Monday, November 25, 2013

Carlos Cooks: Dominican-American Garveyite and Black Nationalist


Carlos Cooks, a Dominican-American black nationalist who influenced much of radical Harlem back in the day. He reminds me of Arturo Schomburg as one of those rare Afro-Latinos who moved to the US and became a part of various forms of Black intellectual and political circles in New York. This faithful Garveyite designated Garvey's birthday a black holiday, helped organize buy black campaigns in NYC (although an African-American Muslim called the "Black Hitler" by Jews who accused him of anti-Semitism also shaped 'buy black' consumerism in Harlem by organizing boycotts of white-owned stores in Harlem), influenced Malcolm X and shaped various forms of Pan-Africanist organizations and ideals. 

It really shows one how transnational and transcolonial Marcus Garvey's UNIA was in the circum-Caribbean world, probably spreading to Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Central America through West Indian workers (and from them to New York, where Caribbean immigrants have shaped black resistance and radicalism since the early 1900s. 

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