazines and books. Many of us had televisions in our homes and set the habit of the “newshounds” we became later.

If we were associated with a university, whether it be University of the West Indies, Mona, or the University of California, Berkeley, we were even more apt to get at the “meat” of revolutionary happenings across the globe.

We went to the university. We read books. We read periodicals. We listened to “our” music. We gathered world news from radio and television, but we learned the most about the world, not from our elders, but from our peers, our friends. We had a kind of unspoken network, a fraternity of dissent whereby all in “the struggle” were brothers and sisters.

The variations of what emerged from the 1950s into the 1970s played itself out in a revolution of all possibility, a fascinating study.

Where We Came From

The U.S. Census figures speak for themselves:[10]

Most of us in America lived in suburbs and a good many of us had automobiles.[11]

We who had become adults during this period were comprised of a higher percentage of intellectuals from middle class backgrounds than the population as a whole. We were children of parents with unprecedented wealth compared to previous generations.

We had been raised with fundamental beliefs in the value of patriarchy as the bedrock of our social system, but we were not buying it anymore.

The late humanist John William Gardner wrote of this generation:[12]

One Kind of Thinking

We were sure we could have it all. We felt we had stopped taking things for granted. Often we were vexed with our personal passive non-participation by tacitly condoning what we saw around us which we thought was surely wrong. We reasoned that if the natural resources of the earth belonged to all, surely the benefits from them should be shared by all. We favored artist types because we thought they mixed with all classes of society.

We were sure we were revolutionary and not reformist. We fully expected a socialist revolution. We became, in one form or another and to varying degrees, socialists, anarchists, communists, syndicalists,[13] nationalists, pacifists and feminists.

One thing was for sure — we were taught about hate and fear from a song. Many learned the words. From the film South Pacific playing in 1958 were the words:

The lyrics made perfect sense to us. No problem.

Still, behind that egalitarian sentiment, some of us were taken by a fragment of their imagination that Black people knew things Whites did not.

It was a formative time, a time of self-education in revolution. Let’s be frank. Those on the Left were naïve social idealists and slightly rebellious. We put some thought into our world. We were full of hope . . . a hope often dashed to the ground by the realities of human nature.

We, of the greater U.S. Left, had a point-of-view based on the religious ideology of our upbringing. We carried on a tradition of humanist liberalism. We believed in participation and advocated social democracy.

We, of the greater U.S. left, had a whole list of items of concern for ourselves and for our fraternal brothers: free education, opportunities for higher learning, women’s rights, economic control over resources, African liberation movements, land reform, opposition to police brutality anywhere it occurred, relations with Cuba, promotion of local cultures which included those people with indigenous roots.

We could rapidly use dangerous arguments and argumentative patterns that suggested we knew the inside story. An apt example is observing a reaction to an earthquake where crumbling blocks of cement fell on people’s limbs.

The reaction to the situation, though the earthquake example is from the great Haitian earthquake of 2010, was similar to the attitudes of some young people of the 60s.

Here is how our thinking and our accusatory judgment went:

The reaction immediately goes toward blaming the volunteer doctors, some of whom were from the U.S. and Europe with the ultimatum of judgment that they were committing an “offense against humanity.”  

The reaction assumed that doctors are deficient, not exclusively in care but in caring.

The reaction showed the person making the accusation did not know the subject.

Truths of the decision for amputations were (1) crushed bones and muscles; (2) unamputated limbs with crushed muscles leading directly to kidney failure and the country had few dialysis machines; (3) advance care was doubtful; (4) gangrene is a killer; (5) the likelihood of physical reconstruction with crush injuries is small; (6) in ideal circumstances, a different time and place, the necessity for amputations might have been reduced.

Another classic example of our kind of thinking went something like this:

Except a corporation is not a person and just because of telescoping of thought by personifying a corporation is a shortcut to simplicity, in reality a corporation is a massive and complex organization with varying degrees of impact on society.

The ideal solution and blame – the famed “knee-jerk” reaction[14] — is at play versus the realities of an emergency situation where so many doctors from around the world volunteered or a quick fix to feed the world’s people. It was this kind of thinking we of the early 1960s entertained.

We let ourselves believe that “where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” If you said that about political matters, your peers might give an example which was an exception, but this was quickly dismissed. We were quick to name scapegoats. We were quick to rebut arguments about current affairs with examples from another time or place.

We were swift. We knew it all. We were arrogant. We always wanted to know which side you were on.

Naming

Shall we call them revolutionaries, or the Left, or progressives, or radicals, socialist, communist or those engulfed in the nihilism of the new? For the purposes of this study and its bent on revolution, the term “young revolutionaries” seems apt. There were countless and varied ways we found those who thought like us, we young revolutionaries, either armchair or those out for action.

Memory

Let us go “back, back” as my late friend wrote, and try to remember the early “beatniks”[15] somewhere out there in California. They were poets and writers, and they liked jazz. Their preferential clothing color was black. They would meet together in coffeehouses; men and women reading poetry, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. The “beats” were cool.

Not fully aware of the “underside” of the beat community; for example drugs other than nicotine, activities often of a criminal hue, and sexual relations of a non-heterosexual type, we were innocents who picked up on literature and music. We knew the beatniks were against materialism and we felt we believed that too.

We of the United States of America, who were the children of acquisitiveness from our parents’ rising incomes after WWII, knew something had changed in one group of the society and it was definitely other than what we experienced in the suburbs. Some of us ached to leave home and live in Greenwich Village.

Bob Dylan’s 1965 lyrics “Ballad of a Thin Man” turned around our heads: [16]

Somehow we read a copy of On the Road by Jack Kerouac; widely published in 1957,[17] but we had to be really cool to get books of poetry from City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco.

On the Road impressed some of us at a time when our personal remedy from suburban stagnation was to get away, hit the road, explore the Big City and the Open West; all exciting prospects that we felt were urgently needed.

Eventually “beatnik” turned to “hippie” and the Sixties counterculture. By that time, our generation had traveled to new territory.

Over on the East coast, 1965 through 1969, on East 10th Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg creations were pouring out of the Peace Eye Bookstore. Poets Sanders and Kupferberg started the Fuck You Press and a musical group. They told tales of the Beat and hippie counterculture in the literary journal Fuck You: a magazine of the arts.[18]

Compressing time, one saw the emergence of the counterculture people who felt they did not want to have anything to do with the sick prevalent culture in America. And so they dropped out to live life the way they saw as best. During this period of the 60s, there often was a sense of collective hallucination which often gave assent to non-sensical behavior.

The anti-Vietnam War Movement with many mass demonstrations, non-violent for the most part, started in earnest in 1965 and continued into the 1970s.[19] The Vietnam War had a profound and depressive affect on our generation.

We attended demonstrations. We read the flyers. We believed in participatory democracy and inclusiveness. We bought the radical newspapers. We wore a “keffiyeh,” the Arabic scarf which indicated we were in solidarity with the peoples of Palestine.[20] We knew a refugee family from Jerusalem displaced to the Ramallah camp and then on to Washington, DC for a new life.

We went to conferences; for example, the inaugural Socialist Scholars conference at Rutgers University held 27 September 1965.[21] Participants included Robert A. Hill,[22] Martin Glaberman,[23] Conor Cruise O’Brien,[24] and Maxwell Geismar.[25]

We may have hung out in the same Cambridge, Massachusetts coffee shop frequented by Vanessa Redgrave while the magical voice of Fairuz[26] was echoing into the garden, lilting out from a custom-made audiotape. That was the Algiers Café in Harvard Square, in case you forgot.

We frequented political bookstores. We mined our local library for books and speeches known to us. We could read Race & Class, for example, from London. The journal’s first issue was in January of 1959.[27] Journals from near and far were obtainable.

We followed on “tough childhood” memoirs like the late Piri Thomas’ Down These Mean Streets, published in 1967 about growing up in Spanish Harlem.[28]

Since we were what we felt was poor, our view was empathetic, and precisely because we felt we were poor our point-of-view was predisposed to others with difficult childhoods when in actuality we were patronizing and arrogant, but young.

Joan Baez albums were at one’s local library alongside deep field recording collections of American and British folk music. We may have come upon the late Irwin Silber’s Sing Out magazine which he founded May 1950 and continued as editor until 1967. Silber wrote a monthly column titled “Fan the Flames,” a title similar to Antiguan Tim Hector’s later publication.

We followed the Supreme Court decision in 1967 [Loving et ux v. Virginia] allowing an inter-racial couple’s marriage to stand. We celebrated “Stop the Draft Week.” We followed every protest on television and radio. We intently watched Walter Cronkite report from Vietnam in the war right in front of our TVs.

If we were in Manhattan [October 1969] or Washington DC [November 1969], we may have been among the many at one or both of the Vietnam Moratorium marches. Buses were organized to such events.

We remembered slogans like “No Vietnamese Ever Called Me Nigger.” We went to “revolutionary” films. We bent toward the outlaw side of culture.

All this new information was an adventure for us; one would say we were caught up in revolutionary adventurism, and we loved the vitality it brought to our lives.

We catalogued in our minds the multiple U.S. military interventions in Latin America, Africa and Asia over the past 70 years. We felt it all fit together and we knew the enemy.

We attended political meetings. We were sure one person at those meetings was an FBI agent. We suspected our telephone was tapped, even though we hardly ever uttered a word of importance in our phone calls. We suspected our political meeting group was infiltrated by another political party or an FBI agent.

