ORGANIZING WITHIN THE DIASPORA: CLAUDE H. A. DENBOW, HOWARD UNIVERSITY, AND THE LEAGUE OF COLOURED PEOPLES

Abstract

For centuries, social and cultural organizations that were formed to empower their constituents have occupied unique positions within communities throughout the African Diaspora. Historical narratives about early organizing among communities of African peoples in Newport and Providence, Rhode Island; Buenos Aires, Argentina; and Valencia and Cadiz, Spain, describe these activities. (1) Africans and their descendents in the Americas constructed cultural and social institutions to fulfill their economic, educational, social, cultural, political, and even psychological needs, usually under very oppressive conditions. Historical antecedents for New World institutions are often rooted in an African past and on that basis forge linkages throughout the hemisphere. In examining the enduring and important roles of international and transnational linkages that contributed to the development of local institutions and organizations, the social and intellectual networks within the African Diaspora are revealed. This essay examines how an elite segment of the African Guyanese population, committed to improving the social welfare and educational conditions for the working class, was supported by and linked to individuals and groups in other parts of the African Diaspora in the Americas and in Europe. The branch of the League of Coloured Peoples (LCP) located in Georgetown, British Guiana, later the Republic of Guyana, was headed by Claude Denbow through World War II and the postwar years, and he used his connections to U.S. African Americans at Howard University, as well as Afro-Caribbean intellectuals in the United Kingdom, to prepare the colonized African Guyanese working class for economic advancement and independence. Anticolonial activities and labor strife moved from intermittent to the immediate in the English-speaking Caribbean with the coming of the Great Depression in the 1930s. The increasing unemployment spawned labor militancy, protests, and general strikes in Trinidad and Tobago, St. Kitts, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, and Barbados. In Jamaica in 1938, when dockworkers went on strike, British soldiers were brought in and violence erupted, triggering rioting that left twenty-nine dead, and over a hundred wounded. Following investigations, some labor reforms were introduced in 1939 when World War II erupted. (2) Labor protests and strikes hit British Guiana in the late 1930s, and in 1941 among the graduates of Howard University's School of Dentistry was Claude H. A. Denbow. A brilliant undergraduate student, Denbow had several remarkable achievements in chemistry, and upon earning the bachelor of science degree in 1937 from Howard University, he was awarded a scholarship to attend the School of Dentistry. Returning to British Guiana in 1942, now Dr. Denbow, he joined the League of Coloured Peoples (LCP), which had been formed in the United Kingdom in 1931, and was dedicated to ensuring the empowerment of Africans and African-descended peoples throughout the British Empire. Joining the LCP afforded Denbow the opportunity to become a leader and to prepare working-class Guyanese to pursue schooling and education, economic empowerment, and political independence. Denbow believed that focusing on these programmatic objectives would enable colonized Guyanese people to challenge the racial status quo and eventually colonialism itself. He believed that acquiring those assets would be crucial for their self-improvement and preparation for independent political development. Moreover, Denbow understood the value of diplomacy in international relations. At Denbow's urgings, he and his colleagues employed conflict resolution techniques to enable LCP members to confront challenges they faced and to pursue social justice issues without having to mount militant public protests. (3) In many ways Denbow's education and professional training at Howard University facilitated his accomplishments and contributions to his native Guyana. …