In Part 1, I noted that after Sir Arthur Lewis and Derek Walcott made their home on the tiny island, the nation with the highest number of Nobel laureates per head of population worldwide – Saint Lucians are still learning to honor their own, while yearning for more knowledge about the unknown and unsung heroes who paved the way for all that followed.
But they are not alone, as most citizens of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) hardly know about the national heroes and important dates for neighboring countries, or about the many Caribbean people who also put the region on the map of world history.
Every Caribbean island or territory, independent or not, has its own set of heroes and historical figures worth honoring, starting with its first people and later freedom fighters.
Names associated with political struggles and unionism include, Vere Bird of Antigua, Errol Barrow of Barbados, Rosie Douglas of Dominica, Maurice Bishop of Grenada, Toussaint L’Ouverture of Haiti, Marcus Garvey of Jamaica, Saint Vincent & The Grenadines Garifunas and Williams . Uriah Butler.
Caribbean writers and political thinkers such as CLR James, Eric Williams, Walter Rodney and Hilary Beckles emerge from time to time and contribute greatly to a better understanding of our origins and heritage.
But not many in the English-, Dutch-, and Spanish-speaking Caribbean know, for example, of the effects of the literary contributions of Martinique Frantz Fanon and Aime Cesaire on the early leaders of Africa’s independence struggles in the mid-20th century.
Caribbean citizens know all their national and colonial holidays and religious Holy Days, but none are connected to their freedom struggles, thanks to centuries of miseducation that aims to hide much of the true history of the Caribbean .
CARICOM governments, the University of the West Indies (UWI) and the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) all agree that after decades of post-independence brain drain, history (and not just Caribbean history) is an endangered subject in the region and there is an urgent need. rescue mission.
Few Caribbean nationals know John Quinlan of St. Lucia, who addressed the 1887 royal commission calling for reparations or repatriation for ex-enslaved Africans in British colonies in the Caribbean and America and addressed the Pan African Congress in the UK in 1900 on behalf of the Caribbean.
Very few know about Bussa of Barbados, Fedon of Grenada, Cuffy of Guyana, Dado of Jamaica and Chatoyer of St. Vincent; and many will not even know that Kwane Ture (who coined the term ‘Black Power’ in the US, married popular South African singer Miriam Makeba and moved to the continent to found the All African People’s Revolutionary Party) there was also a Trinidadian named Stokeley Carmichael; or that Malcolm X’s mother was a Grenadian, or that Louis Farrakhan’s mother was from Saint Kitts, or that Cicely Tyson was from Anguilla, or that Hamilton (Bermuda’s capital) was named after the first US treasury secretary after Independence, Alexander Hamilton, who was born there.
Not many people today will also know that the Dominican lawyer Telford Georges was the first Chief Justice of Tanzania; and Saint Lucia’s Darnley Alexander was the first Chief Justice of Niger, Nigeria’s largest state.
Or that Saint Lucia’s Jean Baptiste Bideau fought alongside Simon Bolivar for Venezuelan independence and died defending it after serving as Governor of Eastern Venezuela – and now has national hero status in the Bolivarian Republic.
Not enough is being done at the regional and institutional levels to bridge the clearly widening knowledge gap that still prevents the people of the Caribbean from getting to know each other better.
Information is readily available and information technology (IT) is also ever-present in this new era of instant global communication, when online learning is accepted as the new norm, but not enough is being engaged to accelerate the pace of the process. of learning. so vital to creating a true Caribbean feel throughout the region.
The Reparations Movement started by CARICOM governments almost a decade ago has in the past nine years raised levels of awareness and increased popular interest in Caribbean history, from slavery to independence, colonialism to republicanism and more about how , when and why enslaved Africans were brought to the Caribbean.
Much still needs to be done to dig deeper into the past to find our present and better see our future, but those still here who crawled and walked those longer miles that made our journeys shorter that are today, they should never be forgotten. .
Much still needs to be done to work with the families of those ancestors who have left reams of works of literature and art that need to be properly researched, documented and protected for future sharing, including veteran journalists from the era of pen and paper. will have left countless chronicles of history after putting down their pencils – and like Rickey Singh (who turns 86 on February 1, 2023) and countless others of his venerable ilk still with us, growing old swiftly gracefully.
The burning thirst for more information on Caribbean heroes will always grow and can be quenched – but not ended – by more true stories of who we are and where we come from.
Scientific and technological progress exists to accelerate the pace of regional education by clarifying, even as historical trends of traditional learning and intergenerational sharing of knowledge are increasingly drowned out by imported trends such as extremist advocacy and action for immediate change, the pursuit of external interpretations of concepts such as ‘political correctness’ and the adoption of foreign cultural norms, accentuated by artificial divisions between government agencies and civil society, deepened and widened by the eternal gap created by the growing distance between private sector objectives and the public one – and ever-increasing differences. in the speeds of justice and portions of wealth to and between the haves and the have-nots.
But with all of the above, this is not the end of the road, only the beginning of a new beginning, on another front, in the endless battle to always recognize and honor our heroes, past and present.
