A Tribute to Walter Rodney, Scholar and Activist

By Neil Armstrong

This weekend, 50 years ago, Black intellectuals, Pan-Africanists, activists and students gathered in Montreal for the Congress of Black Writers, from Oct. 11-14, 1968 at McGill University. These were heady days of the Black Power Movement in the USA and critical discussions about colonialism, imperialism and racism in Canada. The Congress was organized mainly by Black West Indian university students and featured people such as Roosevelt ‘Rosie’Douglas (one of the organizers who later became the prime minister of Dominica), Rocky Jones of Halifax, Nova Scotia; C.L.R. James, Stokely Carmichael, Walter Rodney, and many more.

David Austin explores the significance of this event and time in which it happened in his Casa de las Americas Prize-winning book, Fear of a Black Nation: Race, Sex, and Security in Sixties Montreal, Moving Against the System: The 1968 Congress of Black Writers.

After attending the Congress, Walter Rodney was banned from re-entering Jamaica on October 15, and as a consequence his post as lecturer in History at the University of the West Indies, Mona campus was revoked. The ban resulted in protests on Oct. 16 in what became known as the “Rodney riots” when “thousands took to the streets in protest against the ban and against their condition of living.”

On Tuesday, October 16, 2018, starting at 6:30 p.m., the Black and Caribbean Book Affair at A Different Booklist Cultural Centre, 777-779 Bathurst Street in Toronto will present  “A Tribute to Walter Rodney: 50 Years Later.”

The speakers include: Norman Otis Richmond, journalist and founder of the Biko Rodney Malcolm Coalition; Alissa Trotz, associate professor of Women and Gender Studies, and Caribbean Studies, New College, University of Toronto; Wazir Mohamed, associate professor of Sociology at Indiana University East in Richmond, Indiana; and special guests live and via Skype.

In her book, Being Black, Althea Prince notes that: “The late 1960s and early 1970s saw unprecedented community work in Toronto. Black students from York University, the University of Toronto, and Ryerson Polytechnical Institution contributed much time and energy to this work.”

She views the Congress of Black Writers held in Montreal in 1968 as a precursor to this period and noted the attendance of people like Miriam Makeba, Alfie Roberts and Walter Rodney.

“The Congress was a defining moment in the political education of many young African Canadian people. My consciousness, awakened by Malcolm X and the Black Muslims, was informed by the unending and unerring wisdom of C.L.R. James, coupled with the fire that leapt from Stokeley’s tongue. Walter Rodney’s work on Africa and on the Rastafari, are legendary tomes,” she writes.

Rodney was the author of several books, such as How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, The Groundings with my Brothers, A History of the Guyanese Working People, 1881-1905, A History of the Upper Guinea Coast, 1545-1800 and more.

Rodney was born on March 23, 1942 in Georgetown, Guyana and was assassinated on the evening of June 13, 1980. He was 38 years old.

A brief biography of Rodney in “Walter Rodney Speaks: The Making of an African Intellectual” notes that: “On the evening of June 13, 1980, agents of the government succeeded in executing what they were promising to do all along. Walter was assassinated by a bomb in the neighbourhood of his childhood haunts.”

After attending primary school, he won an open exhibition scholarship to Queens College and excelled academically and in athletics. In 1960, he won an open scholarship to the University of the West Indies in Jamaica, graduating with a first-class honours degree in history.

From there a scholarship took him to the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. At the age of 24 he was awarded a Ph.D. with honours.

“Rodney left London in 1966 to take up his first teaching appointment in Tanzania. He returned to the University of the West Indies to teach in January 1968,” notes Walter Rodney Speaks.

It notes that, “the 1960s saw a resurgence of the mass movements in the Caribbean which had their roots in the rebellions of the 1930s.”

“Walter did not confine his activities to the cloisters and lecture rooms at the university, but shared his knowledge and exchanged ideas with the most despised and rejected elements of the Jamaican society – the Rastafari brethren.”

As a result of being banned from Jamaica in 1968, he returned to Tanzania where he lectured from 1968-1974.

In 1974, he decided to return to Guyana and accepted an appointment as professor of the university but the Burnham government rescinded the appointment.

Rodney later joined the Working People’s Alliance, which was founded in 1974 and which became a political party in July 1979.

Scholar, Rupert Lewis, in his book, Walter Rodney’s Intellectual and Political Thought, notes that: “His assassination on 13 June 1980 by an ex-officer of the Guyana Defense Force put an end to the life of one of the most creative Caribbean scholar-activists of the 1960s and 1970s and enabled the PNC regime to continue in power for over a decade with negative social, economic, political and moral consequences for the Guyanese people.”

