As part of the Institute for the Study of the Americas’s Caribbean seminar series, Leslie James will deliver a lecture: “’The Most Completely Political Negro’: The Convergence of George Padmore’s Pan-Africanism and Marxism in the West Indian Labor Revolts, 1935-1939.” The lecture will take place on January 18, 2011, at the Institute for the Study of the Americas (School of Advanced Study, University of London) located at the Senate House (3rd Floor), Malet Street, London, England.
Description: Born in Trinidad in 1903, George Padmore is best known either as one of the ‘fathers of Pan-Africanism’ or as the Communist International’s most important ‘Negro communist.’ These categories have diminished his interest in, and support for, resistance in the West Indies. The Caribbean labor revolts, which began in British Honduras in early 1935 and culminated in the strikes, marches, and demonstrations across Jamaica in 1938, became a major subject of George Padmore’s journalism and a key action point for his London-based International African Service Bureau (IASB). The IASB became heavily involved in West Indian affairs and although many see this period as Padmore’s stronger identification as an ‘African,’ it was also the period in which he was most involved in West Indian politics. This paper will show that Padmore’s continued Marxism and his persistent encouragement of pan-African unity came together in his support for Caribbean workers.
Leslie James, LSE, a PhD candidate in the International History Department, London School of Economics and Political Science, is working on a biography of George Padmore.
For more information, you may write to americas@sas.ac.uk or visit http://americas.sas.ac.uk/events/eventdetails.html?id=11271
Photo from http://www.stabroeknews.com/2009/features/08/02/rescuing-george-padmore-from-obscurity/
