POSTPONED: “No Yankee Rule for Us”: Annexation Rumors and the Interwar Circum-Caribbean Black Press

We hope to reschedule this event for the 2019/2020 academic year.

In the aftermath of World War I, rumors that the United States was planning to annex the islands of the British West Indies swept across the Caribbean, sparking panics in Trinidad, Jamaica, Barbados, Grenada, and elsewhere. Annexation rumors were transmitted by sailors and migrants as well as by the cosmopolitan circum-Caribbean black press, which reprinted stories from throughout the Americas. In this talk, Reena N. Goldthree, Assistant Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, examines how Caribbean newspapers–published in the islands and in the diaspora–both facilitated the spread of annexation rumors and provided a crucial platform for West Indians to challenge U.S. imperial expansion.