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This chapter examines how Black Power activism developed in 1960s Jamaica, highlighting the contributions of Walter Rodney, the Abeng group, and lesser known grassroots activists. It shows how Jamaican Black Power drew on multiple streams of resistance to British colonial legacies and to the neo-colonial rule of the independence era, including Garveyism, Rastafarianism, and a strong identification with Africa. The chapter reflects on the response of the Jamaican state to Black Power, revisiting the demonstrations of October 1968 (the “Rodney riots”) and their political and cultural repercussions. It argues that the political agenda articulated through Black Power in the 1960s and 1970s has been only partially accomplished, while the need to address socio-economic deprivation remains an ongoing issue.

This chapter provides a background of the production and reception of Candyman (1992). It begins by looking at the casting of Tony Todd for the Candyman role, as well as the casting of Virginia Madsen for the role of Helen Lyle. The chapter then details the filming of Candyman in the real Cabrini-Green housing project. The producers worked closely with the residents' association and employed Cabrini-Green youths to act in the film, which also served to help the production's credibility with the residents. Finally, the chapter details how the theatrical release of Candyman came at a time of great racial tension in Los Angeles. According to Bernard Rose, Candyman had a test screening scheduled on the day that the Rodney King riots broke out; this would mark the screening as taking place in April of 1992, several months before Candyman's US theatrical release in October. As Clive Barker has remarked, there was genuine fear amongst the movie executives that, in the aftermath of the riots, the film would be seen as racist.

This chapter offers personal reflections on the forty years since the upsurge of Black Power in the Caribbean. Four nodal points of the period are examined from the perspective of an analysis of radical politics in the Caribbean: the Rodney events of 1968 in Jamaica; the 1970 Black Power uprising in Trinidad and Tobago; the period of PNP government in Jamaica under Michael Manley; and the rise and fall of the Grenada Revolution. The chapter assesses the significant but ambiguous impact that the Caribbean Black Power movement had on subsequent social and political events in the region. It argues that the Caribbean movement must be located within the broader global wave of resistance of the late 1960s as part of a wave of anti-systemic insurrection that challenged the authority of dominant states and systems.