Walter Rodney

Walter Anthony Rodney (23 March 1942 13 June

1980) was a prominent Guyanese historian, political activist and scholar, who was assassinated in Guyana in
1980.

Rodney became a prominent Pan-Africanist, and was important in the Black Power movement in the Caribbean
and North America. While living in Dar es Salaam he was
inuential in developing a new centre of African learning
and discussion.

Career

2 Later years and assassination

Born into a working-class family, Walter Rodney was a

very bright student, attending Queens College in the then
British Guiana (now Guyana), where he became a champion debater and athlete, and then attending university on
a scholarship at the University College of the West Indies
(UCWI) in Jamaica, graduating in 1963 with a rst-class
degree in History, thereby winning the Faculty of Arts
prize.

In 1974 Rodney returned to Guyana from Tanzania. He

was due to take up a position as a professor at the
University of Guyana but the government prevented his
appointment. He became increasingly active in politics,
founding the Working Peoples Alliance, a party that provided the most eective and credible opposition to the
PNC government. In 1979 he was arrested and charged
with arson after two government oces were burned.

Rodney earned a PhD in African History in 1966 at

the School of Oriental and African Studies in London,
England, at the age of 24. His dissertation, which focused
on the slave trade on the Upper Guinea Coast, was published by the Oxford University Press in 1970 under the
title A History of the Upper Guinea Coast 1545-1800 and
was widely acclaimed for its originality in challenging the
conventional wisdom on the topic.

On 13 June 1980, Walter Rodney was killed, at the age of

thirty-eight, by a bomb in his car, a month after returning from the independence celebrations in Zimbabwe and
during a period of intense political activism. He was survived by his wife, Pat, and three children. His brother,
Donald Rodney, who was injured in the explosion, said
that a sergeant in the Guyana Defence Force named Gregory Smith had given Walter the bomb that killed him.
Rodney traveled widely and became very well known in- After the killing Smith ed to French Guiana, where he
ternationally as an activist, scholar and formidable orator. died in 2002.
He taught at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania
during the period 1966-67 and later in Jamaica at his alma It was, and is still, widely believed - although not proved mater UWI Mona. He was sharply critical of the middle that the assassination was set-up by then President Linden
[2][3]
Rodneys idea, that the various ethclass for its role in the post-independence Caribbean. He Forbes Burnham.
nic
groups
who
were
historically
disenfranchised by the
was also a strong critic of capitalism and argued for a soruling
colonial
class
should
work
together,
was in conict
cialist development template.
with Burnhams presidential opinions.[4]
On 15 October 1968 the government of Jamaica, led by
prime minister Hugh Shearer, declared Rodney persona In early 2015 a Commission of Inquiry (COI) was held
non grata. The decision to ban him from ever returning to during which a new witness, Holland Gregory Yearwood,
Jamaica because of his advocacy for the working poor in came forward claiming to be a longstanding friend of
that country caused riots to break out, eventually claim- Rodney and a former member of the WPA. He testied
ing the lives of several people and causing millions of dol- that Rodney might have had a hand in his own demise,
lars in damages. These riots, which started on 16 Octo- having presented detonators to Yearwood weeks prior
ber 1968, are now known as the Rodney Riots, and they to the explosion asking for assistance in assembling a
[5]
triggered an increase in political awareness across the bomb.
Caribbean, especially among the Afrocentric Rastafarian
sector of Jamaica, documented in his book The Groundings with my Brothers (Bogle-L'Ouverture Publications, 3 Academic inuence
1969).
In 1969, Rodney returned to the University of Dar es Rodneys most inuential book was his magnum opus,
Salaam, where he served as a Professor of History until How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, published in 1972.
In it he described an Africa that had been consciously ex1974.[1]
1

