By Mark Landler and Azam Ahmed

LONDON — The last time a string of distant dominions cast off Queen Elizabeth was in the 1970s when the Black power movement emboldened three Caribbean countries to declare themselves republics. Now, in the heat of the Black Lives Matter movement, the Caribbean may once again turn against the queen.

On Wednesday, Barbados announced it would remove Elizabeth as its head of state and become a republic by November of next year. Jamaica is also considering whether to abandon the monarch, a step supported by successive prime ministers. St. Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines have both flirted with the idea, though in St. Vincent, voters defeated a proposal to become a republic in 2009.

This time might be different, experts on the Caribbean said. The mass protests against the killing of Black people by the police in the United States have inflamed a long-simmering debate in Britain and its former colonies about the legacy of empire. That debate inevitably draws in the 94-year-old monarch, whose realm, while dwindling, still spans 16 countries from Canada to New Zealand in the Commonwealth.

“Barbados could be a tipping point,” said Richard Drayton, a professor of imperial history at Kings College London. “If Barbados is successful in taking this step, it would inspire other countries to do the same.”

The prime minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, explicitly couched the move to abandon the queen as head of state in terms of throwing off colonial shackles. In a speech prepared for the governor-general of Barbados, Sandra Mason, Ms. Mottley wrote: “The time has come to fully leave our colonial past behind. Barbadians want a Barbadian head of state.” Read more via New York Times