The Emigrant Ambassadors: a foundation for present-day Black Liberation

Abstract

In this polemical commentary on Canada, the author argues for the recognition of the crucial role played by West Indian, particularly Barbadian, women – Emigrant Ambassadors − of the 1950s and ’60s who fought in Canada against their supposed subordination in the West Indian Domestic Scheme so as to establish Black women at the forefront of a liberatory struggle and create the conditions on which the present Black Lives Matter Millennials can now build. Using the examples of Jean Augustine (first Black member of Parliament) and Mia Mottley (Barbados’ prime minister), who fought the ordained de-skilling and downward mobility of the neocolonial economic arrangements, he asks that we view them not as individual achievers justifying a neoliberal meritocracy but rather as part and parcel of Black liberatory politics, stretching from slave rebellions to the Black Power movements and fights against racism of the mid-twentieth century.