Mid-20th Century Black Resistance Struggles - Blackness in Latin America and the Caribbean, pt. 1

Session Submission Type: Panel

Description for Program

The middle of the twentieth century was a pivotal historical moment in the evolution of Black organizing and resistance struggles. Black activists were central organizers in new formulations of freedom and liberation as movements against colonialism and dictatorship erupted across the globe. Black revolutionaries traversed colonial and international boundaries to craft visions of freedom which voiced a global platform for Black liberation, regardless of citizenship. Yet, as the embers of these radical movements settled, we saw the later half of the century bring to the forefront the solidification of neoliberal forces determined to eradicate the social mobilization of the preceding decades. Pathways for economic advancement and political reform appeared to shutter, as the apparatuses of the state to consolidate power through state violence expanded their scope. As the first part of a two-panel series featuring members of the Blackness in Latin America and the Caribbean working group, the papers in this panel exist in this critical juncture: in the aftermaths of revolutionary organizing and widening state control. Scholars will illustrate the various ways Black people within the African Diaspora created new formulations of resistance within increasingly contested spaces. Through a discussion on the labor struggles of mid-century Brazilian maids in the “conto do suadouro” sex scandal, the Lisbon founded Clube Marítimo Africano (1954) as a key site of political education and revolutionary organizing, the transatlantic travels of the Pan-Africanist Candomblé priestess Mãe Olga de Alaketu and finally 1967 Dominican Republic labor organizing in the largest sugar corporation in the country, this panel will showcase the nuanced and unexpected ways in which Black people reimagined liberation in one of the most pivotal time periods in modern history.

Sub Unit

• ASWAD

Chair

• John Mundell, Washington University in St. Louis

Individual Presentations

• “El Año del Desarrollo”: Aftermaths of Revolution in Dominican Labor Organizing - Genesis Lara, University of California, Irvine

• Weaponizing the Master’s Tools? Sex Scams, Dubious Consent, and Newspaper Coverage of Black Domestic Workers in Post-War Brazil - Cassie Osei, Bucknell University

• O Clube Marítimo Africano: Maritime Networks and Black Internationalism in Lisbon - C. Darius Gordon, Johns Hopkins University

• Mãe Olga de Alaketu: A Pan-African priestess in the era of decolonization and dictatorship - Jamie Andreson, Simmons University