Caribbean Matters is a weekly series from Daily Kos. Hope you’ll join us here every Saturday. If you are unfamiliar with the region, check out Caribbean Matters: Getting to know the countries of the Caribbean.
Jomo Thomas, a lawyer, journalist, and social commentator from Saint Vincent, published a timeless piece for The Vincentian newspaper in 2021 titled “Black history outlasts February.”
It was originally written by Saint Lucian journalist Earl Bousquet and adapted with his permission.
We remember Marcus Garvey, Dr Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela. However, we overlook those giants and icons still standing tall among us and designated as ‘national heroes’, but not given equal treatment regionally.
Advocates for change are pressing for urgent upgrading of the History curriculum at our schools to reflect real contemporary Caribbean History. However, it’s still left (primarily) to individual principals and teachers to find innovative ways to introduce new subjects to classes of young Caribbean minds getting ready to shape the region’s tomorrow.
We are necessarily re-writing Caribbean History in our own images and likeness. Still, it’s also necessary to understand that many teachers than imagined have also been mostly mis-educated about our history, and the process of re-learning also applies to them.
The knowledge gap between today’s students and yesterday’s teachers was technically bridged by technology. Still, IT has also widened the gap by the comparative ease with which students consume the info at their fingertips.
Yet, with all the knowledge at hand, students and teachers still need guidance — at times — about which Caribbean heroes they are searching for and why.
Our Caribbean Heroes are very much lost on Our Caribbean.
Arthur Lewis and Derek Walcott are still regarded as ‘Saint Lucia’s two Nobel Prizewinners’; and few know that Saint John Pearce, from Guadeloupe, was the first Caribbean writer to win a Nobel Prize for Literature.
Saint Lucians (and Caribbean people) still don’t know about John Quinlan, who solely represented Africans and Blacks in all British colonies at the Royal Commission on Reparations commissioned by Queen Victoria in 1887; or that (ex-slave) Freedom Fighters who established a republic on Saint Lucia in the 1790s were defeated by a combined invading fleet of 15,000 French and British troops, then captured and shipped to be sold back into slavery in England in 1796 on a ship named ‘London’, only to die when it wrecked off the coast of Devon.
In a prior story titled “Black History is American history: Books you should read,” I covered Frantz Fanon and Eric Williams. Their work was an important part of my political education, and we shared it in Community Political Education classes provided by the Young Lords Party and Black Panther Party.
Their work was not being taught in New York City high schools. While the orange resident in the White House continues to whine about the Nobel Peace Prize Committee dissing him, he surely isn’t aware of Black Caribbean Sir Arthur Lewis, who won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science in 1979, or Derek Walcott, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992.
Here is a video of Sir Arthur Lewis’ 25th Memorial Lecture:
This video is titled “Derek Walcott in St. Lucia”:
Bousquet continued:
Our students still essentially don’t know about Haiti’s roles in reshaping the world, the roles of Frantz Fanon and Aime Cesaire of Martinique in raising Black Consciousness in Africa, who was Barbados’ ‘Bussa’ or Guyana’s ‘Cuffy’, or Jamaica’s Paul Bogle or Queen Nanny, or Amy Jacques Garvey and Amy Ainsworth Garvey.
This article prompted me to research some names and history I was unfamiliar with. While it’s bad enough to have Republicans and the MAGA cabal attempting to erase Black History here in the U.S., there needs to be a serious effort to expand our awareness of linked history in the Caribbean. The media largely ignores the Caribbean, unless they are covering a climate disaster or current U.S. policies of attack like the recent “drug boat” bombings that targeted Venezuela.
We who are not Caribbean by birth or ancestry are often unaware of communities like the Garifuna here in the U.S.
While many of us here in the U.S. and other parts of the world have visited the Caribbean as tourists, knowledge of the history of places visited is often completely absent. That needs to change.
This was made obvious in this Naples News piece titled “The Historical Forces Visitors Often Overlook”:
Most travelers arrive in Caribbean destinations without knowing the profound historical events that shaped the places they’re exploring, missing crucial context for their experiences. The sugar plantations that once dominated these islands created brutal systems of labor that paradoxically became incubators for new cultural forms and resistance movements.
Enslaved Africans couldn’t practice their traditions openly, so they disguised spiritual ceremonies within Christian frameworks, creating unique religions like Vodou in Haiti, Obeah in Jamaica, and Santería in Cuba. The Haitian Revolution of 1791 stands as a pivotal moment when enslaved people defeated French colonizers to establish the first Black republic in world history.
This victory sent shockwaves through colonial powers and inspired liberation movements across the Caribbean and beyond, proving that European empires weren’t invincible after all. Jamaica, Barbados, and Trinidad saw their own uprisings that eventually forced colonizers to end slavery, though racism and economic exploitation continued long after abolition occurred. These struggles for freedom didn’t end with independence but evolved into ongoing fights for economic justice, cultural recognition, and self-determination that continue shaping Caribbean societies.
Where have you learned any Caribbean history? Please join me in the comments section below to discuss.