ploited by European imperialists, leading directly to the

modern underdevelopment of most of the continent. The
book became enormously inuential as well as controversial: it was groundbreaking in that it was among the rst
to bring a new perspective to the question of underdevelopment in Africa. Rodneys analysis went far beyond the
previously accepted approach in the study of Third World
underdevelopment.
Instead of being interested primarily in
the inter-relations of African trade and politics,
as many of us were at that time, Walter Rodney focused his attention on the agricultural basis of African communities, on the productive
forces within them and on the processes of social dierentiation. As a result, his research
raised a whole set of fresh questions concerning the nature of African social institutions on
the Upper Guinea coast in the sixteenth century
and of the impact of the Atlantic slave trade. In
doing so, he helped to open up a new dimension. Almost immediately he stimulated much
further writing and research on West Africa,
and he initiated a debate, which still continues and now extends across the whole range of
African history.

LEGACY

4 Legacy
Rodneys death was commemorated in a poem by Martin
Carter entitled For Walter Rodney, by the dub poet
Linton Kwesi Johnson in Reggae Radni, and by
Kamau Brathwaite in his poem Poem for Walter Rodney (Elegguas, 2010).
In 1977, the African Studies Centre, Boston University,
inaugurated the Walter Rodney Lecture Series.
In 1982,the American Historical Association posthumously awarded Walter Rodney the Albert J. Beveridge
Award for A History of the Guyanese Working People,
1881-1905.
In 1984, the Centre for Caribbean Studies of the
University of Warwick established the Walter Rodney
Memorial Lecture in recognition of the life and work of
one of the most outstanding scholar-activists of the Black
Diaspora in the post-World War II era.
In 1993, the Guyanese government posthumously
awarded Walter Rodney Guyanas highest honour, the
Order of Excellence of Guyana. The Guyanese government also established the Walter Rodney Chair in History
at the University of Guyana.

In 1998, the Institute of Caribbean Studies, University of

the West Indies, inaugurated the Walter Rodney Lecture
When teaching at the Universities of Dar es Salaam and Series.
the West Indies, he launched and sustained a large number of discussion groups which swept up and embraced In 2004, Walter Rodney`s widow, Patricia, and his chilmany who had had little or no formal education. As dren donated his papers to the Robert L. Woodru Lia writer, he reached out to contact thousands in The brary of the Atlanta University Center. Since 2004, an
Groundings with my Brothers (1969) and in his inuen- annual Walter Rodney Symposium has been held each 23
tial How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972). Re- March (Rodneys birthday) at the Center under the sponmarks by Professor John Richard Gray, History Today, sorship of the Library and the Political Science Department of Clark Atlanta University, and under the patronVol. 49, Issue 9, 1980.
age of the Rodney family.
When we think of Walter Rodney as a
Revolutionary Scholar we are talking about two
things, Radical Scholar and his revolutionary
contribution to the study of History ie. History of Africa. Walter Rodney was a pioneering scholar who provided new answers to old
questions and posed new questions in relation
to the study of Africa. Remarks by Professor Winston McGowan at the Walter Rodney Commemorative Symposium held at York
College, USA, in June 2010.
Walter Rodney was no captive intellectual playing to the gallery of local or international radicalism. He was clearly one of the
most solidly ideologically situated intellectuals
ever to look colonialism and its contemporary
heir black opportunism and exploitation in the
eye Remarks by Wole Soyinka, Oduduwa
Hall, University of Ife, Nigeria, Friday, 27 June
1980.

In 2005, the London Borough of Southwark erected a

plaque in the Peckham Library Square in commemoration of Dr. Walter Rodney, the political activist, historian
and global freedom ghter.
In 2006, an International Conference on Walter Rodney
was held at the Institute of Development Studies of the
University of Dar es Salaam.
In 2006,the Walter Rodney Essay Competition was established at the Department of Afroamerican and African
Studies at the University of Michigan
In 2010, the Walter Rodney Commemorative Symposium was held at York College
The Department of African American Studies at
Syracuse University established the Angela Davis/Walter
Rodney Award of Academic Achievement.
The Department of Afroamerican and African Studies
(DAAS) at the University of Michigan established the
DuBois-Mandela-Rodney Post-doctoral Fellowship Program

3
In 2012, the Walter Rodney Conference celebrating the
40th anniversary of the publication of How Europe Underdeveloped Africa was held at Binghamton University.

