Episode Overview

This episode of the New Books Network features Dr. Zachary Williams interviewing Dr. Leslie James, professor at Queen’s University of London, about her 2025 book, The Moving Word: How the West African and Caribbean Press Shaped Black Political Thought, 1935-1960 (Harvard University Press). The conversation focuses on how newspapers functioned as dynamic, transnational political actors, shaping and reflecting Black political thought, anti-colonial activism, concepts of democracy, and the evolution of political discourse from the colonial to the post-independence era in West Africa and the Caribbean.

Main Themes and Purpose

• Exploring the profound influence of the press in West African and Caribbean contexts as an engine of Black political thought.
• Situating newspapers as not only recorders of history but active creators and shapers of political consciousness and collective agency.
• Tracing the transformation of the press—its forms, roles, and networks—across the process of decolonization.
• Connecting past press practices and debates to contemporary issues of democracy, activism, and global Black networks.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Genesis of the Book and Research Approach

• Leslie James describes the origins of her work in earlier research on George Padmore, which led her to “a lot of unexpected publications” and an “efflorescence” of political debate in the newspapers she uncovered (01:03).
• James intended to test the “breadth and depth of concepts of Black internationalism” via newspapers, ultimately expanding and deepening the project as she uncovered their broader significance.

2. Rethinking “Western Civilization” and Global History

• The press illuminates how actors and institutions in the colonial world actively rearranged the boundaries between the “local,” “global,” “Western,” and “alternative” (04:25).
• Black political thought, reflected in and forged by the press, constitutes not an external or adjunct critique but an internal rethinking of Western political ideas (04:25):
  • “It’s not an external part of Western political thought. It's internal…and it's an internal critique to it.” – Leslie James (04:25)
• Newspapers contributed to reframing the history of modernity by “placing the African continent and African enslaved peoples at the center of that story.”

3. The Press as Political Actor—“The Fourth and Only Estate”

• Press in colonies was not just a forum but fundamentally the only mechanism for public discourse and anti-colonial critique:

  • “In colonized societies there is no other mechanism for public discussion…This is the only voice for people in colonized societies.” – Leslie James (07:23)

• West African and Caribbean newspapers served as the core infrastructure of the public sphere, especially when alternative institutions were absent or repressed.

• The phrase "the fourth and only estate" emerges as an explicitly anti-colonial concept.

4. Networks, Informality, and Power Dynamics

• Unruly Creativity: Without access to official news services or colonial state advertising, these presses cultivated improvised networks of “clipping and reprinting” news, poetry, satire, speeches, and stories (12:54).

• Resistance and Exclusion: Their informal, “unruly” nature allowed them to circumvent colonial controls but also led to their being derided and marginalized by colonial authorities (12:54).

  “They function on a very unruly Black Atlantic, deeply historical process of clipping and reprinting…They are defying the dynamic of the metropole, but at the same time, they’re pushed into it because they are marginalized and excluded.” – Leslie James (12:54)

• Professionalization and Loss of Vibrancy: Moves toward professionalization in the 1940s-50s led to shifts in both form and function, often reducing the diversity and creativity of press content.

5. Shaping Public Opinion and Building Independence Movements

• Newspapers fostered transnational consciousness by reprinting items from other locales, enabling readers to connect disparate political and social struggles across the Atlantic (18:33):

  • Example: A poem originated in Trinidad, reprinted in Barbados, then in Ghana, acquiring new meanings in new contexts.

• Reading and Listening Practices: The Black press cultivated “readerships that know how to read between the lines in context of censorship…across decades…and to make those connections” (18:33).

• Genre Innovation: Use of local languages, satire, surrealist and modernist genres, and “shape-shifting” journalistic characters as both literary and political techniques (18:33).

• Possible influence of West African journalistic genres on African American writers (e.g., Langston Hughes).

6. Plotting Freedom—Fusion of Carib-African Consciousness

• The chapter “Plotting Freedom” serves as a linchpin, highlighting how discussions of freedom, racial capitalism, and sovereignty developed collectively through press debates—not just via canonical intellectuals but by ordinary contributors (26:52):

  “The conception of racial capitalism is being innovated as well as articulated by the people in these newspapers. And they do it through these techniques [of clipping, reprinting, connecting local and global events].” – Leslie James (26:52)

• These cross-regional networks built an “integrated, cross-contaminated cultural politics…very well-versed” in each other’s realities.

