The Groundings With My Brothers

by Walter Rodney

Overview

"I have sat on a little oil drum, rusty and in the midst of garbage, and some black brothers and I have grounded together." - Walter Rodney

In his short life, the Guyanese intellectual Walter Rodney emerged as one of the leading thinkers and activists of the anticolonial revolution, leading movements in North America, South America, the African continent, and the Caribbean. In each locale, Rodney found himself a lightning rod for working class Black Power. His deportation catalyzed 20th century Jamaica's most significant rebellion, the 1968 Rodney riots, and his scholarship trained a generation how to think politics at an international scale. In 1980, shortly after founding of the Working People's Alliance in Guyana, the 38-year-old Rodney would be assassinated.

In this classic work published in the heady days of international black power, Groundings with My Brothers details the global circulation of emancipatory ideas, but also offers first-hand reports of Rodney's mass movement organizing. Introduced and contextualized by leading Caribbean scholar-activists, this updated edition brings Rodney's legacy to a new generation of radicals.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781788731171
Publisher:	Verso Books
Publication date:	04/23/2019
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	144
File size:	774 KB

About the Author

Walter Rodney was an internationally renowned historian of colonialism and a leader of Black Power and Pan-African movements across the diaspora, most notably the Guyanese Working People's Alliance. His life and work brought together struggles for independence on the African continent with the strivings of the black working classes of North America and the Caribbean basin. On June the 13th, 1980, Rodney was assassinated, most likely by the then-president of Guyana. He was 38 years old.

Table of Contents

Editors' Note vii

Introduction; Re-grounding the Intellectual-Activist Model of Walter Rodney Carole Boyce Davies xi

The Groundings With My Brothers

1 Statement of the Jamaican Situation 3

2 Black Power, a Basic Understanding 9

3 Black Power - Its Relevance to the West Indies 19

4 African History and Culture 33

5 African History in the Service of Black Revolution 53

6 The Groundings with My Brothers 63

Commentaries

Living the Groundings - A Personal Context Patricia Rodney 77

The Conscious Youth Robin 'Bongo Jerry' Small 87

The Groundings with My Brothers at Fifty David Austin 93

The Continued Relevance of Walter Rodney's Groundings Verene A. Shepherd 101

Our Responsibilities to Each Other Randall Robinson 109

Notes 113

Editorial Reviews

In short order, Groundings became the single most influential Black Power text in the Caribbean as well as the region’s most notable ideological contribution to Black Power globally.”
—Michael West, Groundings

From the Publisher