We gave too much power to our supposed adversaries when we grew paranoid while seriously considering a conspiracy theory. We transferred information links to others; our friends near and far. We took our cues from revolutionary figures.

We watched Dr. King intensely and mourned his passing 4 April 1968, followed by the murder of Robert F. Kennedy 6 June 1968. We watched the rain fall on Resurrection City.

We were puzzled why there were so many protests worldwide in dismal 1968 and what caused the rising worldwide revolutionary trend. We passed over studying explanations and felt that we were in solidarity with the revolutionaries of the world.

We wondered how we could meet the magical Bob Moses. We were in awe of Malcolm X. We saw the many riots the summer of 1967[29] and we read the 1968 Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, known as the Kerner Commission[30] report, and there were still more & more civil disturbances.

We saw the politicians come and go. We were highly judgmental about Lyndon Johnson; in adulthood, we learned we had not “seen” the man’s humanity.

We debated the finer points of Trotskyism; even non-violence, for that matter. We read the books, digested the magazines, read the newspapers and reinforced the idealism and passionate hope with which we began our quest.

Grant us forgiveness for our youthful rigidities.

We had an alarming disrespect for authority. Even programs or actions which should have drawn our support were derided as “liberal.” “Liberalism” became a term used for derision. It was a label against centrist reforms like the War on Poverty, even the Civil Rights Act signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson. John Fitzgerald Kennedy was one Liberal some of us quietly abhorred, not speaking out because of his popularity.

In our stated scorn for consumerism, we kept purchasing books and music recordings because we felt we needed them. We had distaste for things bourgeois, suburban, industrialist, middle-of-the-road and establishment — all emanating from a “paternalistic” culture.

We questioned the popular media, though were accepting of Leftist periodicals; every word was the “truth.”

We would draw quick conclusions about what was reported in the major media; e.g. if the Huey Newton story did not get reported in the popular media, we considered there was a conspiracy against printing the “truth” about people of the Left. We did not consider that another story, for example the closing down of Expo 67[31] in Montreal, could trump the news of a Black Panther. And if it did, we felt cheated. If Expo 67 news was more important than a Black Panther, well why was that? Just goes to show.

The newspapers and journals of the Left that we read had the “inside” truth and we felt we were duly fortunate to have gotten the correct answers. The fact that we had the correct line caused us to feel that we were radically revolutionary.

Our socio-political networks were highly specialized and grew from person to person. If, for example, one viewed a Newsreel film, we would read about the creators of the film and obtain names; one saw a name of a person they knew. We might contact that person and through that person meet others. Soon we had formed a linked community. Some communities were some strong and others marginal.

A primary category for linking to underground channels was through the arts – the new rhythm & blues recordings and oppositional types shown in films.

The events of the 1960s in the United States left a message. Even though revolutionaries were miles away in the Caribbean, William Van DeBurg observed:[32]

The need to be aware of the seedbed by which revolutionaries grew is essential to understanding how we became revolutionary.

Our post-war younger generation had more affluence than our parents. Within that generation was the influential minority of youth who felt “there was a kind of nobility in being devoted to the public good in an unconventional way.”[33]

There were underground channels where one could obtain information related to fulfilling this goal. If you were a youth, you could read Albert Camus or MAD magazine, for example, and both were super cool. You could even attempt to read Jean-Paul Sartre.

Many of us were raised in the city or the city-suburbs. We were not raised on the farm like our grandparents. We did enjoy returning to the old homestead, if there was one, for visiting.

An important element of context for potential revolutionaries was the Cold War.[34] Simply put, worldwide, the Cold War was the name of a point of view that placed people in two separate arenas - between the Communist world and the Western world.

In the Caribbean, the Cold War led to a split in political parties between Left and Right. The political and labor history of the Caribbean played an important role in studying the context of the Grenada Revolution.

By the end of the 1960s and into the 1970s, the views of worldwide Left began to shift. The processing of political writings from Fanon, Nkrumah, Debray, Che Guevara, mixed with Lenin, Trotsky and Marx, and tossed with the teachings of Mao, congealed into the felt need for structure, a political program and education. 

One might have been among the “radical chic” who met up with Che on his 1964 visit to Manhattan and speech at the United Nations.

One might have even read the Cuban newspaper Granma Weekly Review. Granma[35] was the name of the old cabin cruiser 79 Cuban revolutionaries and 3 foreigners boarded in Mexico to make their attack on Batista forces in Cuba.

One studied Marxist classics supplemented by speeches of European student leaders — Rudi Dutschke,[36] Karl Dietrich Wolff[37] and Daniel Cohn-Bendit.[38] These speeches in themselves were packed with ideology, sayings and propaganda.

Daniel Cohn-Bendit’s 1969 Obsolete Communism: the Left-Wing Alternative was one reading in the Grenada revolutionary study groups of 1975.[39]

Strategies and tactics were needed, ideologies require clarity, and the structural roots of the political economy of the capitalist nations needed to be exposed.

We of the American Left had been looking for world redemption. We dreamed that through direct action the force of our morality and persuasion would take America, at minimal, to a frontier of peace and justice—a country where life was fair for its citizens and all people were treated equally.

By the second part of the 60s, after the pure euphoria, we felt the downward trajectory of our dreams when we experienced one tragedy after another. The assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 4 April 1968; [40] the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, 6 June 1968; [41] the election of Richard Nixon, 5 November 1968; [42] the My Lai Massacre, 16 March 1968,[43] and the Kent State shootings, 4 May 1970.[44]

The continuing specter of the War in Vietnam no matter how much we protested in marches, in print or in song, became a serious and dark cloud.

There were those who championed, as a political action way of life, to live permanently unemployed, or under-employed — outside the capitalistic system of consumerism, taxation, authoritarianism and war-mongering.

A portion of our peers dealt with the frustration of failed challenges by dropping out, some “did drugs,” some pushed back with violence.

They had hit a wall. They saw the old ways of protest as ineffective. The slogan “Power to the People,” the African National Congress (ANC) rallying cry, was not working.[45]

By the end of the 1960s, it could be seen that everything had been coming loose from the ten years of 1960-1970 and into the 1970s. Matters wheeled seemingly out of control in the 1970s, going into wild extremes.

We became bitter and disillusioned and alienated.

The Worldwide African Identity & Revolutionary Movements

National Liberation Struggles

Much interest was focused on the United Nations [UN]. Interest in the UN, established 24 October 1945,[46] included its work on decolonization.

For example, based on previous organized bodies, a Special Committee on Decolonization was created in 1961 by the General Assembly of the U.N. with small island Caribbean states achieving statehood. [47]

Aiding efforts at granting independence to colonial countries, U.N. members were continuously concentrating on this issue.[48]

The original edition of Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth was published in 1961 with the more popular editions in the U.S. and U.K. published in 1963. The theorist of the day for revolutionary struggle, about colonialism and racism was Fanon [1925-1961] [49] who wrote extensively on national liberation in Wretched of the Earth:[50]

As early as the 1961 when Patrice Lumumba was assassinated, the struggles in Africa for national liberation appeared to start their eventual full swing. In 24 April 1965, it was Che Guevara and other Cubans who made their way across Lake Tanganyika to the shores of the Congo for the first time.

Note the path of one liberation struggle:

Amilcar Cabral, in the late 1950s, began leadership of the Guinea-Bissau people’s struggle against forces of both Portuguese Guinea and Cape Verde [PAIGC].[51]

Cabral spoke at the first Tri-Continental Congress held in Cuba in January 1966.[52] The speech was titled “The Weapon of Theory.”[53] The theme was the spirit of internationalism. He also spoke following Che Guevara’s death of 9 October 1967.

Cabral spoke at the United Nations and visited black activist groups in the United States.

On 1 July 1970, Pope Paul VI had an audience with Cabral, Agostinho Neto from Portuguese-controlled Angola and Marcelino Santos from Mozambique. [54]

Amilcar Cabral was assassinated 20 January 1973.[55]

Unilateral Independence of Guinea-Bissau was achieved 24 September 1973.[56]

African Liberation Movements occurred in Algeria with independence granted in 1962, and in Kenya with independence granted in 1963.

The movements against Portuguese African colonialism in Mozambique, Guinea and Cape Verde, Angola, São Tomé and Principe brought changes, but also continuous turmoil.

The original film, Cuba: an African Odyssey,[57] is three hours long with three main sections dealing with Cuban internationalist aid — Lumumba and the Congo, Cabral and Guinea-Bissau, and Agostinho and Angola.

The Cubans had not consulted with the Soviets when they entered Angola. The Cuban vessel The Vietnam Heroico was seen in Angola. The United States did not know the incursion was all Cuban-led until November 1975.[58]

Angola and Mozambique were officially independent in 1975. [59] The island of São Tomé and its major city Principe also achieved independence in 1975.[60]

South Africa[61] with its practice of apartheid from 1948-1994[62] plus Namibia[63] under South African Rule and Zimbabwe[64] under British domination were additional countries of revolutionary struggles. Zimbabwe achieved its independence in 1980 and Namibia its independence in 1990.

Mali’s Modibe Keita, Ghana’s Nkrumah, Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere, Guinea’s Ahmad Sékou Touré, Guinea-Bissau’s Amilcar Cabral, Algeria’s Frantz Fanon, Mozambique’s Samora Machel, Mozambique’s Eduardo Mondlane, Senegal’s Léopold Senghor, Martinique’s Aimé Césaire, and the United Congo Republic’s Patrice Lumumba are a few of the myriad of national liberation struggles to recall.

