1 00:00:00,580 --> 00:00:10,300 So I say this a lot these days when these intersections happen with technology for presentation start. 2 00:00:10,300 --> 00:00:16,390 It usually means I haven't given thanks to you like who's the Urrutia who goes to Crossroads. 3 00:00:16,390 --> 00:00:21,070 So usually after I give thanks, we like where things start to work. 4 00:00:21,070 --> 00:00:29,770 So what would you like? Please open the way of obviously the four panellists. 5 00:00:29,770 --> 00:00:36,190 We have a very broad time frame to talk about 1834 the 1960s. 6 00:00:36,190 --> 00:00:41,110 And as you can see, these discussions over that. 7 00:00:41,110 --> 00:00:47,170 So it's kind of interesting that I'm going to first because I think I'm at the back end of that period. 8 00:00:47,170 --> 00:00:51,040 But I just think that speaks to the connexion of Bermuda's tradition of resistance. 9 00:00:51,040 --> 00:00:54,220 It's really hard to talk about one period and not connect with others, 10 00:00:54,220 --> 00:01:03,550 particularly in a colonial context where historians have been forced to talk about the whole piece of our narrative in terms of not just black people, 11 00:01:03,550 --> 00:01:09,490 but Bermuda history in general, because Bermuda history indicts the colonial system on the island. 12 00:01:09,490 --> 00:01:18,580 So even from the colonial, the colonised perspective. Historic sites, and that experience hasn't been to the benefit of that system. 13 00:01:18,580 --> 00:01:25,930 Put another way. Yes, it is quite true that black people in a public school system socialised to understand our history. 14 00:01:25,930 --> 00:01:35,080 But library readings also aren't taught the history for some of the reasons that we talk to on the other panel as well. 15 00:01:35,080 --> 00:01:38,930 Yes. Are. This is. Thank you so much. All right. 16 00:01:38,930 --> 00:01:52,040 So. I'm going to talk today about surprise, lack power and Bermuda. 17 00:01:52,040 --> 00:01:57,520 You know, you can look my, you know, as far. 18 00:01:57,520 --> 00:02:07,690 I mean, yes, she's using Black Power and Bermuda, as you know, my first book of Black one Bermuda. 19 00:02:07,690 --> 00:02:17,240 Some of the content you will be familiar with, Mike, is that better? 20 00:02:17,240 --> 00:02:22,070 Also, some of the material in this book is part of my forthcoming work on with LeBron. 21 00:02:22,070 --> 00:02:27,470 I will become a cafe girl. And that should be out sometime next year. 22 00:02:27,470 --> 00:02:38,160 Maybe they. So Black Power in Bermuda sought to dismantle British colonialism through political revolution. 23 00:02:38,160 --> 00:02:50,170 For me, this is important because the Black Power movement. Was very much a global movement, Black Power was usually looked at from a U.S. context. 24 00:02:50,170 --> 00:02:58,630 And so the Black Power was branches outside of the United States is often seen as a sabar of the movement in the United States. 25 00:02:58,630 --> 00:03:06,340 But Bermuda is a clear example of if we don't study Black Power in a global context, we kind of lose what that movement means. 26 00:03:06,340 --> 00:03:12,910 To me, that's doubly important because it also shows that Bermuda's history is not just important for Bermuda, 27 00:03:12,910 --> 00:03:16,430 but for the African diaspora in of itself. 28 00:03:16,430 --> 00:03:24,860 Most of the documents you'll see in this presentation from archives, I collected newspapers, magazines, this is from the BlackBerry Kadri's. 29 00:03:24,860 --> 00:03:32,750 Phenomenal newsletter, the BlackBerry. This is important because in many ways, Black Column Bermuda was a reclaim. 30 00:03:32,750 --> 00:03:38,280 Reclamation of African people's identity as much as it was a fight against. 