17 Articles by:
Perry Blankson is a Tribune columnist and a project coordinator at the Young Historians Project. He is a member of the Editorial Working Group for the History Matters Journal.
On this day in 1981, Brixton’s black community rose up against police discrimination and mass unemployment. It was a watershed moment in the fight against racist oppression that still lingers in British society.
On this day in 1970, activists took to the streets of Trinidad and Tobago to protest the colonial systems and racist hierarchies that had survived independence – a brief moment where Black Power had the potential to topple a government.
On this day in 1945, delegates arrived at Chorlton-on-Medlock Town Hall to begin the Fifth Pan-African Congress. Their aim: laying the foundations of a new Africa, free at last from colonial rule.
This June marked the fiftieth anniversary of the famous photograph of Phan Thị Kim Phúc taken during the Vietnam War – a reminder of the horrors of war, and of all those whose stories will never be told.
Belgium has repatriated Patrice Lumumba’s gold tooth – his only remains. But there will only be justice when the Congolese win back what was truly killed in 1961: his politics of self-determination.
Trinidadian socialist George Padmore was born on this day in 1903. His Pan-African organising helped to build the struggle against colonialism in the West – and to push independence struggles towards Marxism.
Today’s Windrush Day comes as government officials continue pushing through racist immigration laws and victims are still left waiting for compensation. They want us to believe the scandal is over – it isn’t.
David Oluwale was the first victim of racist police brutality that the British state acknowledged. Decades after his death, his plaque in Leeds has been repeatedly vandalised – showing that the racism he faced remains a force today.
This week, Blaise Compaoré was jailed for his role in the murder of Burkinabe revolutionary Thomas Sankara –but real justice can only be won by a movement that fights to bring Sankara’s socialist vision back to life.
Over two centuries since enslaved Haitians broke their chains and declared a republic, their descendants remain subjugated by Western imperialism and its homegrown collaborators.
Just days before his assassination, Malcolm X visited the small English town of Smethwick following a high-profile racist election – and saw that the colour bar stretched far beyond the Jim Crow South.
This year marks 60 years since the US began its blockade of Cuba. It is economic warfare designed to collectively punish a people for their independence – and it must come to an end.
Recent years have seen global corporations embrace racial justice causes for PR purposes – but the economic system they preside over continues to ensure Africa is exploited for the benefit of the super-rich.
For years, British state agents organised to undermine and destabilise powerful Black Power movements in the Caribbean. Only in recent years has the extent of their operations come to light.
On Christmas Day 1831, 60,000 enslaved Africans in Jamaica rose up against their masters – the largest uprising ever in the British West Indies, and a milestone on the road to abolition a few years later.
In the 1960s, a new generation of Black radicals in Britain began organising against racism, capitalism and police violence – they were met with state hostility and a campaign of surveillance.
Kwame Nkrumah, who died on this day in 1972, was a leader in the fight against colonialism. But he knew that independence wasn’t enough – only a unified, socialist Africa could truly free itself from its former masters.