The Black Revolution on Campus: The Montreal-Trinidadian Axis

• In Event: Black Campus Movements and the Challenge to Higher Education in North America During the 1960s

Abstract

Black students organized protests on nearly two hundred college campuses across the United States in 1968 and 1969, and continued to organize to a lesser extent into the early 1970s. This dramatic explosion of militant activism set in motion a period of conflict, crackdown, negotiation, and reform that profoundly transformed college life. At stake was the very mission of higher education. Deeply inspired by the Autobiography of Malcolm X and the charismatic leadership of Stokely Carmichael, yet shaken by the murder of Martin Luther King Jr., Black students were engaged in a redefinition of the civil rights struggle at a time when cities were in flames, hundreds of thousands of young Americans were at war in southeast Asia, and political assassination was commonplace. In essence, they were turning the slogan “black power” into a grassroots social movement. But the black student movement was not limited to the US: it touched the entire African Diaspora, from the continent to England, Mexico, the Caribbean and Canada.
In February 1969, at Sir George Williams University in Montreal, now known as Concordia University, black students staged a two-week sit-in in the computer center, which ended with a police raid, fire and considerable damage. This protest was a signal event in exposing racism in Canada, and had been set in motion by events on campus and in Montreal during the proceeding year. The police arrested 97 people, many of whom were Caribbean nationals. There were various highly publicized contentious trials, including one that became the longest in Quebec’s history. Many students were ultimately expelled from the university and deported to their home countries. The Sir George Williams protest and crackdown became a rallying point for the black power movement in the Caribbean, especially Trinidad. The largest group of arrested students hailed from Trinidad, and many expelled student activists subsequently became important leaders in a black power movement in Trinidad that ultimately challenged the government of Eric Williams. Indeed, there was an attempted coup d’etat in 1970. In contrast to the US, where the black student movement’s goals remained largely confined to the campus, in Trinidad they dovetailed with a broader black power-inspired struggle against the national government.
Still, the links to the United States were important and galvanizing. Trinidadian emigrants Stokely Carmichael and C.L.R. James, in particular, were outsized sources of influence. They had both attended an important black writers conference in Montreal in 1968, and James was back in Trinidad, and allegedly played a role in the coup, in 1970. Carmichael sought to visit various Caribbean islands in 1969 and 1970 but British Commonwealth authorities blocked his plane from entry.
I use a historical methodology to tell this story, and utilize a range of voices and perspectives to grapple with how the fallout of black student radicalism in Canada affected political struggles in the Caribbean. I rely upon an array of printed primary sources, journalistic accounts, and crucially, the papers of the office of the British Commonwealth at Kew Gardens in London.

Author

• Martha Biondi, Northwestern University