31 00:03:38,280 --> 00:03:43,500 The colonial system, some of you may recognise this photograph. Some of you may not. 32 00:03:43,500 --> 00:03:52,740 It's from the governor's house grounds after the assassination of Sharpless and ADC. 33 00:03:52,740 --> 00:04:00,990 That car would not fall from the sky in Bermuda. It was an extension of Bermuda black radical tradition, resistance against slavery. 34 00:04:00,990 --> 00:04:14,990 Sally Bassett, the You and I A. The drone boycotts in the context of 1960s, the uprisings at 65. 35 00:04:14,990 --> 00:04:23,090 But more specifically, the April 1968 uprisings after a group of black youth were not allowed to enter the April fair, 36 00:04:23,090 --> 00:04:27,110 and I don't have the time to get into that, but in response to that uprising, 37 00:04:27,110 --> 00:04:35,750 the British government sent troops to Bermuda to suppress the uprising that was just not about being allowed to enter a social event. 38 00:04:35,750 --> 00:04:40,490 This is also a strike against police brutality, colonialism and racism. 39 00:04:40,490 --> 00:04:47,080 All three ideas or. All the all of these are contemporary concerns in the aftermath. 40 00:04:47,080 --> 00:04:53,200 Well, actually, in the moment of that uprising, Roosevelt Brown, who was a member of the Progressive Labour Party, 41 00:04:53,200 --> 00:05:01,240 organises the party youth wing in an effort to try to politicise these youth from back at St. Paul, 42 00:05:01,240 --> 00:05:06,910 who had, as we know, by this time then across the world, he'd been in Kenya. 43 00:05:06,910 --> 00:05:11,080 Liberia met Malcolm X and Kenya during a second visit. 44 00:05:11,080 --> 00:05:19,210 He was already being seen as someone who could give a voice of experience to the Black Power movement in the United States. 45 00:05:19,210 --> 00:05:22,120 He attends a Philadelphia Black Power conference in 1968. 46 00:05:22,120 --> 00:05:28,780 His acts to host a Black Power conference in Bermuda, which does so Bermuda hosts, as you know, 47 00:05:28,780 --> 00:05:36,090 the first international Black Power conference that takes place outside of United States. 48 00:05:36,090 --> 00:05:41,290 According to. The Central Intelligence Agency. 49 00:05:41,290 --> 00:05:47,020 There were three major Black Power leaders in the Caribbean in the 1970s. 50 00:05:47,020 --> 00:05:51,850 One was Stokely Carmichael I commentary that will come as no surprise. 51 00:05:51,850 --> 00:05:58,240 Roosevelt Douglass, who was from Dominica. He was also very much involved in the Black Power movement in Toronto. 52 00:05:58,240 --> 00:06:08,090 Number three was our own Paul. This is important for me because this speaks to the visibility of Palu as a Black Power activists and also indicts 53 00:06:08,090 --> 00:06:14,750 his invisibility in terms of how we do not totally understand his global impact in movements of black power, 54 00:06:14,750 --> 00:06:19,220 Pan-Africanism, ecological ecological justice across the world. 55 00:06:19,220 --> 00:06:22,670 This document came from the U.S. State Department archives, 56 00:06:22,670 --> 00:06:34,290 where they were aware that Paola was organising a recruiting conference participants in the US via D.C. and other spaces. 57 00:06:34,290 --> 00:06:41,580 As I've talked about. Other conferences and lectures on my book, The British, the US, even the French, 58 00:06:41,580 --> 00:06:45,480 Canadian governments for concern with black power spread across the world. 59 00:06:45,480 --> 00:06:50,310 And this particular moment they conspired to suppress this conference in Bermuda, 60 00:06:50,310 --> 00:06:54,870 so a number of activists would have attended, like the Caribbean's Walter Rodney, to make it. 61 00:06:54,870 --> 00:07:01,710 But women like Queen Mother Moore and other activists like Jack Lynch, 62 00:07:01,710 --> 00:07:09,990 who also was our keynote speaker at the conference we had and we organised the Dr. Francis and I know the Black Bible conference some years ago. 63 00:07:09,990 --> 00:07:17,720 We're able to attend. Weeks later, Paolo finds himself in Australia, 64 00:07:17,720 --> 00:07:24,020 where his acts to help Australia's burgeoning Black Power movement by a group called the Aboriginal Advancement League. 