In Panama in Black, 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.

Kaysha Corinealdi is Assistant Professor of World History at Emerson College.

List of Abbreviations  ix
Acknowledgments  xi
Introduction. Legacies of Exclusion and Afro-Caribbean Diasporic World Making  1
1. Panama as Diaspora: Documenting Afro-Caribbean Panamanian Histories, 1928–1936  29
2. Activist Formations: Fighting for Citizenship Rights and Forging Afro-Diasporic Alliances, 1940–1950  57
3. Todo por la Patria: Diplomacy, Anticommunism, and the Rhetoric of Assimilation, 1950–1954  93
4. To Be Panamanian: The Canal Zone, Nationalist Sacrifices, and the Price of Citizenship, 1954–1961  122
5. Panama in New York: Las Servidoras and Engendering an Educated Black Diaspora, 1953–1970  150
Conclusion. Afro-Caribbean Panamanians and the Future of Diasporic World Making  180
Notes  195
Bibliography  233
Index  253