Caribbean History Timeline

Date: January 1, 1959
Location: Cuba
Category: Politics & Government

Fulgencio Batista fled Cuba for the Dominican Republic on January 1, 1959, as his government collapsed under pressure from revolutionary forces. Fidel Castro’s 26th of July Movement had spent years fighting Batista’s dictatorship through guerrilla warfare and urban resistance. After Batista fled, Castro entered Havana a week later and soon emerged as the leading figure in the new revolutionary government. In the years that followed, Castro’s government introduced land reform, nationalized major industries, and developed closer ties with the Soviet Union. These changes transformed Cuba and reshaped its relationship with the United States, the Caribbean, and the wider world.

Date: January 30, 1959
Location: United Kingdom
Category: Carnivals & Festivals

Trinidad-born journalist and activist Claudia Jones organized Britain’s first Caribbean Carnival at St Pancras Town Hall. The indoor event followed the 1958 racial violence in Nottingham and Notting Hill, which exposed the hostility facing Caribbean migrants in Britain. Backed by Jones’s West Indian Gazette, it featured calypso, steel pan, dancing, costumes, and a Carnival Queen contest. The BBC televised parts of the evening. For Caribbean communities, it was a defiant celebration of culture and belonging. Along with Russell Henderson’s spontaneous 1965 steel-band procession in Notting Hill, it was a key forerunner of the Notting Hill Carnival tradition.

Date: 1966 to 1972
Location: London, England, United Kingdom
Category: Art & Museums

The Caribbean Artists Movement was founded in 1966 by a writers’ group that included Edward Kamau Brathwaite, John La Rose, and Andrew Salkey. They did so to bring together Caribbean artists living in the United Kingdom to help them share and promote their work and ideas to the British public. The group held meetings, put on shows, and published books. The Caribbean Artists Movement lasted until 1972, but its impact on Caribbean art and British culture continued long after. It helped many Caribbean artists gain recognition and paved the way for future Black British artists.

Date: March 17, 1972
Location: Montserrat
Category: Carnivals & Festivals; Slavery

The modern Montserrat St. Patrick’s Festival, formally recognized with March 17 becoming a national holiday in 1985, can trace its roots to a 1972 “Know Your Past” project at Montserrat Secondary School. Teachers and students used art, music, and drama to explore the planned 1768 uprising by enslaved Africans, placing African heritage and resistance to slavery at the center of the commemoration. In his 2022 book, St. Patrick’s Day Celebration in Montserrat: A History, Sir Howard Fergus wrote that the project encouraged people to “feel Montserratian” and value the culture created by their ancestors. It helped build public awareness of the freedom fighters and lay important groundwork for the festival that followed.

Date: May 26, 1974
Location: Trinidad, Cuba
Category: Art & Museums

Palacio Brunet, the former mansion of the Counts of Casa Brunet, opened as Trinidad’s Romantic Museum (Museo Romántico) on May 26, 1974. Its rooms display furniture, porcelain, silver, paintings, and other objects that recreate the lives of Trinidad’s wealthy 19th-century families. City Historian Carlos Joaquín Zerquera y Fernández de Lara helped preserve the building and its collections. Opening the museum turned a private colonial-era mansion into a public place for understanding Trinidad’s sugar-boom past.