Black Power in the Caribbean refers to political and social movements in the Caribbean region from the mid-1960s to mid-1970s that focused on overturning the existing racist power structure. Guyanese academic Walter Rodney famously defined the movement as follows: "Black Power in the West Indies means three closely related things":
The Black Power movement in Jamaica developed in the 1960s. Major figures in the movement include Walter Rodney and the Abeng group. [2]
The Black Power movement in Trinidad & Tobago emerged in the late-1960s and came to a head with the Black Power Revolution in February 1970. It had as a precursor the labour uprisings of the 1930s. Key figures in the Black Power movement include Makandal Daaga, Clive Nunez and Basdeo Panday. The movement was responsible for bringing about significant social changes within Trinidad & Tobago, in particular the upward mobility of blacks in corporate Trinidad.
The Haitian revolution is one of the most exemplifying parts in history pertaining to black power in the Caribbean. This revolution led Haiti to become the first black republic of the new world. Haitians developed a fierce vibrant and resistant culture in which they defended themselves from the British, Spanish, and French.
Bois Caïman is where a Vodou ceremony took place in which the first major slave revolt of the Haitian Revolution was planned. On August 14, 1791, slaves from nearby plantations gathered to participate in a secret ceremony conducted in the woods in the French colony of Saint-Domingue. A prominent slave leader and Vodou priest, Dutty Boukman, gave the signal to begin the revolt. The ceremony began the era of black power in Haiti. The effect a couple months after the revolt was that slave rebels controlled a third of the island by 1792.
The history of Trinidad and Tobago begins with the settlements of the islands by Indigenous First Peoples. Trinidad was visited by Christopher Columbus on his third voyage in 1498,, and claimed in the name of Spain. Trinidad was administered by Spanish hands until 1797, but it was largely settled by French colonists. Tobago changed hands between the British, French, Dutch, and Courlanders, but eventually ended up in British hands following the second Treaty of Paris (1814). In 1889, the two islands were incorporated into a single political entity. Trinidad and Tobago obtained its independence from the British Empire in 1962 and became a republic in 1976.
Eric Eustace Williams was a Trinidad and Tobago politician who is regarded by some as the "Father of the Nation", having led the then British Colony of Trinidad and Tobago to majority rule on 28 October 1956, to independence on 31 August 1962, and republic status on 1 August 1976, leading an unbroken string of general elections victories with his political party, the People's National Movement, until his death in 1981. He was the first Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago and also a noted Caribbean historian, especially for his book entitled Capitalism and Slavery.
Obeah, or Obayi, is a series of African diasporic spell-casting and healing traditions found in the former British colonies of the Caribbean. These traditions derive much from traditional West African practices that have undergone cultural creolization. There is much regional variation in the practice of Obeah, which is followed by practitioners called Obeahmen and Obeahwomen.
François Mackandal was a Haitian Maroon leader in the French colony of Saint-Domingue. He is sometimes described as a Haitian vodou priest, or houngan. For joining Maroons to kill slave owners in Saint-Domingue, he was captured and burned alive by French colonial authorities.
Dutty Boukman was an early leader of the Haitian Revolution. Born in Senegambia, he was enslaved to Jamaica. He eventually ended up in Haiti, where he became a leader of the Maroons and a vodou houngan (priest).
Afro-Trinidadians and Tobagonians are people from Trinidad and Tobago who are of Sub-Saharan African descent, mostly from West Africa. Social interpretations of race in Trinidad and Tobago are often used to dictate who is of West African descent. Mulatto-Creole, Dougla, Blasian, Zambo, Maroon, Pardo, Quadroon, Octoroon or Hexadecaroon (Quintroon) were all racial terms used to measure the amount of West African ancestry someone possessed in Trinidad and Tobago and throughout North American, Latin American and Caribbean history.
The Rodney riots were riots and civil disturbances in Kingston, Jamaica in October 1968.