65 00:07:24,020 --> 00:07:30,020 This photograph is courtesy of Australia's security intelligence organisation. 66 00:07:30,020 --> 00:07:35,690 This is the photograph of him when he enters Victoria airport on his way to Melbourne next to him. 67 00:07:35,690 --> 00:07:41,710 These two really critical black core activists in Australia Bob Maza and Bruce McGuinness. 68 00:07:41,710 --> 00:07:50,310 Who he would invite to United States to a conference call, the Congress of African Peoples held in Atlanta 19 seven. 69 00:07:50,310 --> 00:07:57,720 This is bought by mobs, the left in the middle is just a Corba just deal with us when I travel to Australia. 70 00:07:57,720 --> 00:08:04,560 She had a lot to say about Paolo's impact on the Black Power movement in the Pacific. 71 00:08:04,560 --> 00:08:08,760 And we all know this photograph. This is from the BlackBerry Cordray. 72 00:08:08,760 --> 00:08:13,770 Some of these who were also some of the members were involved in the uprising. 73 00:08:13,770 --> 00:08:16,500 In 1968, they joined the youth wing. 74 00:08:16,500 --> 00:08:22,650 A year later, after the Black Power Conference, which they formally hosted a sponsored, rather, they created the Black America. 75 00:08:22,650 --> 00:08:28,260 Drake to the left is joint host and Bassett. 76 00:08:28,260 --> 00:08:33,420 I'm sure we can guess the others. See Jennifer Smith of Prayer in chief. 77 00:08:33,420 --> 00:08:40,140 There's also Khalil Shabazz Bassett spend time as a student in Chicago. 78 00:08:40,140 --> 00:08:44,580 He was close friends with Fred Hampton, 79 00:08:44,580 --> 00:08:53,120 a major Black Power Black Panther Chicago who was murdered by the FBI or the Chicago Police Department in collaboration with the FBI. 80 00:08:53,120 --> 00:09:01,040 The country became the vanguard of Black Power in Bermuda. They did a number of really amazing work. 81 00:09:01,040 --> 00:09:05,240 They created liberation schools, the magazine, the BlackBerry. 82 00:09:05,240 --> 00:09:11,840 Once again, it's a phenomenal, transnational journal of anti-colonialism solidarity. 83 00:09:11,840 --> 00:09:15,080 The BlackBerry acts. This question is Bermuda like a little Rhodesia? 84 00:09:15,080 --> 00:09:19,250 So does connectedness of Africa really at the forefront of black power in Bermuda? 85 00:09:19,250 --> 00:09:29,260 There's also reveals another dynamic of black power globally as a as an anti-colonial movement. 86 00:09:29,260 --> 00:09:39,130 As stated, this was a this was really of concern to two major Western governments, not all were black. 87 00:09:39,130 --> 00:09:47,680 So in the Caribbean, for example, Polo cannot travel to a number of countries Black Power activists, but Stokely Carmichael cannot enter Trinidad. 88 00:09:47,680 --> 00:09:49,870 The country has borne it. 89 00:09:49,870 --> 00:09:56,140 So Black Power is also being repressed by black governments, which also speaks the dynamic of You cannot really talk about black power. 90 00:09:56,140 --> 00:10:01,060 You don't talk about class. You don't talk about the creation of a black elite class. 91 00:10:01,060 --> 00:10:09,930 It also would defend its own interests via support of capitalism and not the kind of systems of dominance. 92 00:10:09,930 --> 00:10:15,660 They believe that the movement via collaborative international networks of intelligence and repression, 93 00:10:15,660 --> 00:10:22,860 which begs another point usually when we talk about the repression of Black Power is in the context of the FBI's COINTELPRO programme, 94 00:10:22,860 --> 00:10:29,100 which is important. But to really understand the suppression of Black Power and the fight against the repression, 95 00:10:29,100 --> 00:10:35,940 we have to look at how other state forces also use or invest the resources in trying to separate the Black Power movement, 96 00:10:35,940 --> 00:10:40,470 which is one of the reasons why we don't think of it as a global movement, because the propaganda, 97 00:10:40,470 --> 00:10:50,430 the education and other means they have cornered this narrative of Black Power in the United States. 