Why was the interwar period conducive to antiracism and women’s rights activism? And why is it useful to look at them together?
The disruption brought by WWI and the rise of decolonisation movements challenged traditional power structures and provided fertile ground for a re-imagining of national and global politics. Women and leaders within the African diaspora seized on the moment to push for a more gender-equal and/or racially just world. It makes sense to look at these movements together firstly because they intersected at the time: many women’s rights activists were interested in the work of antiracist activists and vice versa, and some activists straddled multiple organisations at once. These connections are lost when we study each independently. But I think it is also interesting to study the moments where these movements didn’t connect or where they actively departed from one another, so that we can understand how and why that happened, rather than assuming a priori that these two causes were somehow incompatible.

Why was Bermuda a fertile ground for those movements and what does it tell us about social history in the British Empire?
Located in the Atlantic Ocean due east of North Carolina, Bermuda lay – geographically, politically, and socially – at the intersection of Britain, the United States and the Caribbean. In the 1930s, it was a British island colony with significant white settler and African-descendent populations (around 40% and 60%, respectively). Although it shared a history of British imperialism and African slavery with several islands in the Caribbean, the local government had more control over its affairs than on the other islands and imposed more rigid American-style racial segregation. Bermudians were also a mobile people, travelling to the United States, Britain and beyond for work and education. As a result, I think it is a particularly interesting site that allows us to see how ideologies and activists circulating throughout the Atlantic World intersected with local particularities to influence social movements.

Why did you focus on the Bermuda Woman’s Suffrage Society (BWSS) and the Recorder newspaper?
The BWSS was the central organ of the suffragist movement on the island, and its leader, Gladys Morrell, became the most prominent feminist voice in the public sphere upon returning from several years in Britain. As with many women’s rights organisations at the time, the BWSS was dominated by white elite women. However, it did make clear that it called for equal rights for women of all races/nationalities and reached out to black leaders and communities, a not insignificant fact in a racially segregated society.
The Recorder and its editor, David Tucker, similarly acted as a key critical voice on the island, advocating on behalf of the Afro-Bermudian community. Tucker had edited the newspaper of the League of Coloured Peoples while living in London and brought a pan-Africanist sensibility to local debates. He also published a number of articles and editorials in support of the women’s rights movement locally and internationally, arguing that women’s suffrage was a hallmark of “enlightened” society and declaring himself against “discrimination in any form”.

How did antiracism and women’s rights activism in interwar Bermuda intersect with the global spread of neo-Malthusian and eugenic anxiety?
Concerns over population growth and calls to limit the reproduction of certain groups were widespread internationally in the interwar years. In the context of Bermuda, calls for population control were fairly obviously directed at the black working-class community. Antiracist activists like Tucker recognised the value of family planning for individuals, but quickly mobilised against a top-down government programme of birth control, white feminist activists in Bermuda also joined in these critiques and mobilised networks in Britain to exert pressure on the government to prevent such measures. I find this interesting in light of the fact that, in other areas of the world, prominent feminists (like Margaret Sanger in the United States) actively mobilised racially inflected eugenic discourses to gain support for their movements. This shows that even in highly divided societies, there was always potential for individuals to move beyond their own direct interests and ally against power. 

What tensions shaped the interactions between women’s rights and antiracists? Where and why did they depart from one another?
While women’s rights and antiracist activists in Bermuda shared a number of ideological principles and were able to work alongside one another on specific issues, this was a fragile alliance shaped by a number of tensions. Tucker supported the BWSS’ work but remained critical of the organisation’s ties with institutions that discriminated against black women in scholarships and hiring. The BWSS also refused to take up questions of social and economic rights or universal suffrage that Tucker and other Afro-Bermudian leaders championed. These tensions ultimately erupted in 1943, when Tucker ran for political office and spoke against women’s suffrage on the basis that it would increase white representation over that of the black community. Morrell and the BWSS were furious and publicly renounced their subscription to the Recorder. Although the two ultimately reconciled, I think these experiences illustrate the difficulty of sustaining alliances, especially when gains for one perceived “group” were seen as coming at the expense of the other. 
The tendency of both the Recorder and the BWSS to speak on behalf of (rather than providing a platform for) black women also undoubtedly contributed to the splintering of agendas in these years, allowing “women’s rights” movements to privilege the concerns of white women and antiracist activism to privilege the issues of black men. Perhaps, if black women had been given more space within the BWSS to speak or the chance to write their own articles for the Recorder, issues of civil, social and economic rights would have been recognised as intertwined issues, rather than parallel causes.

So, how did women’s suffrage and black rights evolve in Bermuda after 1943? And what is the connection between their history and contemporary discussions on issues of institutionalised gender and race discrimination? 
Women who met property qualifications obtained suffrage on equal grounds as men in 1944, but universal suffrage for all adults over age 25 did not come until 1963. In any case, this was hardly the end of gender or racial discrimination in Bermuda, or elsewhere. These problems continue, but I think histories like this illustrate that it is not for lack of consciousness or mobilisation. Feminist and antiracist activists have been critiquing inequality for over a century; they have also been attempting to join forces for a long time, sometimes successfully and sometimes not. Perhaps we can learn from both their mobilisations and missteps. I also think this particular story provides vivid evidence for the arguments made by contemporary black/postcolonial feminist theorists like Kimberlé Crenshaw and bell hooks, regarding the intersectionality of gender and race discrimination, the problems with separating women’s rights and black activist agendas, and the powerful potential of a united feminist, antiracist platform. 

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Full citation of the article:
Bourbonnais, Nicole. “Discrimination in Any Shape or Form: Black Activism and Women’s Rights in Interwar Bermuda.” Caribbean Review of Gender Studies, no. 12 (December 2018): 143–68.

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Interview by Aditya Kiran Kakati, doctoral candidate in International History and Anthropology and Sociology.
Edited by Nathalie Tanner, Research Office.
Illustration by HTWE / Shutterstock.com.