The Left in the United States embraced many African independence movements.

The U.S. citizen Stokely Carmichael entered the international revolutionary scene when, from 31 July 1967 to 10 August 1967, he attended and spoke at the Organization of Latin American Solidarity Conference [LASO] and Organization for Latin American Solidarity [OLAS] in Havana.

Castro activated, according to the Committee of Santa Fe report, the OLAS organization under the slogan: "It is the duty of the whole revolutionary army to make revolutions."

A journalist reported “the conference held up the experience of the Cuban revolution as a general model.”[66]

OLAS was founded 16 January 1966 when delegates from 27 Latin American countries first gathered.[67]

From Cuba in 1967, Carmichael then visited Vietnam, Algeria, Syria, Egypt, Guinea, Tanzania, Scandinavia and France, talking with leaders in most all those countries.[68]

Karen Nersesovich Brutents wrote about national liberation movements in his National Liberation Revolutions Today. As of 1977, when the book was published in English, Dr. Brutents was a professor and Doctor of History in the Soviet Union, known as the major Soviet specialist on national liberation movements.

Brutents made the point that national liberation movements are not bourgeoisie democratic revolutions; nor are they independence movements.[69]

Dr. Brutents explained:[70]

The change was not so simple, according to Dr. Brutents:[71]

The clash of social forces permeated much of the radical thought of the day with people striving to maintain power and privilege vs. those who wanted to alter the structure of society.

Though Caribbean radicals were not studying Brutents during this early period, they were doing so later during the time of the New Jewel Movement [NJM] in Grenada. At the Jamaican Workers Liberation League [WLL] and the later Worker’s Party of Jamaica [WPJ], Brutents was studied.

Culture - Mother Africa

Afro hairstyles, dashikis, Nehru collars, Ray-Ban Aviator sunglasses [if one could afford them], clenched fists, sandals made of tires, and wide, wide bell bottom pants all carried a message that Black culture was changing.

The “process” was long gone by 1963[72] and natural hairstyles for Afro-American men were often patterned after singer Sam Cooke’s natural “do.”

The influences of the time from “Mother Africa” were new and unfamiliar. People were exposed to African culture in considerable measure—dance, art, music, poetry, clothing, hair style and history.

It was during this time of all things African for Africans no matter where they lived, the terminology cultural nationalism[73] came into academic use, though the term was not exclusive for Africans and began long before the 1960s.

Congress of African People

Imamu Amiri Baraka [formerly LeRoi Jones] founded the Congress of African People (CAP)[74] in the United States to advance his own vision of African cultural nationalism. The other organizers were Hayward Henry, the first chairman, and Richard Traylor, treasurer. [75]

Baraka’s vision and that of the others was particularly influenced by African leaders such as Julius Nyerere, Amilcar Cabral, and Ahmed Sékou Touré and by the African American cultural nationalist Maulana Ron Karenga.[76]

One sees in Baraka’s writings, and others of his political orientation, an emphasis on revolutionary socialism with an alliance with the black underclass, the black “peasantry,” a term for the black working class.

Speakers at the African Congress[77] held 6-9 September 1970 in Atlanta, Georgia, included Hayward Henry, Rev. Ralph Abernathy, Rev. John Cashin, Kenneth A. Gibson, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Whitney Young, Jr., Louis Farrakhan, Howard Fuller, Richard Hatcher, Ambassador El Hajj Abdoulaye Touré, Evelyn Kawanza, Raymond Mbala, Rosie Douglas, Julian Bond and Imamu Amiri Baraka.[78]

The [CAP] conference leaders were Boston’s Hayward Henry [Mtangulzi Sanyika] of the Black Unitarian Universalist Caucus [BUUC], LeRoi Jones [Imamu Amiri Baraka], James Traylor [Mjenzi Kazana] and Howard Fuller [Owusu Sadaukai].[79]

In addition to the speakers, among others leading the eleven [11] workshops were John Henrik Clarke, Larry Neal, Rev. James Cone, and Trinidadian Tony Brown.[80]

The Pan African Movement

The book, African Congress: a documentary of the first modern Pan-African congress includes an Introduction by Baraka who provided an overview of Pan-African gatherings counting his CAP organization as one:[81]

Baraka edited this volume about the African Congress which stated the aim to form a Black political party and the text of an outline of CAP’s program of “self-determinism, self-sufficiency, self-respect and self-defense.”[82] It also included many speeches given at the conference.

One such speech was by the late Roosevelt Douglas, quoted below in part: [83]

Rosie Douglas also spoke about the challenges to students at Sir George Williams University in Montreal: [84]

Roosevelt Douglas also gave a workshop speech during the Congress of African People [CAP] in 1972. It is quoted in full, titled The Pan-African Struggle in the Caribbean [see full text General Appendix].[85]

Estimates put the attendee numbers at 3,500 people who were listening to speeches, attending workshops and making resolutions.[86] Almost all the Congress of African Peoples [CAP] listed as “Organizations Represented” came from the United States.

The Pan-African Journal was started in 1968 out of New York City by the Pan-African Students Organization and the Pan-African Institute.

In 1973, “Revolutionary movements in Caribbean colonial history”[87] was a going title of volume 8, no. 2 of the Pan African Journal. This issue featured –

A study on Pan-Africanism by Ronald W. Walters stated: [88]

A Youth Organization for Black Unity [YOBU] [1969-1975] of Greensboro, North Carolina, grew out of SOBU and MXLU. YOBU’s aim was to build a revolutionary Pan-African youth movement, promoting Marxism-Leninism instead of revolutionary nationalism, in the United States and continue distributing the bi-weekly The African World newspaper. Nelson N. Johnson was YOBU’s national chairman.

Note that later, in Grenada, around 1973, one of the first organizations to bring Black Power to Grenada was called the Organisation for Black Unity [OBU].

A firm move beyond protest into action was the establishment of Malcolm X Liberation University [MXLU] on 25 October 1969 in Durham, NC.[89]  A year later the university moved its headquarters to Greensboro, North Carolina.

One prime organizer of MXLU was Howard L. Fuller, one Owusu Sadaukai, who also was a chief mover for the African Liberation Day [ALD] celebrations to come later.[90]  Sadaukai was additionally an organizer for the September 1970 Congress of African People in Atlanta.[91]

By 1969, Stokely Carmichael had extended the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party [A-APRP], founded by Nkrumah in 1968 to the United States as the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party [AAPRP]. The group was Pan-Africanist in its Marxism-Leninism [M-L] orientation with scientific socialism as a tenet of its ideology.[92]

During the period Walter Rodney was teaching in Tanzania, from 1968-1974, he was also traveling throughout America.

A United States study location for the scholar Walter Rodney was the Institute of the Black World [IBW]. Rodney was described as a Pan-Africanist.[93]

Dr. Rodney made contact with Vincent Harding, William Strickland and Robert Hill of the IBW when on a speaking engagement at Howard University, May 1970.[94]

He was also in the United States from February-June 1972 as a Visiting Professor at the Center for Afro-American and African Studies [CASS] at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.[95]

A journal article project and a summer month during 1974 at the Institute of the Black World [IBW] kept Rodney in Atlanta.[96]

The IBW was founded in 1968. Its organizers were Dr. Vincent Harding, William Strickland of SNCC, Jamaican Robert Hill and others. By March 1970, the IBW was associated with the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, part of the Atlanta University Center.[97]

The Pan-Africanist organization of the IBW was located in Atlanta on Chestnut Street in the same house where W.E.B. Du Bois once lived.[98]

Archival materials of this period are found in the Vincent Harding Papers at Emory University’s Manuscript, Archives & Rare Book Library.[99]

In Africa, the country of Tanzania, the ideological framework, one with which Tanganyika African National Union [TANU] and Julius Nyerere worked, emerged in a TANU pamphlet in April 1962, published under the title Ujamaa—Essays on Socialism. This was followed by The Arusha Declaration on 5 February 1967.[100]

In 1968 Nyerere’s Ujamaa—Essays on Socialism was first published by Oxford University Press out of Dar es Salaam. The volume included ten [10] essays including the two named in the above paragraph.[101]

Bogues summarized Nyerere’s fundamental political concept:[102]

Nyerere wrote:[103]

African Liberation Day [ALD]

In 1971, Owusu Sadaukai [Dr. Howard L. Fuller] traveled to Africa where he observed the anti-colonial movements in Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, and Angola.  Upon his return to the United States, Sadaukai began to make plans for African Liberation Day (ALD) demonstrations designed to show worldwide support for the African liberation struggles.[104]

The concept of African Liberation Day, according to Sadaukai, was to make the connection between liberation movements in Africa and the United States in each of their struggles against corporate oppression.[105]

His title was National Chairman of the African Liberation Day Coordinating Committee [ALDCC]. His idea had been growing since his earlier tour of African countries in September 1970. On that tour he was representing the Student Organization for Black Unity [SOBU] and the Malcolm X Liberation University [MXLU] of Durham, North Carolina.[106]

After forming the African Liberation Day Coordinating Committee [ALDCC], the head office was at 2207 14th Street, NW in Washington, DC.[107]

The steering committee of Owusu Sadaukai, Ralph Abernathy, Julian Bond, Imamu Baraka, Ron Daniels, Angela Davis, Ron Dellums, John Conyers, Vincent Harding, Nathan Hare, Huey Newton, Stokely Carmichael, Richard Hatcher, Betty Shabazz, and many others, decided on 27 May [1972] for a Washington, DC demonstration.[108] 

Though the ALD celebrations were to co-ordinate with the annual observation of the Organization of African Unity’s [OAU] founding date of 25 May, “organizers ultimately chose Saturday, May 27, 1972 since a weekend date might allow for greater participation.”[109]

Ron Daniels, one of the organizers, gave this history of African Liberation Day [ALD]:[110]

The first statistics from the 27 May, 1972, Washington, DC march, as put out by the ALDCC, was 30,000 participants.[112] The Washington Post reported the presence of 10,000-15,000 persons.[113] Speakers included Pan-Africanists plus U.S. elected Black officials, Congressman Charles Diggs Jr. and Walter Fauntroy.[114]

ALD marches took place on 25 May and 27 May 1972 in New Orleans, San Francisco [with Walter Rodney among the speakers], Toronto, Antigua, Dominica and Grenada.[115]

At the end of April 1972, Sadaukai visited Grenada for three days.[116] Sadaukai’s contributions formed the base for Grenada’s upcoming African Liberation Day on 27 May 1972 in Grenada, according to supporting documents.