The book is described as “an intellectual and political biography of one of the leading black intellectuals of the 1960s and 1970s.”

“ A West Indian, Pan-Africanist and Marxist, Walter Rodney functioned in the intellectual tradition of C.L.R. James, Henry Sylvester-Williams, and George Padmore of Trinidad and Tobago, Theophilus Scholes and Marcus Garvey of Jamaica, and the collective force of the Rastafarian movement in Jamaica during the 1950s and 1960s – although his post-colonial-era perspective also set him apart from those earlier figures and movements,” the book notes.

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SOME UPCOMING EVENTS

On Friday, October 19, 5:00 p.m. to Saturday, 7:00 p.m., there will be the “Congress of Black Writers and Artists: An Argument for Black Studies in Canada” at the William Doo Auditorium, New College, University of Toronto, 45 Wilcocks Street, Toronto.

Black Congress is a two-day transdisciplinary symposium organized by graduate students at the University of Toronto. This event is hosted by the Women & Gender Studies Institute and funded by the New College Initiatives Fund, Canadian Studies (UTSG), Department of History (UTSG), Centre for Media and Culture in Education, Caribbean Studies (UTSG), Faculty of Arts & Sciences, School of Graduate Studies and the Canada Research Chair in Canadian and Transnational History.

“2018 marks the 50th Anniversary of the Congress of Black Writers and Artists in Montreal, Quebec. Created as a meeting place for Black intellectuals, activists and artists, Congress offered an opportunity to engage in Black radical scholarship, to display Black creative production, for Black people to gather in communion and most importantly, to continue the work towards Black liberation. This work was transnational in its lens as Black people worked through what another world, another life, might look like for Black people the world over,” notes a description of the event.

The keynote on October 20, 5:30-6:45 p.m. will be historian and academic Robert Hill in conversation with Dr. Alissa Trotz.

For more information, visit https://www.eventbrite.com/e/congress-of-black-writers-artists-2018-an-argument-for-black-studies-in-canada-tickets-49855013688

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On Thursday, Oct. 18, 7:00 p.m., the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies presents the launch of new programs and research in Black Studies at York University. The keynote will be presented by Professor Christina Sharpe at Tribute Communities Recital Hall, York University.

Professor Sharpe, one of the most important contemporary scholars in Black Diaspora Thought and Cultures, joined the Black Studies program at York University in June. To read more about her, visit http://bcs.huma.laps.yorku.ca/2018/06/christina-sharpe-leading-scholar-in-black-diaspora-studies-joins-black-studies-program-at-york-university/

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On Thursday, Oct. 18, 6:30 p.m., Arts and Culture Jamaica Inc. presents A Literary Evening with three authors: G. Barton-Sinkia, By the Next Pause; Jermel Shim, The Long Road to Progress for Jamaica; and Esther Tyson, Ah Suh Me See It, Ah Suh Me Say It  at the Consulate General of Jamaica, 303 Eglinton Avenue East, Toronto.

RSVP by Oct. 15 at 905-272-5717/dcherita@rogers.com

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On Saturday, Oct. 20, 2:00-5:00 p.m., Naomi M. Moyer, a self-taught, multidisciplinary artist and writer, will launch her book, “Black Women Who Dared,” about “inspiring and indomitable Black women whose stories need to be told.”

Profiled are: Chloe Cooley, The Coloured Women’s Club, The Hour a Day Study Club, Rosa Pryor, Mary Bibb, The Black Cross Nurses, Sylvia Estes Stark, Jackie Shane and Blockorama.

Also featured is Sherona Hall, who was very active politically in Jamaica in the 1960s and 1970s and who was a founder of the Black Action Defence Committee here in Toronto.  Here is Philip Mascoll’s piece about her written in the Toronto Star on January 9, 2007 https://www.thestar.com/news/2007/01/09/sherona_hall_59_fighter_for_justice.html

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On Tuesday, Oct. 23, 9:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m., Wazee Kukusanya (Gathering of Elders) – a conference on elder abuse takes place at the Jamaican Canadian Centre, 995 Arrow Rd., Toronto. The keynote speaker: Floydeen Charles-Fridal, executive director of CAFCAN. Register at 416-740-1056/info@canfcan.org

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On Wednesday, Oct. 24, 6:30-9:00 p.m., Black feminist writer, activist and educator, Robyn Maynard, will present the ECI Mandela Lecture "Toward 21st Century Black Liberation" during Social Justice Week at Eaton Lecture Hall, 80 Gould St., Ryerson University, Toronto.