Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Williams issues state of emergency in response to Black Power Revolution -- a small group of soldiers mutiny

Following the student uprising in February of 1970, the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago declared a state of emergency on this day in 1970 to try to contain the Black Power Revolution. Prime Minister Williams passed a Sedition Bill, outlawing texts such as Mao’s ‘Little Red Book’ along with the works of Frantz Fanon and Che Guevara. Williams further cracked down on the Black Power demonstrations by introducing the Public Order Act, which greatly impinged upon civil liberties to reduce the popularity of protest marches. His repression was unsuccessful in its intents. When the Trinidad and Tobago Army regiment was summoned to the capital, Port of Spain to help enforce order about half of the army, led by Rex Lassalle, Raffique Shah and other junior officers, refused to take up arms against the citizenry. Lassalle and Shah, together with other junior officers, took control of the Teteron Barracks. When the mutineers tried to leave Teteron, they were fired upon by the Trinidad and Tobago Coast Guard. The mutineers held Teteron for 10 days, while engaging in negotiations with the government. The two leaders were court martialed and jailed but both were released on appeal in 1972. Rex Lassalle was radicalized while in his military training in the UK, experiencing racism and being asked to produce "a written military appreciation of how to wipe out a Mau Mau enclave". On his way home from the UK he stayed in New York with an aunt in the aftermath of the Watts riots and the assassination of Malcolm X. While there, he read Franz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth, which inspired him to read Fanon's other works.