JOHN, KESEWA
Lecturer in Caribbean History @ University College London
Bio
Kesewa John is a Lecturer in Caribbean History at the Institute of the Americas, University College London. Prior to joining UCL she was a Junior Fellow (ATER) at the Université des Antilles in Guadeloupe 2019-21, and a Teaching Fellow (Lectrice and Vacataire) at the Université des Antilles in Martinique 2012-15. Keenly interested in community-led research projects Kesewa is a member of the Black British History Matters working group, and Insightful Black History, a community history project. Kesewa is the current Vice-Chair of the Society for Caribbean Studies and coordinator of the Archiving SCS project.
Geographical location :
Research Area and Interest :
Social Media
Panel
Publishing in the Caribbean
Presentation
The Radical Press of the Colonial Caribbean
This paper introduces the concept and characteristics of people papers – locally-owned newspapers which self-defined as by the people for the people and positioned themselves in narrative opposition to the better-established, ‘planter papers’ in the 1930s and in so doing nurtured a crucial wave of Caribbean nationalism and a generation of nationalists. The Caribbean region witnessed an explosion of new, popular and increasingly politically radical newspapers in the 1920s and 1930s, from the communist rag Justice published in Martinique from 1920, whose editor, Andre Aliker was murdered for his unrelenting publishing of evidence of corruption at the colony’s highest levels, to the Garvey-supporting The People in Trinidad and Tobago founded in 1933, in which Harlem Renaissance star Eric Walrond was published. Unapologetic, often aggressive advocates for the Caribbean’s labouring classes, these new media players challenged – often openly - the mainstream, long-established ‘planter papers,’ their monopoly of the public sphere, and the ruling class, the plantocracy, which they represented. Much has been written about the Caribbean labour rebellions of the 1930s, the near constant series of uprisings which affected the whole region, which are widely considered to mark the birth of the contemporary Caribbean. Far less has been said about the popular newspapers which collectively, consciously and stridently critiqued the colonial status quo and were read by the masses who manifested those uprisings.