The antinomies of Sam Morris: a life in the diaspora

Abstract

This article attempts to recover the antinomies and contradictions of the life and work of Grenada-born Samson Uriah Morris (1908−1976), an educationalist, anti-colonialist and Black political activist, whose life was dedicated to both the movement for civil rights in Britain and the broader anti-colonial and Pan-Africanist struggle. His life ranged from the Caribbean to the United Kingdom to Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghana and then back to Britain where he eventually became the deputy general secretary of the Community Relations Commission and Assistant High Commissioner for Grenada. Despite his role in the anti-racist struggles of the inter-war period he was seen as a somewhat conservative figure by a new generation of Black radicals in Britain by the late 1960s. The authors chart Morris’s biography, setting it against changing political forces, and suggest that he made an important contribution to the struggle against racism and imperialism and the project of ‘intellectual decolonisation’.