The Black Power Movement in Trinidad and Tobago

The article examines the impact of Black Power in Trinidad and Tobago during the 1960s and 1970s.Black Power appealed to a wide cross-section of the public, including academics, trade unionists, and the underprivileged.There is emphasis on the global and regional linkages, including the Sir George Williams Affair in Canada and the Black Power Movement in the United States.Furthermore, Black Power participants in Trinidad and Tobago maintained contacts with their counterparts in other Caribbean countries.The article also provides evidence that the Black Power Movement highlighted the economic problems, racism, and social crisis facing Trinidad and Tobago.This included removal of restrictions from certain jobs and reduction of the racial tension between Afro-Trinidadians and Indo-Trinidadians.Mention is made of individuals and groups who provided leadership, guidance, and ideological input within the movement.Origins of Black Power Black Power in Trinidad and Tobago, during the 1960s and 1970s, was strongly influenced by the ideology of Pan-Africanism, which emerged during the nineteenth century and continued into the early twentieth century when Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican based in the United States, promoted race consciousness during the 1920s and 1930s. 1 Race consciousness, African identity, and pride were important components of Pan-Africanism and Garveyism, which comprised the foundation of Black Power.The emergence of Black Power during the 1960s signified a struggle to reclaim authority, power, identity, and respect.Black Power in the UnitedStates was a response to many years of racism faced by African Americans and that turbulent era was marked by discontent with the "establishment" and rejection of conventional politics.Black Power in the Caribbean, however, was a response to racism but also to the negative socioeconomic effects of colonialism and imperialism (Riddell, 1972, pp.7-9).Trinidad and Tobago had achieved independence in 1962, but its natural resources continued to be exploited by foreign oil and sugar companies, including Texaco, Tate and Lyle, British Petroleum, and Shell.This "independent" status represented the ending of political ties to European countries and meant that Trinidad and Tobago had the freedom to govern themselves.However, the economic and social freedom of West Indians had not yet been achieved.For instance, a 1970 survey of Tobago revealed that 75% of the best land was owned by either the local elite or foreigners.Some members of the National Joint Action Committee (NJAC), a major Black Power group based in Port-of-Spain (in Trinidad), visited Tobago in March 1970 for one week and sought to enlighten the people.Tobagonians needed the land to plant food, but "some of it was left in bush and treated like a tourist resort" (Daaga, 1995, p.197).Thus, one of the demands of Black Power was the need for more locals owning land, local ownership of companies operating in the Caribbean, and the employment of more locals in these companies.The relatively high levels of poverty and unemployment in 1970 made Black Power more appealing to the masses in the Caribbean and Global South.In the Caribbean, during the late 1960s to 1 John La Guerre (1995) believed, "The doctrines of Black Power were essentially an amalgam of Marxism and Garveyism" (p.282).

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