Looking back on childhood in Trinidad, CLR James called himself the “little Puritan.” His family, jet-black descendants of slaves, carried themselves with the utmost dignity. His father, the schoolmaster, with suit and tie, his mother and distinguished aunts, dressing up with special effort for church, that is, “C of E.” Like other Episcopalians of the colonies, come of age late enough to remember slavery in a grandparent but also dress, talk, enjoy literature and music and even themselves dance in modern, early twentieth-century fashion, the Jameses had a culture of religion or a religion of culture at the center of their lives.
For “Nello,” a diminutive bestowed upon him by an encouraging mother, the moral code embedded in Church allowed him to shrug off racial disparagement or discrimination. These existed but would not hold him back. After he reached his teens, the theological core shriveled down, but the moral code remained. And there was something more.
In a 1960 series of lectures at the public library in Port of Spain, Trinidad, where James had temporarily resettled at the call of his former student and soon premier, Eric Williams, James explained. His own historical world began with Greece, the early democracy, philosophy and drama (including sports), but proceeded to Rome and the colonies. There, the Bible’s St. John had predicted, in the mystical “Revelations,” the course of Empire’s Fall. “He was a Jew whose country was ruled by the…