In 2010, Professor Howard Fuller [Owusu Sadaukai] appeared in the film Waiting for Superman,[117] though not listed in major credits. He spoke about education in Michigan in the footage.

The Culture of Dread

By the 1960s and into the 1970s, a culture of Dread had become widespread, showing itself most prominently in reggae music—Bob Marley’s Soul Rebel, Toots & the Maytals Do the Reggay, Count Ossie, Dennis Brown, Burning Spear, Dillinger, Culture, Ras Michael & the Sons of Negus, the Mighty Diamonds, Third World, Bob Andy and Marcia Griffiths.

In the Great Britain of 1970, Jamaican artist Desmond Dekker sang the classic You Can Get It If You Really Want. The song, written by Jimmy Cliff, reached No 2 in the U.K. charts.[118] The part that Reggae and Natty Dread music played in the formation of the lives of Grenadian revolutionaries [and other revolutionaries] is a uniquely powerful thread.

A root of Rastafari belief stems from a 1964 speech by Haile Selassie:

The formation of Rastafarianism was based on: [119]

The Americas

Since the definition of the countries of the Caribbean[120] is variable, an attempt at identification of them for this book is in order.

First are the independent countries—Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Haiti, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad-Tobago. Often, Cuba is omitted from this group.

The territories that have a historical relationship with metropolitan countries include the British Crown colonies of Anguilla, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands, Cayman Islands and Montserrat; the Kingdom of the Netherlands with the Dutch Antilles and Aruba and the French Overseas Departments of Guadeloupe, Martinique, Saint Barthelemy, and Saint Martin. The territories related to the United States are the commonwealth of Puerto Rico and the territory U.S. Virgin Islands.

Often the mainland countries of French Guiana, Guyana [formerly British Guiana] and Suriname [formerly Dutch Guiana] in South America, plus Belize in Central America are considered parts of the Caribbean.

Some eliminate the “Caribbean” altogether and name the region as the Americas, or those countries in the Caribbean Sea [though some are outside of the Caribbean Sea], Middle America or even Latin America.

All of Grenada’s Caribbean neighbors were important to this history, and they are noted throughout.

Historian Rupert Lewis made a summary observation about the Caribbean region:[121]

A widely read journal and with many pages turned, especially in the United States, the National Geographic magazine seemed to be in every household; at the least in the basement or the local rummage sale. If one wanted to see photos of the Americas, especially the Caribbean, several issues featured classic photos.

The December 1965 National Geographic magazine feature was on the sailing vessel Finisterre winding its way through the Windward Islands. It was written by Finisterre’s Captain, Carleton Mitchell, with photographs by National Geographic Society photographer Winfield Parks. The very long article is 46 pages of island descriptions and events from Grenada to Dominica.[122]

The island of Grenada was one island visited, among many. There is a fold–out to a very long shot of the Carenage and its inner harbor and the classic photo of the woman in a straw hat sorting nutmegs. Human fingers extended into a bunch of ripe nutmegs with their ruby lattice–work of mace are shown in another photo, according to the writer about the photos.[123]

The photographer’s interest led him to Grenville and to what was then Seamoon Park and its horse racing events. He also got an image of a woman “heading” a weight of green bananas, and a picture of one of Grenada’s former wooden buses - this one the owner called Rolling Home with its open windows and tarps ready to let down in case of rain.

Shown up close was a cocoa pod on its way from being sliced open by a machete to make its way to a chocolate plantation “sweating shed” to ferment. [124]

There was the classic swirling skirt dance photo by Dean Conger of the National Geographic Society. The photo was taken on a shoot at the “Big Drum Dance” in Carriacou. [125]

The National Geographic Society published a hard–bound book in 1966 titled Isles of the Caribbees and the text was by Carleton Mitchell.[126]

The first chapter is “Grenada: Gateway to the Windwards.” The first photo of a panoramic overview of the Inner Harbor is by Dean Conger, National Geographic photographer. [127]

Boys walking donkeys on Grand Anse Beach was a photograph by Fred Ward for Black Star. The beaming smile of a little girl in her white dress was taken by Winfield Parks.

Conger got a long shot of fishermen on the Grand Mal Beach. A different racing photo was added to this book, also taken by Winfield Parks. A Caribs Leap view from the water by Fred Ward of Black Star [a stock photography service] and a stunning photo of Christ of the Deep close out the article. [128]

Some of the photos in the book, Isles of the Caribbees appeared in the February 1965 and also the December 1965 issues of National Geographic.

The Heritage of Social Stratification

A review of the literature, especially the studies of Michael Garfield Smith[129] shows the heritage of social stratification in Grenada. From 1953, those citizens of Grenada of the Western orientation elite figured at less than 7%; the remainder of rural traditionalism and African orientation.

A high correlation existed, and still exists in Grenada, between social status, pigmentation, association and family. If one were to look at Grenada society hierarchically, at the top would be the rich and white stratum, most of whom owned land and were schooled in Britain. They followed the tradition of their fathers and placed educational opportunity across the ocean on their legitimate children.

Categorized, this group was termed the White Planter Group. They took little part in local commerce, government or religious activities though the professional British expatriates found themselves in positions in Grenada as administrators, priests and doctors. [130]

Another group was the larger, brown upper middle class who overlooked most commercial enterprises, were on official councils and committees, belonged to select groups and organizations. If there was a beauty contest, the winner usually belonged to the brown elite. Usually island scholarships were awarded to those of a lower level, but elite, background. [131]

There were oddities in the broad generalization above; e.g. the fascinating S.A. “Bigs” Francis had made his money in the USA before returning to Grenada,[132] or the four East Indian wealthy produce dealers.

Few people of black African origin were involved in the economic or administrative bodies of the country.

The dominant religion of the Caribbean elite was Anglican; the religion of the folk was of the Roman Catholic faith, according to M.G. Smith who acknowledged in his writings the African origin of some religious ceremonies. [133]

Political Activity

The number of political parties grew in Caribbean countries, reflected in the global upsurges of political activity into the 1970s. Political activity centered in countries with branches of the University of the West Indies [UWI]; namely Jamaica and Trinidad-Tobago. There was also political movement in Guyana, based in the capital city Georgetown.

The primary group in Jamaica was first the Worker’s Liberation League [WLL] soon to become the Worker’s Party of Jamaica [WPJ] and similarly the Working People’s Alliance [WPA] pre-party and official party in Guyana.

The formation of Grenada’s New Jewel Movement [NJM] grew from the JEWEL and MAP organizations.

The Jamaican the Young Socialist League [YSL], founded in 1963, included Robert Hill, Norman Girvan and Hugh Small, among others, who worked within the People’s National Party [PNP] to bring forth socialist orientation and discussions.

The history of Jamaican politics is vastly larger that the tiny stabs at landmarks presented here.

Major demonstrations took place in Trinidad- Tobago during what is known as the February Movement of 1970.

Many of the key figures in the emergence of Caribbean Black Power were at the major Caribbean universities.

The Institute of Social and Economic Research [ISER], founded in 1949 at the University of the West Indies, published a journal titled Social and Economic Studies. Economists Lloyd Best, George Beckford and Norman Girvan published articles in this journal.

Academics, primarily from the University of the West Indies [UWI] and the University of Guyana joined in forming the New World Group in the 1960s. Interested in publishing academic papers, their first periodical out of Jamaica in 1965 was the New World Quarterly, published until 1975.[134]

The publication was organized by George L. Beckford of Jamaica, the late Lloyd A. Best of Trinidad & Tobago, Clive Y. Thomas of Guyana, Miles Fitzpatrick of Guyana and the late David DeCaires of Guyana.[135] An additional New World group member was James Millette of Trinidad-Tobago.

Much was hinged on what was known as the Caribbean Black Power Movement. In the period 1962-1969, the New World Group grew to include other radical black intellectuals from Canada, the Caribbean and the United States.[136]

An interpretation of the New World Group position vs. Marxism and scientific socialism was presented by David E. Lewis:[137]

The goals of these groups were generally ones of social transformation and the take-over of state power.

Groups developed out of Black Power, Black Nationalism, Marxism, anti-imperialist nationalism, revolutionary socialism via Cuba and Ho Chi Minh, Fanonian liberationism, the Cuban Revolution, Catholicism, Garveyism, and Rastafarianism.

