Panama in Black

In <i>Panama in Black</i> Kaysha Corinealdi traces the multigenerational activism of Afro-Caribbean Panamanians as they forged diasporic communities in Panama and the United States throughout the twentieth century. Drawing on a rich array of sources including speeches yearbooks photographs government reports radio broadcasts newspaper editorials and oral histories Corinealdi presents the Panamanian isthmus as a crucial site in the making of an Afro-diasporic world that linked cities and towns like Colón Kingston Panamá City Brooklyn Bridgetown and La Boca. In Panama Afro-Caribbean Panamanians created a diasporic worldview of the Caribbean that privileged the potential of Black innovation. Corinealdi maps this innovation by examining the longest-running Black newspaper in Central America the rise of civic associations created to counter policies that stripped Afro-Caribbean Panamanians of citizenship the creation of scholarship-granting organizations that supported the education of Black students and the emergence of national conferences and organizations that linked anti-imperialism and Black liberation. By showing how Afro-Caribbean Panamanians used these methods to navigate anti-Blackness xenophobia and white supremacy Corinealdi offers a new mode of understanding activism community and diaspora formation.