“[…] This series examines the conditions, circumstances, personalities and forces which came together and gave birth to the most dynamic show of people’s power ever witnessed in the Caribbean. We also examine some of the achievements of the Revolution, as well as the principles and philosophy which guided the Revolution. …
Read More »Raffique Shah: ‘Black power’ and Indians; when flowering racial unity sparked a revolution
The following column was written by Raffique Shah on 9 June 2000: IN 1970, I was the only Indian officer in the Trinidad and Tobago Regiment. I was also the youngest officer, having graduated from Sandhurst in July 1966, some four months after I had turned 20. When I returned …
Read More »Dear editor: Basil Davis’ 1970 funeral is historic, although we’ve lost hard-won gains
“[During the 1970 uprising] Basil Davis pleaded that [an] arrested man had mental problems but was well known and harmed no one. The police officer shot the unarmed, pleading Basil Davis at point blank range killing him on the spot. “The shooting death of Basil Davis outside of Woodford Square, …
Read More »What’s in a name—Pt 2: Black Power, Calypso, Soca and pumpkin vine
What, a young British schoolboy was asked somewhere in the early 1980s, is Black Power? His response was a name: ‘Clive Lloyd.’ As the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago emerges from Carnival and begins a largely muted celebration of the anniversary of the epoch-making 1970 Black Power Revolution, some other …
Read More »Remembering the 1970 Mass People’s Movement and the Church
The entry of the National Joint Action Committee (NJAC) under the leadership of Makandal Daaga (then Geddes Granger) into Port of Spain on Thursday 26 February 1970, represented the beginning of the most dynamic and significant period in the history of Trinidad and Tobago. NJAC had convened a March through …
Read More »Gilkes: Youth don’t need approval to be agitators, kudos to that outspoken CIC student
At a post-budget discussion this week, a St Mary’s College student chided a panel of present and former government officials, including Public Utilities Minister Robert Le Hunte and Public Administration Minister Allyson, for how they handle youth issues. In the following guest column, Corey Gilkes comments on the public debate …
Read More »Noble: The blackest thing in Laventille; how decades of neglect shaped a ‘hot spot’
Dr Eric Williams’ last tome, The Blackest Thing in Slavery (1973), tells us that there were many more shady dealings in slavery than the African slave. This is analogous to the Laventille situation; there are more criminal dealings than those who live there. While there is an undeniable need for …
Read More »Daaga make we do it! Black Power stories of the Q and the 1970 Coup
“Power alone,” the poet Syl Lowhar wrote in Tapia’s “Black Power in Human Song” special somewhere in the 1970’s, “will never make us strong. The heart must also sing the human song.” Almost half a century after Geddes Granger’s NJAC empowered Black people in Trinidad and Tobago, the politically most …
Read More »Black identity (Pt 8): The redemption of blackness through the rubric of Black Power
The Black Power movement of the 1960’s and ‘70’s was not spawned by a spontaneous determination to destroy white supremacism and undo the psychological damage of European enslavement, colonialism and Jim Crowism. Rather, it was a much longer and more complex historical process, a process which this column is dedicated to …
Read More »People power and a new, just society! NJAC celebrates 48th anniversary of historic 1970 march
“The desire for a new and just society, therefore, could only be achieved by replacing the old institutions with new ones. The generation of the 1970s thus saw its mission as the removal of these alien impositions and the mobilisation of our population for the building of a new foundation …
Read More »Dear Editor: Afro-Indian unity? Never happened! Granger, NJAC bungled 1970 March by ignoring “Baba”
“Most of us Indians didn’t like Eric Williams and his PNM and would be glad to see them go. But we had no interest in seeing the Eric Williams black gang replaced by another black gang led by Granger/Daaga and company. “[…] Once Williams had got the news that a …
Read More »Indo-Trinis and “Black Power”: why Bhadase and Dr Williams agreed on issue of Indian-African unity
Someday in the future, when Trinbago nationalism becomes a common experience across our multifaceted demographic, February 1970 will surely be memorialised collectively as the month that precipitated the most significant events in the history of the two-island state since Emancipation. I am motivated to write this piece not only because …
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