This book examines the impact of Black Power on the British colony of Bermuda, where the 1972-73 assassinations of its British Police Commissioner and Governor reflected the Movement's denouncement of British imperialism and the island's racist and oligarchic society.Introduction: The Truth is An Offense : Black Power in a British Colony Negroes Dressed in Insolence : Boycotts, Black Muslims and Racial Uprisings (1959-1968) Another Unknown Soldier : Pauulu Kamarakafego A Bermuda Triangle of Imperialism Blueprint for Freedom : The 1969 Black Power Conference Wake the Town and Tell the People : The Black Beret Cadre Emerges The Empire Strikes Back : The Government's War Against the Berets We Don't Need No Water : The Cadre Burns the Union Jack Robin Hood Was Black in My Hood : 'Buck' Burrows and the Assassinations (1972-1977) Conclusion: Babylon Gave Them a Ride : Blackness in Contemporary Bermuda
Black Power and Decolonization both have been profoundly pivotal movements but it is only with the publication of this marvelous and riveting book that these two potent trends have been linked so effectively. Persuasively argued and beautifully written, this book makes an effective case for the importance of Bermuda as a laboratory for political developments that reverberated significantly on the U.S. mainland. - Gerald Horne, Author of Mau Mau in Harlem?: The U.S. and the Liberation of Kenya
Black Power in Bermuda is a concise and scholarly discussion of the struggle for civil rights, Black nationalism, and political independence evolving in Bermuda during the mid to late twentieth century. 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. Bermuda, he demonstrates, was part them: as influential contributor, as receiver of influence. Dr.l