Abstract
The Black Beret Cadre was formed in the late summer of 1969. Its relatively short period of overt activity (1969–72) represented the apex of Black Power in Bermuda. It sought to bring about a political revolution in Bermuda through Black Power; in Bermuda’s colonial context this implied economic, political, and cultural independence from British imperialism. Self-defined as the vanguard of Black Power in the island, the Cadre established a number of social programs geared toward Black self-determination. The Berets worked closely with other Black progressive organizations and received support from the local Black community, particularly the island’s youth. They also maintained relationships with organizations such as the Black Panther Party (United States) and revolutionary groups across the African Diaspora.
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Notes
See, e.g., Jama Lazerow and Yohuru Williams, In Search of the Black Panther Party: New Perspectives on a Revolutionary Movement (North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2006)
Jeffrey Ogbar, Black Power: Racial Politics and African-American Identity (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004)
Robert Self, American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland (New Jersey: Princeton University Press)
Eddie Glaude, 7s It Nation Time? Contemporary Essays on Black Power and Black Nationalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001)
Peniel Joseph, Waiting ‘TU the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America’ (New York: Henry Holt, 2006).
Bassett, interview; see Wade Churchill and Jim Vander Wall, Agents of Repression: The FBI’ s Secret Wars against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement (Boston: South End Press, 1998), 64
Michael Clemons and Charles Jones, “Global Solidarity; the Black Panther Party in the International Arena”, in Liberation, Imagination, and the Black Panther Party: A New Look at the Panthers and Their Legacy, ed. Kathleen Cleaver and George Katsiaficas (New York: Routledge, 2001), 106.
Selwyn Ryan, “Politics in an Artificial Society: The Case of Bermuda”, in Size, Self Determination and International Relations: The Caribbean, ed. Vaughn Lewis (Kingston: University of West Indies Institute of Social and Economic Research, 1976), 194.
George Jackson had formed the Black Panther branch with WL. Nolan. In January 1970 the latter was killed by a prison guard who was acquitted of the murder. The Soledad Three were later accused of killing a guard in retaliation. Jackson’ s seventeen-year-old brother, Jonathan Jackson, was subsequently killed after invading a courtroom armed with a machine gun and taking a judge hostage in demand that the Soledad Three be released. George Jackson was gunned down on August 21, 1971, in San Quentin prison at age twenty-nine. This led to one of the largest prison uprisings in U.S. history. See George Jackson, Blood in My Eye (Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1996)
Cedric Robinson, Black Movements in America (New York: Routledge, 1997), 152.
See Barbara Harris Hunter, The People of Bermuda: Beyond the Crossroads (Toronto: Gagné-Best, 1993), 194.
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© 2009 Quito Swan
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Swan, Q. (2009). Wake the Town and Tell the People: The Black Beret Cadre Emerges. In: Black Power in Bermuda. Contemporary Black History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230102187_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230102187_6
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
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