St John's Black History Month Lecture 2024

We are thrilled to welcome Dr Christienna D. Fryar to St John's for this year's Black History Month Lecture. Dr Fryar's lecture will examine 'Fears of Jim Crow: Jamaica at the Dawn of the American Century'.

Dr Fryar is a writer and independent historian of modern Britain, the British Empire, and the modern Caribbean. After taking a Ph.D in History at Princeton University, she lectured at Duke University, SUNY Buffalo State, the University of Liverpool, and Goldsmiths, University of London. At Goldsmiths, Dr Fryar created and convened the MA in Black British History, the first taught Masters' degree of its kind in the United Kingdom.

Since leaving academia in 2023, Dr Fryar has been researching and writing her monograph, Entangled Lands: A Caribbean History of Britain, set to be published by Allen Lane/University of California Press in 2025. In 2020, she was named a BBC New Generation Thinker and is a regular contributor to BBC Radio.

Register for free tickets via Eventbrite.

'Fears of Jim Crow: Jamaica at the Dawn of the American Century'

What can a disaster tell us about Jamaica in the early 20th century? This talk will explore post-emancipation racial politics in a colony caught between Britain and the United States as revealed through the months-long debate over British sovereignty, US annexation, the respective racial regimes of the United States and the British Empire that began after a severe earthquake that destroyed the capital city of Kingston in 1907.

Drinks will be served following the lecture.

All are very welcome to join –– register for free tickets via Eventbrite.