US Black History Event’s Bermuda Focus
Bermudian academic Dr. Quito Swan will be discussing the island’s racial and political evolution along with the miltant upheavals which rocked Bermuda in the 1970s as part of Black History Month celebrations in Tennessee.
Dr. Swan, author of “Black Power in Bermuda and the Struggle for Decolonisation”, will speak on “Black Power in Bermuda and Beyond” on February 23, at the the Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro.
An assistant professor at Howard University in Washington, DC, Dr. Swan specialises in the global African diaspora. He was one of the speakers at the sixth International African Diaspora Heritage Trail Conference held last year in Bermuda.
Published in 2010 by Macmillan,”Black Power in Bermuda and the Struggle for Decolonisation” chronicles the Bermuda Civil Rights movement and the emergence of Black Power as a cultural force on the island in the 1960s and ’70s.
Along with detailing the quest for racial solidarity, consciousness and identity in Bermuda, the book also focuses on rise of the militant wing of the Black Beret Cadre.
“Black Power in Bermuda” has been described as “a concise and scholarly discussion” of the 20th century struggle for Civil Rights and the flowering of Black nationalism by Bermudian historian Dr. Clarence Maxwell.
“Dr. Swan grounds his analysis in the historical context for rights that was pursued by blacks in Bermuda before this period and he demonstrates the interconnectedness between these local political movements and the larger, global, anti-colonialism of the period,” said Dr. Maxwell.
“Bermuda, he demonstrates, was part them: as influential contributor, as receiver of influence. Dr. Swan’s narrative, strongly reflective of classic historiographic method, adeptly utilising considerable primary and secondary source material, provides an important and powerful voice to the discourse on Bermuda’s political history and is destined to become a classic in the field.”
Black History Month originated in 1926 with the first celebration of “Negro History Week”, which was created by historian Carter G. Woodson. Only the second African American to earn a doctorate from Harvard University, Dr. Woodson’s brainstorm raised awareness of blacks’ contributions to the American experience.
The Middle Tennessee State University will be holding an exhibit commemorating Dr. Woodson as the centrepiece of the Black History Month celebrations which Dr. Swan is participating in.
this is a great book! everyone should read it, it’s amazing how much we are NOT taught and unaware of!
The mentioned book is only one of many that our children on this island are made so unaware of. Spread the word people, we need to educate our children on our history. Too many of them have no clue about who they are or where they come from.
Black Panther group was and is a black supremacy group. I quote the Black Panthers at the Washington riots….”Kill whites, slay the white pigs!”
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It is a sick, disgusting group, no better than the evil Klu Klux Klan.
The Black Panther division called the Berets were the ones responsible for the ASSASSINATION of the white governor here decades ago.
Anyone who supports this hateful group is a racist who is just like a skinhead KKK member. Just the opposite color.
Anyone who supports this supremacy of any color is a sick, twisted monster of an individual, who is more animal than human.
Black Panther party is affiliated with the Nation of Islam, which is a religious group who is black supremacy, teaching that the white race are DEVILS. they are the cause of the endless rapes on white women and young white girls, which are rampant throughout the world thanks to the DEVILISH teachings of Elijah Mohammad.
I hope God punishes anyone sick enough to support such a racist, devilish, evil group as the Black Panthers. Anyone DUMB enough to say they were just for black rights, is a blind moron with their head in the sand.
Everyone should know that whites were slaves alongside the blacks and indians. This was in Bermuda AND North America. Just as many white slaves as blacks. Blacks owned slaves of all colors, and so did whites. Only about 10% of whites owned slaves, and not all the slaves were black.
The biggest slave owner in early America was a black man. Race had nothing to do with slavery. It was status. That’s it.
White children were kidnapped, stolen, and shipped to America as slaves, where they worked all day until they died, then were replaced like lab rats. Do these whites not matter, because blacks suffered too? Do only blacks matter?
I stand up for the dead children, mothers, fathers, and all HUMANS who died or served as slaves – irregardless of their skin color.
Anyone who looks at ONLY THEIR OWN KIND as the only ones who suffered, are shameful, proud, selfish, and disgusting. It is pathetic. God will punish you sorely.
Most black slaves were given free land when they were released. They were given jobs, food, and shelter, homes.
Many white children were used as sex slaves and then killed.
Who matters more? Neither. Who suffered more? Does that matter?
Every race enslaved every race, over mankind’s history.
People need to stop caring about their own kind and GROW UP.
Blacks enslaved, tortured, killed, raped, even cannibalized their own race for thousands of years before the whites came. The black leaders of Africa SOLD their own people to the whites. Which is more shameful, to SELL your own people for money or ill gain, or to buy someone as a servant? Both are wrong.
It makes me sick all this black this, white that. The white man is not the devil.
Black Pantherism and black supremacy is a load of bull, being spoon fed into the minds of people….and the one holding the spoon is SATAN HIMSELF.
Spit out the rhetoric, and open your eyes to WISDOM.
Let the true stories be told. we need more Bermudian and african history taught to our kids, we hear too much about colonialism and false or half truths. I am glad I went to a HBCU where i learned about my people, even about Bermuda and Mary Prince, etc. Education is key. History needs to be involved more in the curriculum changes.