As the son of a Black Jamaican woman and Black Bajan man and an admirer of the Harlem Renaissance, I was intrigued by this JSTOR article by Matthew Wills.
Black Caribbeans in the Harlem Renaissance examined some of the Black Caribbeans that had an influence on the 1920s movement including:
- Claude McKay (Jamaica)
- Eric Waldron (British Guiana; raised in Barbados)
- Arturo Schomburg (Puerto Rico)
- Wilfred A. Domingo (Jamaica)
- Marcus Garvey (Jamaica)
Domingo himself argued, “West Indians were better prepared to challenge racial barriers in the United States” because they came from countries in which “Blacks had experienced no legalized segregation and limitations upon opportunity.” The brutality of American racism, so very different from that of imperial Britain and France, shocked them into action. In the 1920s, of course, “the great colonial empires were alive and well, but the intellectual seeds were already being sown for their eventual dismantling.”
Almost a quarter of Harlem’s Black population was foreign-born in the 1920s. They included, most famously, Marcus and Amy Jacques Garvey. Garveyism, with its “ideological mixture of Black pride, diaspora consciousness, and defiance of white racism” was foundational to the growth of Black nationalism in the United States, the Caribbean, and the world.
Of course, this only covers the Black Caribbean men. There were plenty of influential Black Caribbean women in the Harlem Renaissance such as:
- Hermina Huiswoud (Guyana)
- Amy Jacques Garvey (Jamaica)
- Maymie de Mena (Martinican and French Guianan grandparents)
“This freedom from spiritual inertia characterizes the women no less than the men, for it is largely through them that the occupational field has been broadened for colored women in New York. By their determination, sometimes reinforced by a dexterous use of their hatpins, these women have made it possible for members of their race to enter the needle trades freely.”
Wilfred A. Domingo, Gift of the Black Tropics
Recommended reading
- Radical Moves: Caribbean Migrants and the Politics of Race in the Jazz Age
- Caribbean influences in African-American political struggles
- Explaining Afro-Caribbean Social Mobility in the United States: Beyond the Sowell Thesis
- Black in America but not Black American: A Qualitative Study of the Identity Development of Black Caribbean Immigrants [PDF]