Socialism was never forgotten among Black radicals during the period of the early 1970s. Consider this from Rosie Douglas, writing from jail circa 1973:[138]

Black Power in the Caribbean

Marcus Garvey’s remains were returned to Jamaica in 1965, becoming Jamaica’s First National Hero.[140]

Garveyism, like the Nation of Islam, was a large mass movement in the history of Blacks in the United States. Branches of both Black movements were found in towns of all sizes.

Garveyites urged a cultural revolution towards the Black community to gain a mass following.

Manning Marable wrote about the Garvey Movement:[141]

Black Power in the Caribbean was a political strategy similar to how it manifested itself in the United States, but Caribbean Black Power presented itself as radical political activism—radical politics, radical economics and even radical culture in addition to personal dignity and self-respect.

Militant Black Power evangelists were generally not receptive to analysis and discussion. Their strategy tended towards confrontation over interaction as they felt that status quo change was too slow.

West Indians who figured prominently in the 1960s U.S. Black Power Movement were Stokely Carmichael [Trinidad & Tobago], Roy Inness [Virgin Islands], Courtland Cox [lived in Trinidad] and Lincoln Lynch [Jamaica].[142]

In general and specifically, compared with the movement in America, Black Power in the Caribbean was less racial as it applied to melanin content of the skin. It was difficult to acclaim blackness in skin tone when Caribbean people were often multi-racial with their own hierarchical figuring of skin color based on shades of brown; the concept of the Brownocracy. 

Caribbean Black Power was riding on the trend in the States and using the movement to enlist mass support. When racial overtones were used by Caribbean Black Power intellectuals, the discussion concerned neo-colonialism with capitalists and imperialists being white. There was the belief that poverty in the Caribbean was not caused by racism, but by capitalism and oppressive imperialist policies.

Information about these parties and major events, like Haile Selassie’s visit to Jamaica in 1966 and Walter Rodney’s expulsion from Jamaica in October 1968[143] and the February [1970] Movement in Trinidad-Tobago, spread throughout the region and major world cities by radio, newspapers, periodicals, pamphlets, university publications, conference publications and word-of-mouth.

C.L.R. James attended the 1st Regional Conference on Black Power in Bermuda, 10-13 July 1969. The specter of Black Power advocates gathering together was so unsettling that the British government sent a contingent of Royal Marines to watch over things.[144]

C.L.R. James was traveling extensively and added his weighty influence to the political thought of the time. One theme of C.L.R. James was the idea of transformation. Real change can be enabled by democratic actions of ordinary people.[145] James believed people joining together can transform their existence.

Dr. Robert Millette wrote at length on The Black Revolution in the Caribbean.[146] The piece was first published by Moko Enterprises, Trinidad & Tobago in 1971. His writing favored a black society, over a dependent one. Millette stated:[147]

When power potentially shifts from overseas to “within the territory itself,” he figured the world of possibility:[148]

Dr. R. Millette also cautioned:[149]

Once again, Black Power in the Caribbean was seen as radical Black Nationalism.

The theoretical partner with nationalism was the concept of national sovereignty.

Writer George Lamming spoke to this in 1982 at the Regional Committee for Cultural Sovereignty at a conference in Grenada:[150]

A telex on 27 March 1979 from Ambassador Frank Ortiz Jr. of the American Embassy in Bridgetown, Barbados to the Secretary of State in Washington, DC plus embassies and security bodies, summarized security in the Caribbean at the end of a discussion on the matter. Ortiz wrote:

The rise of radical movements in wake of British withdrawal has changed the traditional security situation in the Caribbean.

Poorly-equipped security services are no longer sufficient.

But we must be aware too that even the best-equipped force will not save a leadership out of touch with citizens.

And many of these government are our of touch with the new generation which grows out of the Black Power movement of the sixties rather than the Inns of Court in London.

This generation provides the leadership and manpower for radical groups throughout the Caribbean.

Embassy will do its part in maintaining contact with these opposition groups and, wherever possible, nudging island leaders toward accommodation rather than confrontation with their political opponents, but ultimately existing governments of the area bear the primary responsibility for meeting the economic and political needs of their citizens.

Grenada has made them more aware of the possible consequences of failure.

Corporate Imperialism

Advocates of Caribbean Black Power felt corporations were robbing their country. They were concerned the outside influence was going to change their national culture and take over national institutions and mores.

Consider the example of television. No one said corporations, the company, brought television to a foreign country.

What usually happened were the highly paid expatriates working for the corporation located in the foreign country wanted to have television for their family, one of many luxury goods. These executives developed ways and means for the foreign country to receive television signals. Soon televisions were imported as a consumer product. Soon most of the people in the country were watching television for lengthy periods.

Much of the imported television programs were the cast-offs from North American programs and, as put by George Lamming, “unloaded on a mesmerized and uncritical populace.”[151] 

Soon the styles and ways of the foreign country or countries became the desires of the citizens of the foreign country where the corporation was based.  Teenage boys were seen with wide Afros.

After being inundated with luxuries like air-conditioners, kitchen appliances, the latest automobiles, carpeting, motorized lawn equipment [most all duty-free], the people of the foreign country felt an invasion on their old ways when at the same time they yearned for the labor-saving conveniences. They felt the “full weight of imperialism,” as some would frame the matter, yet they enjoyed the fruits.

This dichotomous process is called “cultural imperialism” and highly resented by many citizens feeling the pressures on their society.

An attitude of cultural imperialism plays itself upon a smaller, so-called less important nation as advancement. The expatriate unwittingly assumes a higher state of being over the “natives.”

The foreigner from a large nation like the United States with its economic and military superiority acts as a representative of the first world knowing better than peoples of the “third-world.”

It was a particular thorn in the side of Black Power advocates that education in the Caribbean still carried remnants of colonial culture. Students studied history of other countries miles away from their own and rarely studied their own country or region. Students still took the test sent them from Europe.

Students did not learn about the great African fighters from the Caribbean like Toussaint L’Ouverture, Edward Blyden,[152] Henry Sylvester-Williams,[153] René Maran,[154] Aimé Césaire, George Padmore, Frantz Fanon, Marcus Garvey, or C.L.R. James.

The corporations that were producing goods from the resources of the country were seen as maximizing profits and sending the gain to external owners, usually the United States. The profits were seen as going to an owner or to boards of directors, stock brokers, stockholders with little invested in the host country. No one knew the amount of the profit, or how much was earned or where the profit went.

Corporate executives were seen as deciding and making secret deals behind closed doors.  These foreign bodies were seen as robbing the host country’s economy, including using up the host country’s resources.

Multi-national corporations were seen to restrict purchases in the foreign country and produce whatever might be needed in their own industry.

Corporations which produced goods were seen to export the higher quality items and sell the lesser quality good to the local population.

The pay scale for white expatriates in the foreign country was higher than black employees from the foreign country.

Black Nationalism and Foreign Corporations

If there were pure nationalism, with a sovereign right, the host country would be allocated the profit. If done according to radical proposals, the masses would participate in national decisions, including the parameters within which multi-national corporations operated.

For example, corporate profits would be reinvested locally; some capital going to the foreign country.

Caribbean radicals stuck to the concept of localization whereby West Indians produced and processed the resources of their own country.

The salient factor was that radical nationalists were of a mind to place the blame for the corporate actions or inactions on the country’s government. From this blame to a solution, revolution or control of state power was waiting in the wings as an option.

In the situation of Prime Minister Eric Williams and the 1970 government in Trinidad & Tobago, Caribbean Black Power advocates put the government between a rock and a very hard place.

If the government were looking to find solutions to outstanding issues, the means for doing so were through parliamentary measures. Parliamentary changes took time and some radicals felt they could not wait.

They put the pressure on the government and its officials through protests and demonstrations with violence at the outer fringes.

The constitutionally-elected government of all the people could not see their rights jeopardized and the Trinidad-Tobago government stood firm calling for two states of emergency in the February–April 1970 period.

Radicals were outraged, stating they knew all along the continuing exploitation of “metropolitan whites” proved the existence of neo-colonialism. Some radicals ratcheted up an argument of conspiracy saying the CIA was involved.

In defense, some corporate executives would say they had Black employees. Statistics may have shown a preponderance of national employees over or equal to expatriate employees, but the radical critique was that this information was tightly held to the chest of the multi-national corporation.

The Caribbean Black Power people would come right back with the argument that those Blacks who were hired were sell-outs, black bourgeoisie, Afro-Saxons, Black lackeys or Black Honkies because Black Power people saw the white power positions held by the corporations in foreign countries.

The primary defense of the multi-national corporations is capitalism. The people of these corporate entities worked hard, invested millions, and the company they owned lock, stock and barrel was not to be shared no matter the location.

In Jamaica one found the bauxite[155] companies with bauxite used as the source for making aluminum—Reynolds, Alcan, Kaiser, Also and others.

Trinidad had the oil refineries—Texaco and Shell— and the company Tate & Lyle which formed the West Indies Sugar Company.

Booker Brothers, McConnell & Company, popularly known as Bookers, owned most of the sugar plantations in Guyana.

The Tourism Industry

The tourist industry is a topic often discussed because the tourist industry in the Caribbean uses foreign-made goods and is usually an enterprise owned by non-nationals. Tourists change the values in the host culture.

William Demas noted this about land:[156]

Foreign visitors wanted more and different goods as high-priced imported foodstuffs and material goods, and services. Most of these were not available in the host country.

Tourists have the money to get what they want, items the locals cannot afford. In other words, tourists bring their own lifestyle. Many times tourists bring their own aspiration and means to live part of the year in the host country; driving up property values.

