Jessica Huntley's Pan-African Life

The Decolonizing Work of a Radical Black Activist

Claudia Tomlinson

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9781501394553
• eBook ISBN: 9781501394577
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

A powerful biography that presents analysis of a black working-class woman who rose from a tenement slum in intensely racialized British Guiana to become a leading anti-colonialism, workers' rights and women's liberation activist in Britain.

Jessica Huntley's Pan-African Life celebrates Huntley's importance as a leading figure in the Windrush-era resistance to the multiple, racialized injustices faced by black settlers, children and communities in Britain. Claudia Tomlinson details how Huntley became the elder stateswoman of radical black activism of her era through participation in decolonization movements and actions such as the Black Parents Movement and the International Bookfair of Radical Black and Third World Books, as well as her foundational role at Bogle L'Ouverture Publications, the leading black-led, pan-African publishing house and its associated radical bookshop.

Based on extensive archival research and over 40 interviews with Huntley's closest family members, associates, comrades, authors, artists and friends, this book affords readers an opportunity to take a long-lensed view of the historical roots of the many contemporary racial injustices re-invigorated in recent debates. Tomlinson re-writes the history of a period and a struggle often told through a master discourse that is male, middle-class and privileged. In so doing, she shows how Jessica Huntley's fight for justice and the rights of all black people in Britain provides a useful lens into UK-based, black literary and cultural expression in the 20th century.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Dedication Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Growing Up, Rising Up
• 2 Raised to Resist
• 3 The Emerging Activist
• 4 National Freedom and Women’s Emancipation
• 5 ‘Bound with the Chains of Colonialism and Imperialism’
• 6 Struggles in Male Ranks
• 7 An Old Fight in a New Place
• 8 Finding a Foothold in Activism in Britain
• 9 Becoming West Indian in Britain
• 10 ‘A Political Act’, Bogle L’Ouverture Publications’ Early Work
• 11 ‘A New Alternative in Publishing’
• 12 ‘To Re-Write Our Own History’: A Black Publishing Strategy
• 13 Growing a Pan-African Publishing Tradition
• 14 ‘The Atmosphere Was Electric in the Shop’: Bookshop Activism
• 15 ‘Matriarch of the Movement for Black Rights in Britain, the World’
• 16 Fighting for Decolonization in Independent Guyana
• 17 Publishing Activity in Bogle L’Ouverture’s Later Period
• 18 The Bookshop Goes Back Home
• Appendix: Oral History Interviews
• Bibliography
• Index
• Imprint