Bogle-L'Ouverture Press

Bogle-L’Ouverture Publications (BLP) is a radical London-based publishing company founded in 1968 by Guyanese activists Jessica Huntley (23 February 1927 – 13 October 2013) and Eric Huntley (born 25 September 1929). Named in honour of two outstanding liberation fighters in Caribbean history, Toussaint L'Ouverture and Paul Bogle, the company began operating during a period in the UK when "books by Black authors or written with a sympathetic view of Black people’s history and culture were rare in mainstream bookshops in the UK." Alongside New Beacon Books (founded in 1966) and Allison & Busby (founded in 1967), BLP was one of the first black-owned independent publishing companies in the UK. BLP has been described as "a small, unorthodox, self-financing venture that brought a radical perspective to non-fiction, fiction, poetry and children's books."

The birth of Bogle-L'Ouverture Publications was a direct response to the 1968 banning from Jamaica of historian and scholar Walter Rodney, who was then teaching at the University of the West Indies in Mona and outside the lecture halls had been sharing his knowledge and exchanging ideas with the island's working people, prompting the government's censure. Thousands of Jamaicans took to the streets protesting the ban and in London a group of concerned West Indians — the Huntleys, Richard Small, Ewart Thomas, Andrew Salkey and others – decided to challenge it by publishing and distributing Rodney's speeches and lectures. These were published in 1969 as BLP's first title, The Groundings With My Brothers, financed by friends and community funding, and much reprinted. Speaking in 1979 at an event marking BLP's 10th anniversary, Jessica Huntley recalled: "It was a political position we took.... We barely made the money to pay the printer.... We just gave away a lot of copies to people so people must read it." The company went on also to become the original publisher (jointly with Tanzania Publishing House) in 1972 of Rodney's influential work How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.

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