7. Decolonization and the Shift in Newspaper Roles

• The press shifted during decolonization:
  • Newspapers became institutional pillars of “readiness” for self-government, but also increasingly professionalized and surveilled (33:10).
  • Vibrancy diminishes: The anarchic creativity of the 1930s-40s “looks different” in the 1950s as professionalization, competition, and political party affiliations narrow diversity (33:10):

    “By the moment of political independence…the variety has dwindled because either they can’t compete and are forced to close, or they are tied to a political party that loses at the ballot box.” – Leslie James (33:10)

8. Newspapers, Democracy, and Contemporary Resonances

• Newspapers played a crucial role in theorizing and imagining democratic participation, often from the margins (41:42):

  “Once you see [Black political thought] in the United States, in West Africa, in South Africa, in Europe, in the Caribbean as being all in conversation, then you can start to appreciate how they are conceptualizing democratic processes together.” – Leslie James (41:42)

• Ethiopia—its role in the collective Black imagination—serves as a catalyst for global Black critiques of democracy and anti-fascism (41:42).

• The evolution from print to digital and the adaptation of oral, conversational modes (e.g., podcasts) reflects the enduring influence of the “moving word.”

9. Ongoing Research and Broader Implications

• Dr. James previews her next project on the genealogy of Black anti-fascism and anti-apartheid movements as traced through press networks (46:04).

• She reflects on how “binary” political times today resonate with the creative, dialogical exchanges of the press in the 1930s, highlighting the importance of retaining a sense of heterogeneity and authentic conversation (48:37):

  “What struck me…is that while that's true, you know, we talked about the heterogeneous aspect of that political thought, that people were still conversing. They were figuring out ways to have to really debate the meaning of freedom, the meaning of sovereignty, the function of everything that's happening.” – Leslie James (48:37)

Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On Black Thought as Internal Critique:

  “It’s not an external part of Western political thought. It's internal…and it's an internal critique to it.” – Leslie James (04:25)

• On the Press in Colonized Societies:

  “This is the only voice for people in colonized societies. And the newspapers really make a lot of that…an anti colonial critique of how colonialism operates to remove democracy in its colonies.” – Leslie James (07:23)

• On “Unruly” Networks:

  “They function on a very unruly Black Atlantic, deeply historical process of clipping and reprinting…” – Leslie James (12:54)

• On Plotting Freedom:

  “The conception of racial capitalism is being innovated as well as articulated by the people in these newspapers.” – Leslie James (26:52)

• On Press’s Shifting Role:

  “By the moment of political independence…the variety has dwindled because either they can’t compete and are forced to close, or they are tied to a political party that loses at the ballot box.” – Leslie James (33:10)

• On the Enduring Value of Conversation:

  “What struck me…is that while that's true…people were still conversing. They were figuring out ways to have to really debate the meaning of freedom, the meaning of sovereignty, the function of everything that's happening.” – Leslie James (48:37)

Important Segment Timestamps

• [01:03] – Origins: Linking George Padmore research to a broader newspaper study
• [04:25] – Theoretical reframing: Black political thought as internal to Western thought
• [07:23] – The press as the “fourth and only estate”
• [12:54] – Clipping/reprinting culture; informality and marginalization
• [18:33] – Building transnational consciousness; cultural politics
• [26:52] – “Plotting Freedom” and the conceptualization of racial capitalism
• [33:10] – Professionalization and narrowing of press diversity during decolonization
• [41:42] – Newspapers, democracy, and the intertwining of local and global conversations
• [46:04] – Dr. James’s forthcoming research: Black anti-fascism/anti-apartheid genealogy
• [48:37] – Reflections on creativity, conversation, and contemporary parallels

Tone and Language

Dr. James communicates with scholarly clarity but is attentive to complexity and nuance, foregrounding the vibrancy and interconnectedness of Black intellectual, political, and cultural life. The discussion is dynamic, reflective, and appreciative of both the micro-level practices (reading, clipping, satire) and the large-scale implications (democracy, transnational activism).

Conclusion

Dr. Leslie James’s The Moving Word reframes our understanding of the West African and Caribbean press as engines of political imagination, resistance, and collective agency. Newspapers were not merely chronicles but active laboratories for democracy, freedom, and transnational solidarity. The insights from this episode resonate in today’s struggles over voice, representation, and the evolving “moving word” in digital spaces—affirming the enduring power of creative political conversation.