Gabriehu. Dangerous Times: The Assassination of

Dr. Walter Rodney. Brooklyn, NY: Gibbi Books,
2003.

Rodney is the subject of the 2010 documentary lm by

Clairmont Chung, W.A.R. Stories: Walter Anthony Rodney.[6]

Lewis, Rupert. Walter Rodney`s Intellectual and Political Thought, Wayne State University Press, 1998

The Walter Rodney Close in the London Borough of

Newham has been named in honour of Dr Walter Rodney.

Bibliography
Walter Rodney Speaks: the Making of an African Intellectual (1990)
A History of the Guyanese Working People, 18811905 (1981)
Marx in the Liberation of Africa (1981)
Guyanese Sugar Plantations in the Late Nineteenth
Century: a Contemporary Description from the Argosy (1979)
World War II and the Tanzanian Economy (1976)
How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972)
A History of the Upper Guinea Coast (1970)
The Groundings with my Brothers (1969)
Ko Baadu Out of Africa (childrens book) Georgetown, [Guyana]: [s.n.]
Lakshmi Out of India (childrens book) Georgetown,
Guyana: The Guyana Book Foundation, 2000.

5.1

Further reading

And nally they killed him": speeches and poems

at a memorial rally for Walter Rodney, 1942-80,
Oduduwa Hall, University of Ife, Nigeria, Friday,
27 June 1980.
Walter Rodney: Revolutionary and Scholar: A Tribute. Los Angeles: Center for African-American
Studies and African Studies Center, University of
California, 1982.
Alpers, Edward A. and P. M. Fontaine (eds),
Walter Rodney, Poetic Tributes. London: BogleLOuverture, 1985.
Campbell, Horace. Rasta and Resistance: From
Marcus Garvey to Walter Rodney. Trenton, NJ:
Africa World Press, 1985.
Chung, Clairmont: A Promise of Revolution,
Monthly Review Press, 2013

Lewis, Rupert. Walter Rodney: 1968 Revisited

Issa G. Shivji, Remembering Walter Rodney,
Monthly Review, Volume 64, Issue 07 (December
2012).

6 References
[1] Michael O. West (November 2005). Walter Rodney and
Black Power: Jamaican Intelligence and US Diplomacy
(PDF). African Journal of Criminology and Justice Studies
1 (2). ISSN 1554-3897. Retrieved 2011-06-26.
[2] Walter Rodney [1942-1980]", The Grenada Revolution
Online
[3] The grand betrayals of Walter Rodney, Kaieteur News,
16 June 2012.
[4] Anon, 2002, Gregory Smith dead, reports say, Stabroek
News, 24 November 2002.
[5] Rodney hearing takes dramatic twist. New witness tells
of attempted cover up. Guyana Chronicle. 17 February
2015.
[6] W.A.R. Stories: Walter Anthony Rodney, Roots and Culture Media.

7 External links
Walter Rodney 25 Anniversary Commemoration
Committee
Rodney biography
The Walter Rodney Eect
African History in the Service of the Black Liberation
George Jackson: Black Revolutionary
Street Speech
Walter Rodney and Pan Africanism Today by Horace Campbell
C. L. R. James, Walter Rodney and the Question of
Power (London: Race Today Publications, 1983).

8 TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

8.1

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Walter Rodney Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Rodney?oldid=702939888 Contributors: Edward, TwinsFan48, Wik, Peregrine981, Warofdreams, Chris Roy, Academic Challenger, Timrollpickering, PBP, Bobblewik, Sesel, Matt Toups, D6, Rich Farmbrough,
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