From Masking to Black Power: The U.S. Social Movement that Reproduced itself in Trinidad

• In Event: 1429 - Informal Discussion Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 7: Global and Transnational Issues

Abstract

There Black Power Movement in the U.S. became increasingly beholden in the aftermath of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. who became an international symbol of nonviolence. However, the Black Power Movement reached the Caribbean and became embedded into the fabric of Trinidadian youth subcultures who sought a self-determination over conformity. Conformity in the African Diaspora derives from a legacy of masking such that suppressed religious expression became normative. However, such a social movement provided favorable conditions for religious minorities to embrace the imagined African heritage through the open practice of traditional African spirituality or other Afrocentric forms of the participation in a sacred heritage. Racial and religious minorities both in the U.S. and Trinidad have historically experienced religious life within the context of the following four vital expressions: accommodation, assimilation, integration, and nationalism. Despite the variations of each in terms of differences in intergroup relationships all four produce a form of religious syncretism.

Author

• Michael D. Royster, Prairie View A&M University