The current argument goes that some islands have property values in keeping with those of the United States leaving no place for the island’s sons and daughters to make their home in their own country.

One complaint was summarized by Owusu Sadaukai (Howard Fuller) speaking on the Caribbean situation in Toronto in April 1972:[157]

Sadaukai furthered his talk outlining national purpose:[158]

Sadaukai continued:

The solution, according to Tapia newsletter of 29 August 1971, was to cultivate a Caribbean tourism movement to boarding house lodgings with advertising to low income people who wanted to take a Caribbean vacation, most of those being black Americans and Canadians.[159]

This identical issue was important during the time of development of a similar tourist strategy during the People’s Revolutionary Government in Grenada.

Rosie Douglas commented:[160]

An easy fix on the tourism industry may not take into account the many expatriates who are hotel owners, who have made their home in the Caribbean and become citizens in their new country, whose spouse is Caribbean, whose family may have once been expatriate with diffusion over the years, whose aim is to use local produce and products, who directs cooks to cook the menu of dishes from the host country and who hires local staff.

The issue of whether tourists bring capital to a Caribbean island continues to this day, especially regarding cruise ships. It is harder to justify income from these tourists who are off the boat for one day at a time.

The cruise ship passengers eat their food on the vessel and their lodging is on the vessel. They leave the ship when it is in dock primarily to buy goods most likely made in another country on the cheap. The adventurous among them make it on to a tour van and get to pet the monkeys in a national park area.

It is important to note the concept of Caribbean economic nationalism as interpreted by Dr. Anthony P. Maingot:[161]

Norman Girvan, who received his PhD in 1966 from the University of London, was on the faculty of the University of the West Indies, Jamaica in the early 1970s. He contributed his research and thoughts to many journals, one being New World Quarterly. He was Director of the Caribbean Centre for Corporate Research in Kingston, Jamaica and actively writes online.[162]

Girvan wrote extensively about the issue of Third World Minerals: predominantly bauxite and oil. When the bauxite industry in Guyana was nationalized, followed by the oil industry in Trinidad and Tobago and the actions in the Jamaican bauxite industry, Girvan corroborated the economic nationalist trend in the Caribbean for the first years of the 1970s:[163]

Religion and Marxist Philosophy

The predominant religion in the Caribbean is Roman Catholicism with half the population of Grenada, for example, believing in the Roman Catholic faith.  In the larger scope, Christianity is in the majority with Anglicans and Methodists predominating. Other religions include the Afro-Caribbean Creolized religions and East Indian religions [usually showing up in Presbyterianism].[164]

The 1960s saw organizations active in modernization issues:[165]

In the Sixties, there were symposiums at the United Nations Commission on Trade and Development [UNCTAD], no. 1 & 2; Vatican II; the 4th Assembly of the World Council of Churches [WCC]; and the World Conference on Development [1967] sponsored jointly by the WCC and the Vatican.[166]

Important conclaves also included the 1966 World Council of Churches conference of church and society and the 16 March 1967 Papal Encyclical on Development of Peoples.[167]

The World Council of Churches, based in Geneva, Switzerland, was established in 1937.

Populorum progression is the Papal Encyclical on Development of Peoples written by Pope Paul VI. The church letter also spoke of development and the world economy serving all mankind and not just the few.[168]

The lives of some young Grenadian radicals saw their association with religious groups. Starting with Pope John XXII on 11 October 1962 and closing under Pope Paul VI on 21 November 1965,[169] the Second Vatican Council had an effect on the Caribbean and Caribbean youth.

The four Constitutions of Vatican II are complicated.[170] Below they are outlined with the aid of the writings of Rev. Robert Cuthbert.[171]

The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy did away with most religious services done in Latin and also encouraged the use of local speech patterns and indigenous expressions.

The Constitution on Divine Revelation encouraged the Church to make access to the Scriptures more accessible.

The Constitution on the Church emphasized the Church not as an undisputed revelation, isolated within its own body, but as an organization with a mission to embrace equality of all religions.

The Constitution on the Church in the Modern World put the focus on building justice and peace. Cuthbert noted:[172]

It was a call for ecumenism, for unity among all Christians; praying together, making commitments, engaging in community service; even playing guitars during the church service.

Latin American radicals were drawn to matching the social thought of religion to Marxist philosophy in their branch of liberation theology. More specifically, they linked Marxist interpretations of Roman Catholic theology with political activism—social justice, the elimination of poverty, and human rights.

If the poor were the key to change, if the oppressed and exploited were the last inheritors of the earth, then it followed that the masses represented a living battleground for the future.

To put the matter another way, from a song by the Central Park Sheiks:

George Lamming, in a 1983 speech, reminded listeners of the importance of religion in the Caribbean:[173]

Music

In the English-speaking Eastern Caribbean, West Indian music continued as the rhythm of Carnival and was centered on the talent of Francisco Slinger, known as the Mighty Sparrow.[174]  

Born in Grenada, Slinger went to Trinidad-Tobago when he was a year old, and there his talent grew. He aided the growth of the Calypsonian medium through his rising career as the dominant figure of the style. He was known as a member of the Young Brigade.

The Mighty Sparrow’s social commentary was biting and innovative, writing lyrics filled with wit and irony.

Consider his thrust against colonial education from Captain James Oliver Cutteridge’s West Indian Readers in Dan is the Man.[175] Cutteridge was an education officer in Trinidad.

Sparrow singing his 1963 hit Dan is de Man [about what was learned in colonial education] is an online video.[176]

Sparrow also sang another song in 1963 reflective of the times about Kennedy and Khruschev [The Cuban Missile Crisis]. The tune was titled “Kennedy is the Man for Them.”

Another Grenadian was Clifton Ryan [1928-   ], who also went to Trinidad-Tobago in his youth and made his mark. He was Calypso King there in 1964, known as “The Mighty Bomber.” [177]

An interesting performer, born in the United States,[178] from the 1950s was “Calypso Gene, the Charmer.”[179]

One song was a calypso-like tune using a title from a saying by Muslim pioneer Wallace Dodd Fard—White Man’s Heaven is Black Man’s Hell? It was issued in 1958.[180]

The young Calypsonian would play this song before Malcolm X gave a speech for the National of Island [NOI], speaking a rhetoric of revolution. Another song from 1961 was Look at My Chains.[181] This was Minister Louis X, during his times as a professional Calypsonian in Boston and later in performances throughout the United States, then known as Louis Farrakhan.[182]

Farrakhan[183] was born Louis Eugene Walcott in the Bronx but moved with his mother to the West Indian community in the Roxbury section of Boston where he attended Boston Latin School. His mother was from Saint Kitts/Nevis; his absent father was Jamaican. The boy later returned to his given name, Louis Farrakhan.[184]

Farrakhan’s career as a public personality, within and without the Nation of Islam [NOI], continued past the year 2012.

Grenada, Carriacou and Petite Martinique

The nation of Grenada embodies the island of Grenada, the sister island of Carriacou and smaller sister island of Petite Martinique. Many of Grenada’s major politicians came from, or had roots in the sister islands.

Carriacou had its own airstrip, Lauriston, which formed an additional way to arrive on the island. Previously the ferries Starlight V and Miriam B made the trips between Carriacou and Grenada, a 4-7 hour one-way trip, depending on the weather.[185]

The sister island Carriacou was known for its sea-island cotton, maize, pigeon peas and shipbuilding tradition. The first established secondary school, Bishops College, was located in Hillsborough. Paule Marshall, writing from the perspective of her West Indian roots, features Carriacou in her novel Praisesong for the Widow.[186]

The political and labor history of the Caribbean plays an important role in studying the context of the Grenada Revolution.

Still another element was the condition of the Caribbean in its post-colonial growth and hierarchical struggles between the peoples of former class structures, including the separation between rural and city people.  

M.G. Smith wrote of the intimate associations between the people in Grenada through kinship, family intermarriages and social groupings. People often inherited their occupation, stuck with people by way of immigrant status or origin, went to school locally or in another country, married within the same class. There was a hierarchical status structure and elites were the people who voted.[187]

Gordon K. Lewis commented on race and class:[188]

Author George Lamming in a 1980 lecture on “Politics and Culture” at UWI Cave Hill, Barbados campus graduation where he received an Honorary Doctor of Letters, wrote about the dominant class in Caribbean countries and its persistent legacy:[189]

M.G. Smith termed this class as the dominant minority—these included people involved with the government, justice, administration, welfare and development in their institutional form. The educated, those building formal religious bodies, the property owners—all wanted to maintain the status quo, keep their special privileged position.[190]

In Grenada, the base of educated people was in Saint George’s with the old families. They often carried a sense of entitlement which contributed to the classic “town vs. country” division. The late Gordon K. Lewis wrote about class in the West Indies: [191]

West Indian class structures evoked this observation:[192]

The folk, according to M.G. Smith, were illiterate or barely, poor, illegitimate, of low status, spoke primarily patois with social institutions such as the maroon and susu.[193]

During his 1980 lecture, upon receiving an Honorary Doctor of Letters degree, George Lamming spoke of education in the islands:[194]

Young Grenadian revolutionaries were generally the more fortunate within their society—children of the middle class, dark-skinned and fair-skinned, with basic educational opportunities primarily in the capital of Saint George’s.

They looked to conquer the challenges of poverty, unemployment, lack of education, economic disparity, ill-health, inequality and the political legacy of British Colonialism.

