Scholarship and popular perceptions of Black Power have been dominated by the North American movement. However the Caribbean also experienced significant Black Power upheavals in the same period as its powerful northern neighbour. In this seminar, Dr Quinn will examine the region-wide Black Power movement in the Caribbean, focusing in particular on its relationship with black activism in the United States and Canada. It will explore what Black Power meant in the majority black and multi-ethnic societies of the Caribbean; and the differences, overlaps and tensions between Caribbean and US Black Power. Witnessing the proliferation of the symbols, styles and rhetoric of Black Power on the streets of Kingston, Nassau and Port of Spain, many contemporary observers dismissed Caribbean Black Power as an American importation of little relevance to Caribbean society. However to characterize the Caribbean movement as merely imitative does justice neither to the local dimensions of Caribbean Black Power nor to the transnational contexts in which it emerged.

Kate Quinn is Lecturer in Caribbean History at the Institute of the Americas, University College London. Her publications include Black Power in the Caribbean (2014) and Politics and Power in Haiti (2013).