The Grenadian Revolution, Part 4: A Jewel Shines Through

Written By The Yaad

Content Warning: This episode discusses and recounts instances of police brutality.

As Sir Eric Gairy’s tenure as head of government continued throughout the 1970’s, the country was on the brink of economic and social collapse. After Bloody Sunday and Bloody Monday occurred, two of the most ferocious cases of police brutality in Caribbean history, Eric Gairy was beginning to face opposition from all sides. However of all the oppositions that formed, one stood out: an organised group of young professionals who called themselves the New Jewel Movement. The New Joint Endeavor for Welfare, Education, and Liberation was founded in 1973 and born out of two organisations: MAPS, Movement for Assembly of the People, founded by UK trained attorneys, Maurice Bishop and Kenrick Radix; and JEWEL, Joint Endeavor for Welfare, Education, and Liberation founded by US educated economist Unison Whiteman and Sebastian Thomas. By the mid 1970’s, the Marxist Leninist political party was now headed by a group of leftist young professionals: Maurice Bishop, Bernard Coard, Unison Whiteman, Kenrick Radix, Vincent Noel, Hudson Austin, George Lousion, Selwyn Strachan and Jacqueline Creft. With a national grassroots approach to political organising, NJM would attract the support of the poor, youth, women and members of the Rastafari community in Grenada; and by 1977, would position themselves as the main opposition party on the island.

Additional Knowledge

BOOKS

  • Black Power in the Caribbean by Kate Quinn

  • Big Revolution, Small Country: The Rise and Fall of the Grenada Revolution by Jay R. Mandle

  • Caribbean Revolutions and Revolutionary Theory: An Assessment of Cuba, Nicaragua and Grenada by Brian Meeks

  • Comrade Sister: Caribbean Feminist Revisions of the Grenada Revolution by Laurie R. Lambert

  • Grenada: A History of Its People by Beverley A. Steele

  • Grenada: Tale of Uncle Gairy by Frank McDonald

  • Grenada: The Peaceful Revolution by Catherine Sunshine and Philip Wheaton

  • Grenada: The Jewel Deposited by Gordon K. Lewis

  • Race and Revolutionary Consciousness: A Documentary Interpretation of the 1970 Black Power Revolt in Trinidad by Ivar Oxaal

  • Reform and Revolution in Grenada, 1950 to 1981 by David Lewis

  • The Commission of Inquiry Into The Breakdown of Law and Order and Police Brutality in Grenada

  • The Hero and the Crowd in a Colonial Polity by A.W. Singham

AUTOBIOGRAPHIES

  • We Move Tonight by Joseph Ewart Layne 

FICTIONAL BOOKS

  • Angel” A Novel by Merle Collins

ACADEMIC PAPERS

  •  A Caribbean Story: Grenada's Journey - Possibilities, Contradictions, Lessons by Merle Collins

  • Charismatic Leadership and Popular Support: A Comparison of the Leadership Styles of Eric Gairy And Maurice Bishop by Pedro A. Noguera

  • Between Populism and Leninism: The Grenadian Experience by Colin Henfrey

  • Grenada: Eric Matthew Gairy and the Politics of Extravagance by Frank McDonald

  • Grenada In Contemporary Historiography by Ron Sookram

  • Grenada: Maxi-Crisis for Mini-State by Tony Thorndike

  • In the Legacy of Marronage: The Sir George Williams Affair and Acts of Refusal, Protest, and Care by Kelann Currie-Williams

  • Rastafari in the Grenada Revolution by Arthur Newland 

  • Ressentiment and the Gairy Social Revolution  by Oliver Benoit

  • Roots, Rhizomes and Resistance: Remembering the Sir George Williams Student Uprising by Adaeze Greenidge and Levi Gahman

  • Shifts in Grenadian Migration: An Historical Perspective by Gail R. Pool

  • The Black Power Movement in Trinidad and Tobago by Jerome Teelucksingh

  • The Black Power Power Movement in in Trinidad: An Exploration of Gender and Cultural Changes and the Development of a Feminist Consciousness by Victoria Pasley

  • The Grenada General Election of 1976 by Patrick Emmanuel

  • The Rastafarians In The Eastern Caribbean by Horace Campbell

  • What Happened? Grenada: A Retrospective Journey by Merle Collins

ARTICLES

  • Caribbean Life and Times: Revolution in Grenada: An Interview with Maurice Bishop

  • CBC: How the Sir George Williams Protest Changed the Conversation About Racism in Canada

  • National Trust of Trinidad and Tobago: Women in the Black Power Movement

  • The McGill Daily: Memories of the Sir George Williams Affair - Fifty Years Late by Athina Khalid

  • Caribbean Women and Politics by the Merle Hodge

DOCUMENTARIES

  • Grenada: Colonialism and Conflict directed by Valerie Scoon

  • 70: Remembering a Revolution (2010) directed by Alex DeVerteui and Elizabeth Topp

  • Caribbean Resources Institute - Grenada: The Future Coming Towards Us (1983)

  • Four Years of Love: The Grenada Revolution (2021) directed by Richard Audley Vaughan

  • Ninth Floor (2015) directed by Mina Shum

  • The Story of Sir Eric Gairy directed by Bev Sinclair

  • TTT Live Online: Remembering 1970 - The Black Power Revolution

PODCAST

The Yaad
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The Grenadian Revolution, Part 5: We Should Move, Rather Than Wait To Be Killed
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The Grenadian Revolution, Part 3: Aliens, Mongoose & the 1970’s