The Moving Word: How the West African and Caribbean Press Shaped Black Political Thought

In the 1930s and 1940s, amid intensifying anticolonial activism across the British Empire, dozens of new West African and Caribbean newspapers printed their first issues. With small staffs and shoestring budgets, these newspapers nonetheless became powerful vehicles for the expression of Black political thought. Drawing on papers from Trinidad, Jamaica, Ghana, and Nigeria, Leslie James shows how the press on both sides of the Atlantic nourished anticolonial and antiracist movements. Editors with varying levels of education, men and women journalists, worker and peasant correspondents, and anonymous contributors voiced incisive critiques of empire and experimented with visions of Black freedom. But as independence loomed, the press transformed to better demonstrate the respectability expected of a self-governing people.

Illuminating an extraordinary period in the history of Black Atlantic political thought, The Moving Word vividly portrays the power of experimental media which sustained and expressed political and social movements for Black autonomy.

For accommodations, please contact the Assistant Director for the Center for the Study of Africa and the African Diaspora at ac8829@nyu.edu.