Strictly Facts: A Guide to Caribbean History and Culture

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What a better time to catch up on some Caribbean history books than during  Caribbean American Heritage Month! We're reading Aunty Roachy Seh by Louise Bennett-Coverley, Black Jacobins by C.L.R. James, and Far from Mecca: Globalizing the Muslim Caribbean by Aliyah Khan. Read along with us and let us know what else you're reading this summer! 

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Happy National Caribbean Heritage Month! In this episode, we celebrate the life and legacy of Sir Randol F. Fawkes, Bahamian "Father of Labor," in honor of  Sir Randol Fawkes Labor Day this Friday, June 3rd. 

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In this bonus episode of Strictly Facts, we’re doing an episode swap with Carry On Friends The Caribbean American Podcast featuring the episode "Solidarity".

In this episode we discuss the legacy of Caribbean Americans in Civil Rights and the importance of continuing our participation for equal rights.

In the words of Black Uhuru's "Solidarity!"

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Celebrations of national heroes in the Caribbean pay homage to individuals who have had an immense impact on the region. In this quick chat, we discuss Barbados' national heroes and their impact, and even talk about who we'd like to see as national heroes moving forward. Let us know who you think should be your island's next national hero!

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Formerly known as Saint Domingue, Haiti is the world's first Black republic and the first independent Caribbean nation. Despite these facts, Haiti has faced a series of postcolonial challenges rooted in the racial threat the Haiti Revolution (1791-1804) posed to the rest of the world. Dr. Yveline Alexis joins our discussion to discuss the legacy of the Haitian Revolution and the numerous examples of neocolonial imposition Haiti faced in the aftermath of independence. 

Yveline Alexis studies the Global Black past. She is an Associate Professor at Oberlin College. Her first book, Haiti Fights Back: The Life and Legacy of Charlemagne Péralte gained the prized Haitian Studies Association Book award and a nod in The Times Literary Supplement as a 2021 Book of the Year. 

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In a similar fashion to other Caribbean islands, Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Haiti remained in close connection throughout France's colonialism. Dr. Philippe Zacaïr joins this episode to discuss how these connections strengthened after Haiti's triumph as the first Black republic in 1804.

Philippe Zacaïr was born and raised in Guadeloupe, in the Eastern Caribbean. He received his Ph.D. in history in 1999 from the University of Paris-Sorbonne Nouvelle in France. He has been a faculty member of the History Department of California State University Fullerton since 2002. He teaches Latin American, Caribbean, and world history. He is the editor of Haiti and Haitians in the Wider Caribbean (University Press of Florida, 2010). His work has appeared in Cahiers du Monde Hispanique et Luso-Brésilien, Caribbean Studies, The Journal of Caribbean History, French Colonial History, the Bulletin d’Histoire de la Guadeloupe, and Recherches Haïtiano-Antillaises. His current research projects explore political and economic migrations within the Caribbean basin after the abolition of African slavery, and the relations between the Republic of Haiti and the French Caribbean colonies of Guadeloupe and Martinique until the turn of the twentieth century.

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Jewish life in the Caribbean extends as far back as the fifteenth century with Jewish-European migration following patterns of trade and colonialism to the region. Ainsley Henriques, Jewish-Jamaican genealogist and Administrator of Kahal Kadosh Sha'are Shalom synagogue in Kingston, Jamaica, joins Strictly Facts to map out this long history and describe how it figures into the Caribbean's ethnic diversity.

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Originating in the nineteen century, calypso is a genre of Caribbean music that can be traced since spread across the region and its diaspora through migration. In this episode, we discuss calypso's evolving history, impact, and representation of Caribbean culture and society. 

Meagan A. Sylvester - Music Sociologist.Author.Researcher is a published author of over fifteen book chapters and journal articles and is a well know public academic in her native Trinidad and Tobago where she participates in both television and radio discussions on the Calypso and Soca musical artforms. Her research topics of interest are Music and National Identity in Calypso and Soca, Music of Diasporic Carnivals, Narratives of Resistance in Calypso and Ragga Soca music, Steelpan and kaisoJazz musical identities, Gender and Identity in Calypso and Soca music and Music and Human Rights in the Americas. She has presented academic papers and hosted scholarly workshops in several spaces across the globe including Europe, Latin America, South America, the United States and numerous islands in the Caribbean.

She has recently completed her a Ph.D. in Sociology of Music at The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Campus, Trinidad and Tobago and holds memberships in professional organizations include the Society for Ethnomusicology, the International Association of the Study for Popular Music, Caribbean Studies Association and the Association of Black Sociologists. Follow Dr. Sylvester on Facebook and Twitter. 

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The Garifuna are an Afro-indigenous community  native to Saint Vincent who,  in the late eighteenth century, were forcibly exiled to Central America after surrendering to the British during the Second Carib War. Dr. Paul Joseph López Oro joins this episode to discuss this history and the preservation and legacy of Garifuna traditions throughout Central America and the US today.

Dr. Paul Joseph López Oro is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Africana Studies at Smith College and the 2021-2022 Miriam Jiménez Román Fellow at The LatinX Project at New York University. His research and teaching interests are on Black Latin American and U.S. Black Latinx social movements, Black Feminist & LGBTQ activism and political mobilizations, and Black Queer Feminist ethnographies in the Américas. His in-progress manuscript, Indigenous Blackness in the Americas: The Queer Politics of Self-Making Garifuna New York is a transdisciplinary ethnography on how gender and sexuality shapes the ways in which transgenerational Garifuna New Yorkers of Central American descent negotiate, perform, and articulate their multiple subjectivities as Black, Indigenous, and Central American Caribbeans. Follow Dr. López Oro on Twitter. 

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Following the completion of the Panama Canal in 1914, some West Indian migrants returned home, but also many stayed and formed new West Indian-Panamanian communities. In this episode Dr. Khemani Gibson shares the challenges and experiences these newly formed communities faced and helps us reconsider the limits of nation and empire in the Caribbean.
 
Khemani Gibson is a historian of the African Diaspora focusing on the Black migration in the Caribbean Basin looking at the West Indian immigrant community in Panama during the twentieth century. For his manuscript entitled: Citizens of Their Own Nation: The West Indian Immigrant Community in Panama, 1914-1961, he examines how West Indian immigrants used migration and claims making as methods to achieve full freedom in the post-emancipation circum-Caribbean. The manuscript explores the development of the West Indian immigrant community in Panama and how its members responded to the racial antagonism they encountered while dealing with the Americans, the British, and the Panamanians. Moreover, Khemani argues that despite the various strategies community members used to navigate the racial politics of the Isthmus, the experiences of the West Indian immigrant community in Panama forces us to reconceptualize our understanding of diasporic citizenship.While committed to his work as an academic, Khemani is deeply committed to bridging the gap between the academy and marginalized communities. Khemani uses his training as a historian to help lead workshops that illuminate the ways that inequalities of the past have a continued effect on Black and brown communities. Moreover, Khemani is committed to blending historical inquiry with modern day technology via mediums such as social media and interactive websites to make academic knowledge more accessible to others beyond the academy. It is Khemani's hope that he not only produces groundbreaking scholarship that helps us to understand how marginalized people navigated racially antagonistic societies but also to use his research and expertise to help community organizers and leaders strategize about how to address social ills.

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Produced by Breadfruit Media