Timeline part 8 (1969-1985)
26 – 29 July: C.L.R. visits Paris and Marseilles. Meets Daniel Guérin during his visit.
August: C.L.R. spends a month visiting Tanzania (1 week), Kenya (4 days) and Uganda (2 weeks). While in Uganda, he has conversations with young Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o.
4 September: C.L.R returns to London.
20 September: C.L.R. visits France.
C.L.R. returns to the United States. He lectures widely and teaches for some years at Federal City College, now the University of the District of Columbia, during the period of Martin Luther King’s assassination and the rise of Malcolm X and the militant Black Panther party. James supports The Student Non-Violent Co-ordinating Committee (SNCC) leader Stokely Carmichael who advocates Black Power. He remains there for a further 12 years.
28 June: The Stonewall riot in New York City marks the beginning of the gay rights movement.
15 January: Biafra surrenders after a 32 month fight for independence from Nigeria.
1 March: Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) severs ties with the UK and declares itself a racially segregated republic.
A special edition of the journal Radical America is published on C.L.R. James. It is the first attempt to anthologise James’ most important writings.
1 May: U.S. troops invade Cambodia.
Facing Reality is disbanded at Martin Glaberman’s suggestion. Glaberman forms Bewick Editions in order to keep as much of James’s work in print as possible.
The Black Jacobins is performed for the BBC Radio series ‘Monday Play’.
27 January: The Vietnam War ends with the signing of peace pacts.
15 August: The U.S. bombing of Cambodia ends, marking an official halt to 12 years of combat activity in Southeast Asia.
April: Pol Pot and Khmer Rouge take over Cambodia
The documentary film-maker Mike Dibb makes an hour long BBC Omnibus film featuring James. Titled Beyond a Boundary, and shot in the UK and Trinidad, it is based on James’ 1963 book of the same name.
Nkrumah and the Ghana Revolution. London: Allison and Busby; Westport, Conn.: L. Hill (1977).
The Future in the Present, Selected Writings, vol. 1. London: Allison and Busby; Westport, Conn.: L. Hill (1977).
15 February: Rhodesia’s Prime Minister Ian D. Smith and three black leaders agree on the transfer of power to black majority rule.
16 January: the Shah leaves Iran after a year of turmoil; he is replaced in February by revolutionary forces under the Muslim leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
3 May: the Conservatives win the British general election; Margaret Thatcher becomes the new Prime Minister.
Spheres of Existence, Selected Writings, vol. 2. London: Allison and Busby; Westport, Conn.: L. Hill (1980).
Walter Rodney, leader of the Guyanese Working People’s Alliance and close associate of James is assassinated (13 June).
C.L.R. moves above the Race Today (edited by his nephew Darcus Howe) office in Brixton. Lives there until his death.
A special edition of the journal Urgent Tasks (Number 12, 1981) is published, edited by his later biographer Paul Buhle. It is the first collection of writings about James. It is later republished in 1986 as CLR James his Life and Work.
2 April – 15 June: British overcome Argentina in the Falklands war.
4 June: Israel invades Lebanon in attack on P.L.O.
80th Birthday Lectures. London: Race Today Publications (1983)
A short British film featuring James in dialogue with the historian E. P. Thompson is broadcast. Six filmed lectures presented by James (on the topics: Shakespeare, Africa, Cricket, Caribbean, Solidarity in Poland and American Society) are also broadcast around this time on Channel 4.
25 October: U.S. and allies invade Grenada.
The C.L.R. James Institute was founded with James’s blessing by Jim Murray in 1983. Based in New York, and affiliated to the Centre for African Studies at Cambridge University, it has been run by Ralph Dumain since Murray’s death in 2003.
At the Rendezvous of Victory, Selected Writings, vol. 3. London: Allison & Busby (1984).
Mike Dibb’s second film featuring James, C. L. R. James in conversation with Stuart Hall is broadcast on Channel 4.
C.L.R. James Library in Dalston Lane, Hackney was named in his honor in 1985. James attended the library’s naming ceremony, and his widow, Selma James, attended a reception there to mark its 20th anniversary in 2005.