One marking of a major attempt at change in the Caribbean was the quest for unification through Federation, led in 1958 by Dr. Eric Williams of Trinidad & Tobago , Grantley Adams of Barbados and Alexander Bustamante of Jamaica. [195]

Officially the dates of the Federation were from 3 January 1958 – 31 May 1962. The West Indian Federation, with the emergence of the concept in 1956,[196] was formed as a unit of ten [10] Caribbean territories, acting independently from Britain. The West Indian Federation concept failed because of internal political conflicts.[197]

Failure of the West Indian Federation in 1962, did not exclude visions of Caribbean integration. Rosie Douglas wrote of his view a decade later:[198]

Douglas continued:[199]

In writing about class, Douglas stated:[200]

The smaller islands were given, by Britain, the designation of Associated Statehood, including Grenada.

Independence of Grenada was formally achieved 7 February 1974. External affairs and defense were the responsibility of Britain. The Governor-General was responsible to the Queen and not the British Government.[201]

The Grenada Revolution cannot be discussed without reviewing the intellectual, cultural, political climate, ambience and morals of the world at that time as it was absorbed into the psyche of this small island state.

What happened in the United States and Britain was reported to the Caribbean, and what was chosen for reportage was often a popularized summary of actual events.

Not to be forgotten was the British Broadcasting Corporation [BBC] World Service. There was the pre-modern BBC radio on the short-wave band. From 25 December 1976 - 25 March 2011, the BBC World Service brought news and music to Grenadian listeners.[202]

There was the isolation of Grenada so that a parallel line of world events had a delay in the Spice Isle. Still, it “reached,” as the saying goes.

Charisma—Eric Gairy and Maurice Bishop

On the main island of Grenada, there were full cups of ingredients precipitating the growth of the New Jewel Movement; not the least of which was the regime of former Chief Minister Eric Gairy.

Intellectual agitation was in the air. Countries were seeking independence and national liberation. Anti-colonial spirits ran high. And Eric Gairy was causing Grenadian radicals to feel the devil’s riding crop.

The importance of the trait called charisma is not to be diminished. The two primary leaders in Grenada, Eric Matthew Gairy and Maurice Rupert Bishop, around whom our story unfolds, each possessed a personality that gained popular support because of their extraordinary knack and talent.

There is no on-point definition of charisma, but you know it when you see it. Charisma is a magnitude and a sense of largesse; a magnetism of a certain quality shown in the personalities of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Forbes Burnham, Michael Manley, Mao Tse-tung, Stokely Carmichael and Malcolm X, Eric Gairy and Maurice Bishop.

One outstanding trait that Eric Gairy and Maurice Bishop had in common was they were excellent orators. Their dress, manner, style, gestures, vocal modulations, and silences accompanied their package of plain-speaking language.  They simplified and personified their messages even when in a teaching mode.

In effect, they were selected as men worthy of devotion because of the imagery of their total being. For some, Gairy and Bishop had magical powers in their directness. It was Eric Matthew Gairy who called upon those mysteries of life.

For Maurice Bishop, everyone knew his father Rupert had been killed in the “struggle” and most people in Grenada knew Rupert Bishop. The loss associated with Maurice Bishop’s family tragedy added a special dynamic to his character.

People, it is said, had a mix of subjective feelings and impressions upon seeing each of them give a speech. When Maurice Bishop raised his hand above his head, the viewer followed along the trajectory, or when Eric Gairy stood on a car top in his white suit, he was perceived by some as other worldly.

A charismatic authority is perceived as a visionary who bases his judgments on fairness and correctness with his invincibility and prescience. The means by which the masses are wooed has a core of emotional appeal. There is the feeling the leader can get things done, skirt bureaucracy and solve problems.

The effect of mobilization of the masses by a populist leader is that all classes and groups become united under one leader.

In Grenada, “Papa” Gairy was the sole leader; “Brother” Bish was the popular leader of revolutionary change through people’s participation.

The emerging control of a central core like the NJM Bureau or the Central Committee began as early as the time Bishop returned to Grenada in 1970. Throughout Leftist histories one can read of the struggles within and outside of a Central Committee.

Often, charisma works best in a crisis, real or manufactured. A step towards further decolonialization in the attempt by Gairy to gain independence as a solitary Grenadian state was one such crisis. The threat to the Gairy regime by the young radicals was another critical point in Grenada’s history.

Anton Allahar’s book on Caribbean charisma made this point:[203]

Indeed, both Gairy and Bishop felt they were one with the people. Bishop especially raised the levels of expectations towards hope of a just and equal society, though there was no question Bishop rejected independent capitalism in favor of socialism when Gairy was all along saying the young rascals were Communists.

Eric Matthew Gairy

Frank J. McDonald wrote Grenada: Eric Matthew Gairy and the Politics of Extravagance published 25 May 1969,[204] and Tales of Uncle Gairy, 10 November 1969. These articles were published by the Institute of Current World Affairs. [205]

Going into the 1970s, Gairy’s consolidation of one-man rule of his Party, the GULP, was evaluated in retrospect by Ewart Archer:[206]

Grenada, going into the 1970s, saw Eric M. Gairy as Premier[207] and Herbert Blaize as the Opposition Leader. Native Grenadian Dr. Hilda Bynoe was Governor General.[208] She was the first female governor in the British Commonwealth of Nations.[209]

The late Joachim "Sonny" Mark wrote about one relationship of Gairy and Bynoe:[210]

The Firearms Act of 1968 passed by the Grenada United Labour Party [GULP][211] took away all firearms permits issued to members of the Opposition and people Gairy considered enemies and to impound personal weapons. [212]  These included citizens who for years had been permitted to carry guns to protect their property. One was Johnny Branch, part–owner of Douglaston Estate in Saint John’s, a Justice of the Peace, and a man with no convictions for any offence.[213]

Those who carried rifles on estates, for example, used them for a variety of protective reasons. According to DaBreo: [214]

Following the Firearms Act, harassment of any opposition began to be carried out by Gairy’s henchmen. There were beatings and searches, overt and tacit intimidation practices. One given example was when the homes of Dr. John Watts and Johnny Branch were searched. Nothing was found, and a pattern of searching homes and finding nothing was established, according to DaBreo.[215]

The opposition groups to Gairy’s regime and union came from farmer’s organizations – the Progressive Labour and General Workers Union [PLGWU] led by Pope McLean and the Grenada Farmers Union [GFU] led by Wellington Friday.[216]

Around the third week of May 1969, a spiteful fight involved accusations and counter-accusations; a Gairy call for a strike, incidents of threats, arson and hooliganism. Because of the recent Firearms Act, those carrying weapons, even for practical reasons, were susceptible to government action.

One incident involved farmer and Senator Ben Jones and his 40 hacked-down cocoa trees in Saint Patrick’s parish. Tensions were so high; the trend seemed to be towards armed resistance. Meanwhile, in Carriacou, there was talk of a secessionist movement, continuing to this present day.[217]

During 1969, flyers appeared in Grenada; an example below:[218]

The Grenada National Bank was established by Eric Gairy in 1969. All sorts of mayhem at the bank resulted, according to Joachim Mark.[219]

Constable Innocent Belmar was promoted to Corporal in 1969.[220]

By way of the Government Information Service [GIS], Gairy made Grenadians and others aware of his disdain of Associated Statehood and his goal of Independence for Grenada.

In a GIS statement of 21 February 1969, Gairy wrote about the preparatory steps towards independence through the United Nations and also about plans to open a consul office in the United States.[221]

The major event of 1969 was conceived by Gairy. The trade fair was called Expo ’69.

The idea for Expo ‘69 was supposed to have been sparked by Gairy’s attendance at the 5 September 1967 “Grenada Day” celebration of the 1967 Montreal Exposition. [222]

Gairy was masterfully in attendance at Expo ’69 wearing a white shirt, white suit coat, white pants and white shoes. In his opening speech at Expo ‘69, he said:[223]

Carifta Expo ‘69 was first international trade fair held in the Caribbean and it was held in Grenada. The fair was open from 5 April 1969 to 30 April 1969.

The Expo Office issued a 24-page booklet with an opening message by Her Excellency Dame Hilda Bynoe.[224] The grounds of the exposition were at a specially-designed complex in the True Blue Beach Resort area in the southern part of Grenada. [225]

Those in charge of the exposition were Chairman Peter Bynoe, Dip. Arch., A.R.I.B.A. The board included Executive Secretary George Isaac Marecheau; John Derek Neckles Knight; Senator Keith Alleyne, Q.C. and Hon. George Frederick Hosten. Mrs. Margo Foister “was nominated Secretary to the Central Committee.” Others who worked on the project included Neville DaBreo, Chairman of the Grenada Tourist Board and businessman Ben Davis.[226]

[Uncorroborated]  Gail Renwick, who was crowned Carnival Queen 1968 with her dazzling Crystal Chandelier costume, had a role in Expo ‘69.

One writer at the Expo Office waxed eloquent about the site description, quoted here in part:[227]

By June 1969, an incident occurred regarding the Church and the late Father Trevor Emmanuel. On Sunday, 16 June 1969, Fr. Emmanuel preached a sermon in the Saint George’s Roman Catholic Church – in part:[228]

According to writer Frank McDonald, Fr. Emmanuel equated the freedoms above with scripture and personal rights. The Governor-General Dame Hilda Bynoe was sitting with the congregation during that sermon. She was not pleased.

She invited Fr. Emmanuel to Government House to discuss her displeasure and suggested that an apology to the Premier was in order.