98 00:10:50,430 --> 00:11:03,730 This is the photograph from 1971. This was a Kadry picture taken during a protest in support of Angela Davis. 99 00:11:03,730 --> 00:11:11,120 According to the State Department, the country was Che Guevara at his most militant. 100 00:11:11,120 --> 00:11:19,130 I should have put a picture of Che Guevara next to that quote, but I think you all know the bar, it looks like. 101 00:11:19,130 --> 00:11:30,260 But that says a lot in terms of not just how the state saw the country, but the potential of this organisation in a small place like Bermuda. 102 00:11:30,260 --> 00:11:33,770 But the potential impact that it could have not just young. 103 00:11:33,770 --> 00:11:40,940 So the British Foreign and Commonwealth Organisation attacked the country through the creation of laws and filtration surveillance. 104 00:11:40,940 --> 00:11:51,600 And once again, propaganda. My time is up, but I will finish with this. 105 00:11:51,600 --> 00:11:59,940 The FCO saw Black Power in the Caribbean as approaching the momentum of 1960s African nationalism. 106 00:11:59,940 --> 00:12:06,780 In other words, the very process that liberated Africa in the 1960s, they saw Black Power was having that same momentum. 107 00:12:06,780 --> 00:12:10,410 In other words, this is not just a sidebar movement that may come and go. 108 00:12:10,410 --> 00:12:19,620 It has the potential to transform the island from on a Caribbean plantation economies that the region has suffered from for hundreds of years. 109 00:12:19,620 --> 00:12:23,790 So they attack the movement, as we all know. 110 00:12:23,790 --> 00:12:32,850 Jonathan Bassett is arrested after Kadri burned the Union Jack and City Hall on a hot Saturday afternoon in 1970. 111 00:12:32,850 --> 00:12:38,730 He was charged on the Offensive Behaviour Bill, which was designed just to attack the Kadry. 112 00:12:38,730 --> 00:12:47,760 To me, this is a striking, and it also speaks to the whitewashing that recently took place at City Hall in terms of the Sunday morning. 113 00:12:47,760 --> 00:12:58,740 But I don't have time to talk about that much further. But when you push, folks push back, we don't know enough about park burrows. 114 00:12:58,740 --> 00:13:06,510 We do talk about national heroes, but in other social contexts, the heroes are the ones who are fighting the colonial system. 115 00:13:06,510 --> 00:13:13,260 They may be maybe the people when and then the folks who are the finest criminals. 116 00:13:13,260 --> 00:13:22,860 They become heroes after the fact. Some Mandela as a terrorist while I was in prison on Robben Island for the ANC, has a youth wing. 117 00:13:22,860 --> 00:13:31,220 It leads to armed struggle against anti-apartheid or apartheid system. Once they win National Hero, Nobody, nobody's afraid to love Mandela. 118 00:13:31,220 --> 00:13:38,930 That let me talk about Mandela. We talk woman down in terms of peace and love and unity and togetherness. 119 00:13:38,930 --> 00:13:44,420 So if Bermuda was to be an independent country, what would you say about buckaroos? 120 00:13:44,420 --> 00:13:50,920 Would he still be a criminal? The person we dance around, would you be transformed, 121 00:13:50,920 --> 00:14:00,100 so is that so is the image of buck worries about himself or the political moment we find Bermudan once again? 122 00:14:00,100 --> 00:14:10,350 My time has been up. These photographs were not in my book because the state had some issues. 123 00:14:10,350 --> 00:14:17,430 With those sources, but I still have them, and hopefully they will be in the next. 124 00:14:17,430 --> 00:14:27,787 Thank you very much for your time.