“In the Name of Our Race, Organize!" Garveyism and the Development of Transnational Blackness in the 1920 West Indian Strike in the Panama Canal

This paper discusses the influence of Garveyism on the 1920 West Indian workers strike in the Panama Canal. The American construction of the Panama Canal from 1904-1914 brought an estimated 150,000 to 200,000 English speaking West Indian workers into Panama, a large majority of which retained employment on the Canal upon its completion.  These West Indian workers faced deplorable working and housing conditions, low wages, and harsh discrimination.  Starting in the late 1910s, West Indian workers, directly influenced by Marcus Garvey and his United Negro Improvement Association, formed a large labor union that framed their struggle in the Canal Zone as part of a larger global movement for equal rights as blacks.  As such, I argue that West Indians utilized transnational ideas of blackness—which had been circulating across the Americas thanks to Marcus Garvey—to shape and give meaning to their struggle within the Canal Zone.  West Indians, therefore, as a diasporic group within the Canal Zone, strongly identified themselves as part of a larger, worldwide negro race. This transnational blackness is key to understanding why the strike of 1920 occurred, and indeed is key to understanding the history of West Indians in Panama in the 20^th century.