Afro-Caribbean people or African Caribbean are Caribbean people who trace their full or partial ancestry to sub-Saharan Africa. The majority of the modern Afro-Caribbean people descend from the Africans taken as slaves to colonial Caribbean via the trans-Atlantic slave trade between the 15th and 19th centuries to work primarily on various sugar plantations and in domestic households. Other names for the ethnic group include Black Caribbean, Afro or Black West Indian or Afro or Black Antillean. The term Afro-Caribbean was not coined by Caribbean people themselves but was first used by European Americans in the late 1960s.
Oungan is the term for a male priest in Haitian Vodou. The term is derived from Gbe languages. The word hounnongan means chief priest. ‘'Hounnongan or oungans are also known as makandals.
The Black Power Revolution, also known as the Black Power Movement, 1970 Revolution, Black Power Uprising and February Revolution, was an attempt by a number of social elements, people and interest groups in Trinidad and Tobago to subvert the neocolonial order held over from the days of British slavery and imperialism, and supported by Anglo-American collusive efforts to maintain dominating influence in the Caribbean region.
The National Union of Freedom Fighters (NUFF) was an armed Marxist revolutionary group in Trinidad and Tobago. Active in the aftermath of the 1970 Black Power Revolution, the group fought a guerrilla warfare campaign to overthrow the government of Prime Minister Eric Williams following the failed Black Power uprising and an unsuccessful mutiny in the Trinidad and Tobago Regiment.
Reginald Andrew Lassalle, better known as Rex Lassalle, is an alternative medicine practitioner and former lieutenant in the Trinidad and Tobago Regiment who was a leader of an army mutiny in April 1970 as part of the Black Power Revolution.
Makandal Akhenation Daaga was a Trinidad and Tobago political activist and former revolutionary. He was the leader of the 1970 Black Power Revolution. During the unrest he was arrested and charged.
Trinidad and Tobago, officially the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, is the southernmost island country in the Caribbean. Consisting of the main islands Trinidad and Tobago and numerous much smaller islands, it is situated 11 kilometres off the coast of northeastern Venezuela and 130 kilometres south of Grenada. It shares maritime boundaries with Barbados to the east, Grenada to the northwest and Venezuela to the south and west. Trinidad and Tobago is generally considered to be part of the West Indies. The island country's capital is Port of Spain, while its largest and most populous city is San Fernando.
This article describes the history of West Indies cricket to 1918.
The Southern Caribbean is a group of islands that neighbor mainland South America in the West Indies. Saint Lucia lies to the north of the region, Barbados in the east, Trinidad and Tobago at its southernmost point, and Aruba at the most westerly section.
Caribbean Americans or West Indian Americans are Americans who trace their ancestry to the Caribbean. Caribbean Americans are a multi-ethnic and multi-racial group that trace their ancestry further in time mostly to Africa, as well as Asia, the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, and to Europe. As of 2016, about 13 million — about 4% of the total U.S. population — have Caribbean ancestry.
The Caribbean is a subregion of the Americas that includes the Caribbean Sea and its islands, some of which are surrounded by the Caribbean Sea and some of which border both the Caribbean Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean; the nearby coastal areas on the mainland are often also included in the region. The region is southeast of the Gulf of Mexico and the North American mainland, east of Central America, and north of South America.
For a history of Afro-Caribbean people in the UK, see British African Caribbean community.
The city of Baltimore, Maryland includes a large and growing Caribbean-American population. The Caribbean-American community is centered in West Baltimore. The largest non-Hispanic Caribbean populations in Baltimore are Jamaicans, Trinidadians and Tobagonians, and Haitians. Baltimore also has significant Hispanic populations from the Spanish West Indies, particularly Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, and Cubans. Northwest Baltimore is the center of the West Indian population of Baltimore, while Caribbean Hispanics in the city tend to live among other Latinos in neighborhoods such as Greektown, Upper Fell's Point, and Highlandtown. Jamaicans and Trinidadians are the first and second largest West Indian groups in the city, respectively. The neighborhoods of Park Heights and Pimlico in northwest Baltimore are home to large West Indian populations, particularly Jamaican-Americans.
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