Marc Matera - Black London: The Imperial Metropolis and Decolonization in the Twentieth Century

PRAISE FOR BLACK LONDON

Marc Matera offers us a vibrant and sophisticated history of the people of African descent, both famous and fugitive, who coursed through the heart of the British Empire in their quest for personal, professional, and political recognition in the twentieth century. Part social history, part collective biography, this genealogy of peripatetic black political formation reveals London as a bustling global portal for some of the most inspiring people who championed anticolonial modernity. Black London archives the often terrible, troubling contradictions at the heart of racialized and sexualized imperial encounters and asks us to rethink both the makers and the tempos of decolonization.

Antoinette Burton, author of Empire in Question: Reading, Writing, and Teaching British Imperialism

Marc Materas vibrant and kaleidoscopic excavation of black London traverses a stunning range of domains (from political activism to newspaper editing, from jazz performance to sexuality) to explore in admirable detail the complexities of what it meant to be black in the English metropole in the interwar period. If the book is a nuanced study of the emergence of black internationalism at the height of empire, it is also a marvel of rediscovery, bringing back to light a number of overlooked or understudied figures, including Una Marson, Amy Ashwood Garvey, Coleridge Goode, and Ras Prince Monolulu. Simply put, Black London is a must-read.

Brent Hayes Edwards, author of The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism

This engaging and lively book, richly peopled and powerfully situated in time and space, brings the multiple worlds of black Londoners vividly to life. Black London charts a web of black intellectuals, performers, and ordinary citizens who saw London as the place in which they might remake themselves, along with transforming the core of imperial thought and policy. Marc Materas account of the diverse sights and soundsalong with politics and personal relationshipsof the late imperial metropole explains much about the complex dynamics of race and urbanity not only in the twentieth century but in the twenty-first as well.

Jordanna Bailkin, author of The Afterlife of Empire

Marc Materas carefully historical and deeply researched study places figures and events familiar in pan-African history in a richly textured setting. Reaching far beyond political protests against imperialism and racism, Matera traces the lives of women and men moving from Soho music clubs to Speakers Corner, from film sets to university seminars, through interracial sexual liaisons and diverse alliances with British activists. He reveals how, despite much disagreement and difference, black London gathered people and influences from Africa and its diaspora and generated both powerful alternate views of the future and cultural forms which later found new homes around the Atlantic world. Many stories within black Atlantic history will be enriched by this book.

Philip S. Zachernuk, author of Colonial Subjects: An African Intelligentsia and Atlantic Ideas

Marc Matera offers a fine, comprehensive reconstruction of black London, demonstrating conclusively the degree to which the imperial metropole worked to generate the counterforces of a vibrant black internationalism. He tells a powerful story that provides an essential dimension to our understanding of decolonization.

Bill Schwarz, author of Memories of Empire, Volume I: The White Mans World

In this deeply researched, compelling story about the daily lives, desires, and political activism of African and Caribbean intellectuals in interwar London, Marc Matera offers a finegrained analysis of the institutional spaces and polyvalent cultural practices that both gave rise to a unique African diasporic formation and fostered a set of black internationalist sensibilities that would resonate throughout the twentieth century. With careful attention to organizational networks, social relationships, and the intimacies that made up black life in the imperial metropolis, Matera places black feminists and less well-known figures alongside a more familiar cast of black male actors to show how their efforts at elaborating an alternative political imaginary involved pursuing a world whose horizon lay beyond the British Empire.

Minkah Makalani, author of In the Cause of Freedom: Radical Black Internationalism from Harlem to London, 19171939

THE GEORGE GUND FOUNDATION

IMPRINT IN AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES

The George Gund Foundation has endowed this imprint to advance understanding of the history, culture, and current issues of African Americans.

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the African American Studies Endowment Fund of the University of California Press Foundation, which was established by a major gift from the George Gund Foundation.

THE CALIFORNIA WORLD HISTORY LIBRARY

Edited by Edmund Burke III, Kenneth Pomeranz, and Patricia Seed

Black London

THE IMPERIAL METROPOLIS AND DECOLONIZATION IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Marc Matera

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu.

University of California Press

Oakland, California

2015 by The Regents of the University of California

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Matera, Marc, 1976 author.

Black London : the imperial metropolis and decolonization in the twentieth century / Marc Matera.

p. cm.(The California world history library ; 22)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-520-28429-6 (cloth : alk. paper)

ISBN 978-0-520-28430-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)

ISBN 978-0-520-95990-3 (ebook)

1. BlacksEnglandLondonSocial conditions20th century 2. PostcolonialismEnglandLondonHistory20th century. 3. DecolonizationGreat BritainHistory20th century. I. Title. II. Series: California world history library ; 22.

DA676.9.B55M38 2015

305.89604210904dc23

2014035966

Manufactured in the United States of America

24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

In keeping with a commitment to support environmentally responsible and sustainable printing practices, UC Press has printed this book on Natures Natural, a fiber that contains 30% post-consumer waste and meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z 39.481992 ( R 1997) ( Permanence of Paper ).

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book is more than ten years in the making. I have accrued more debts in completing it than I can acknowledge adequately here. Its flaws reflect my own limitations and failings, not a deficit of assistance or guidance. In an indirect but profound sense, the influence of my lifelong friends Lucas Blalock and David Schultz suffuses this text. Without them in my life, I would not have taken the paths that I have, and I first experienced the transformative impact of fortuitous encounters and of love and friendship among intellectual fellow travelers with them. They inspired me in our youth, and even now, when large distances separate us, they continue to do so. Many other dear friends and critical interlocutors have shaped me since my first faltering steps into the world of books and learningtoo many to mention by namebut I trust that you know who you are and how much youve meant to me.