Walter Rodney was
an exceptional scholar-activist who not only interpreted the consequences of
centuries of transatlantic slavery, colonialism and neocolonialism but also
engaged in the struggles to change their racial, social and economic legacies.
As these legacies persist into the twenty-first century, his life and writings
remain profoundly relevant.

He contributed to
a distinctive intellectual blend of Black Power and Marxism, that had mass
support in the movements of the 1960s and 1970s in the Caribbean and Africa. He
had a capacity for listening to people which drew Rastafari youth activists and
others to his "groundings". When the Jamaican government banned him from
returning to work at the University of the West Indies in October 1968, there was
a mass upheaval, and these demonstrations stimulated the Black Power and
socialist movements throughout the Caribbean. His most productive years were at
the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, where he taught development
studies and wrote his seminal work, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. A
profound scholar of the history of the working people of his native Guyana, he
embraced the democratic struggles of Africans and Indians. His radical activism
and mass appeal as a leader of the Working People's Alliance in Guyana led
President Forbes Burnham to have him assassinated.