Fr. Emmanuel declined; Gairy went on the radio shouting out Fr. Emmanuel’s name and charging:[229]

Following this outburst, a group of the clergy sent a letter to Gairy on 7 July 1969. The letter was signed by ten [10] church leaders from the Roman Catholic, Anglican, Methodist and Presbyterian houses of worship in Grenada; the largest denominations. They said Fr. Emmanuel had a right to speak out on all matters, including political ones, and noted that “Freedom of speech is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”[230]

The year 1969 marked the time of mysterious fires. Frank McDonald wrote of the consequences of the public incident relating to Fr. Emmanuel’s sermon:[231]

The fire at the old Saint George’s R.C. School included the steel band on 3 July 1969.[232]

Father Trevor Emmanuel, who later was involved in the New Jewel Movement, spoke out about social justice issues:[233]

Memory

Remember Phoenix cigarettes, Blue Danube butter bread, Red Spot, Franco ice cream, blood pudding and one’s rum of choice? One does recall Chinatown, Tropical Inn, and the Bamboo Bar on the Esplanade, BBC nightclub, Portofino’s, the Lion’s Den and movies at the Empire Theatre. On 8 June 1968, the Grenada Zoo was opened; a Gairy project complete with engraved invitations for opening day.[234]

Memories are found in the writings of Anthony Wendell DeRiggs [Recollections of an Island Man],[235] and [Reflections & Ole Talk][236]; Dr. Winston J. Phillips [The Grenada Boys Secondary School Hostel[237]] and Lincoln Depradine [White Cloak & Coals Dust[238]].

The Time-Life Books volume on Cooking of the Caribbean[239], published in 1970, caught the eye of admirers with its colorful photos of Grenada. Books published in the Caribbean followed. This cookbook may have been one’s first introduction to the Spice Isle.

The Peace Corps in Grenada

The United States Peace Corps,[240] founded in the U.S. on 21 March 1961, was in Grenada from 1966-1979 and started up again in 1985.[241]

Among the seized Grenada Documents was one paper titled Secret Memorandum and the Peace Corps. The author is Jack Vaughn. The date is unknown.[242]

The memorandum on the Peace Corps came from the files of the People’s Revolutionary Government. The document reviewed and used as the source of selected quotations with commentary about the memorandum [see General Appendix]. [243]

“Extracts from a Secret Memorandum issued by the U.S. State Department to Peace Corps Volunteers” can also be found at the end of Salkey’s Georgetown Journal. [see General Appendix][244]

A note in Salkey’s Appendix indicated the “Secret Memorandum” was first published as an expose in Uhuru, [245] a twice-monthly newspaper of the Black community in Montreal, Canada from 1969-1970. [246]

The memorandum was reprinted in ASCRIA Drums (April 1970),[247] published monthly by ASCRIA, in Georgetown, Guyana. [248]

The “secret memorandum” via then Peace Corps Director Jack Vaughn, issued to volunteers, essentially provided guidelines for volunteers to be righteous representatives of America.  The quotations in the document filled two typed pages. A selection is made of the more directive extracts:[249]

Other quotations concerned the individual volunteer:[250]

And then there was more about the Communists:[251]

This unknown author of the documents summarized:[252]

Jack Hood Vaughn[253] was Director of the Peace Corps from March 1966–March 1969, appointed by U.S. President Lyndon Baines Johnson.[254] He had been Latin American Director from October 1961–April 1964.[255]

Media in Grenada

Grenada had three anti-government newspapers and a radio network during 1970.

One was the West Indian, a daily newspaper that was founded in 1915 by T.A. Marryshow, but later owned by the Gairy Government.

Another was the Torchlight issued twice during the week.

The third was aligned with the Grenada National Party [GNP]. It was titled the Vanguard,[256] not to be confused with the Vanguard newspaper of Trinidad-Tobago run by editor-journalist Wally Look Lai for the Oilfields Workers’ Union.[257]

The radio network Windward Islands Broadcasting Service [WIBS] had been founded in 1955. Old hands at WIBS include Leslie Seon, former Program Director and former Government Information Service [GIS] director, and Ray Smith.

Caribbean media historian John Lent related in text his May 1971 interview with Claude Theobalds, former chief program officer of WIBS:[258]

From 1955-1971 [during most of Gairy’s three elected five-year terms] the WIBS building was located in Morne Rouge.

WIBS was stopped in 1971, and by the first of January 1972 Radio Grenada was formed as a government radio station housed in the same building.

The use of British libel law to protect an individual’s reputation was not ignored by Gairy:[259]

The Grenada-Aruba Connection

A history of the Grenada-Aruba connection was first printed in Caribbean Week, October 1995. It was written by John Collins about San Nicolas, Aruba. The site at caribbeanrunnings.com is unfortunately disabled as of November 2009. 

Collins wrote:

Calypso - Grenadian Style

In Grenada, Calypso Monarchs were Lord “Whitey” Carleton “Mighty Hurricane” Mitchell [1968] of Clozier, Saint John’s; the Mighty Dictator [1969]; the Mighty Scaramouche [1970], Mighty Unlucky [1971] and Mighty Inspector [1972].[260]

The American and British Black Power Movement Influence in Grenada

American Black Power came to Grenada by way of the usual paths of osmosis. The movement of information from outside the Caribbean filtered into Grenada by way of newspapers, magazines, BBC radio, wire services, returning University of the West Indies [UWI] students, Grenadians traveling back home among various means.

The radicalization of Grenadians who primarily studied in the United Kingdom and at the University of the West Indies had its origins in the Black Power Movement.

Some spoke similarly about the nemesis of Rastafarians, called “Babylon.” These few took on the manner of arrogance, fearlessness, scorn and resistance.

Trinidad-Tobago

In nearby Trinidad-Tobago, the primary newspapers were the Trinidad Guardian with most people purchasing the Sunday edition. The Guardian’s sister paper was The Evening News.[261]

The other newspaper was the Express, managed by Ken Gordon. These two papers were owned by Roy Thomson. Trinidadian newspapers were brought regularly to Grenada to be sold at newsstands.

In broadcasting, Radio Trinidad and the Trinidad & Tobago National Broadcasting System was on the air with a majority it their programming from outside the island.

Trinidadian Merle Hodge’s Crick, Crack Monkey[262] was published in 1970.

A variety of Top Calypso Hits (primarily from Trinibagonian artists) were available 1968-1970, including Child Training by Mighty Composer (Fred Mitchell) in 1969; Severe Licking by Baron (Timothy Watkins) in 1971; Black is Beautiful by the late Duke (Kelvin Pope) in 1969; Mr. Walker by the Mighty Sparrow (Slinger Francisco) in 1968, and Miss Tourist by Lord Kitchener (Aldwyn Roberts) in 1968.[263] Black Stalin (Leroy Calliste) was part of Lord Kitchener’s Kaiso Review in Trinidad-Tobago, starting in 1967 and placed in the Monarch line-up.[264]

Communication between parties of the Caribbean Left with news from Trinidad-Tobago was active. The situation in Trinidad-Tobago was summarized by Trinidadian Wally Look Lai; lawyer, journalist and activist:[265]

Prime Minister Eric E. Williams’ book From Columbus to Castro: A History of the Caribbean, 1492-1969 was published in 1970,[266] followed by his History of Trinidad & Tobago in 1972. [267]

The Saint Augustine campus of the University of the West Indies [UWI] was founded in 1960.[268] Starting in 1966, an Institute of International Relations [IRR] was established on the Saint Augustine campus which was in Trinidad-Tobago. The IRR was in partnership with the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland.[269]

Revolutionary groups, consisting of individuals calling for change of existing structures, could be found at the National Joint Action Committee [NJAC], the Union of Revolutionary Organizations [URO], [270]and members of the New Beginning Movement [NBM].

American Black Power Influence in Trinidad-Tobago

American Black Power came to Trinidad-Tobago by way of the usual paths of osmosis. The movement of information from outside the Caribbean filtered into Grenada by way of newspapers, magazines, BBC radio, wire services, returning University of the West Indies [UWI] students, and Trinidadians traveling back home.

Naipaul commented: [271]

Grenadian Fennis Augustine was interviewed in London by Cecil Gutzmore in the journal Black Liberator. He stated: [272]

Stokely Carmichael, who changed his name to Kwame Touré in 1968, was to visit the country of his birth, Trinidad-Tobago, during this unsettling time.

Eric Williams’ government warned the airlines against allowing Carmichael anywhere near the airport.[273] Carmichael was barred from entering Trinidad-Tobago in 1969.[274]

Eventful in 1969 was that students joined with the bus drivers in their strike in Port-of-Spain.[275] Protesters talked about the charges against West Indian students at Sir George Williams University in Montreal.

Other active groups were the Oilfields Workers’ Trade Union [OWTU] and students-faculty of the University of the West Indies (UWI), Saint Augustine campus.

Groups prominent in the Black Power marches were the Afro Turf Limers, two chapters of the Black Panther party, the National African Cultural Organisation, the National Freedom Organization, the New World Group, the African Unity Brothers, the Southern Liberation Movement and the Tapia House Group.

The February Movement in Trinidad

Willy Look Lai observed:[276]

Much more happened during the February Revolution in Trinidad-Tobago. The overview here is to provide background.

One occurrence was during Trinidad-Tobago Carnival in February 1970, when groups of young people carried large photographs of American Black Power leader Stokely Carmichael, Mao Tse-tung, Eldridge Cleaver and Malcolm X.[277]