Walter Rodney was born in Georgetown, British Guiana in 1942. From an early age he was involved in anti-colonial and nationalist politics. He was an excellent scholar and won a scholarship to study history at the University of the West Indies. That combination of commitment and skills encouraged Rodney to think about the ways in which history could be used to help ordinary working people. He went to England to study African History, where he also experienced the crude racism of the period. At the same time, he gained a better understanding of the world-wide nature of the struggle against racism and what he could contribute to it.
Rodney tried to put his ideas into practice when he accepted a job teaching African History at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. Here he became involved in discussions around the role of the university in making a more just and equal society. His belief that universities should contribute to making a better society for working people was also evident when he left Tanzania to teach at the University of the West Indies. In Jamaica he gave lectures about African history and Black Power to anyone who would listen and took time to get to know and learn from the poorest communities of the island, especially the Rastafarians.
Through his educational work and political organisation, Rodney became a leader of the Black Power movement in Jamaica, which he defined to include Caribbean people of both African and East Indian heritage. The government banned Rodney's re-entry on his return from a Black writers conference in Canada and he returned to the University of Dar es Salaam.
At the time, Dar es Salaam was the centre for a great deal of political thinking and activity. This environment inspired Rodney to think more deeply about solving practical political, economic and cultural problems. He lectured and published widely on African history, contemporary African affairs and imperialism during this period, which also saw the publication of his best known work, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. However, he came to realise that there was only so much he could do as a foreigner in Tanzania and decided to commit himself to working for change in Guyana.
In 1974, Rodney and his family returned to Guyana with the promise of a teaching post at the university. However, the government of Forbes Burnham did not let Rodney take up the job because it did not want him to use his skills to help popular resistance against it. Even so, Rodney helped set up the Working Peoples' Alliance (WPA), which was committed to the removal of Burnham and the system of government which he had installed with help from both Britain and the US. Rodney and the WPA believed that only the people could achieve this goal and encouraged people towards mass action against the government. The government began a campaign to destroy the WPA and the movement it was energising. One aspect of that campaign was to eliminate the WPA leadership. On 13 June 1980, Walter Rodney was assassinated by a bomb. News of his murder sparked outrage around the world and a massive funeral procession in Guyana in defiance of the government, as people mourned the great activist and scholar.
Find out more about the people who made a difference on the HomeBeats: Struggles for Racial Justice CDROM.