Mary Seacole

Mary Jane Seacole (née Grant; 1805 – 14 May 1881) was a Jamaican woman of Scottish and African descent who set up a "British Hotel" behind the lines during the Crimean War. She described this as "a mess-table and comfortable quarters for sick and convalescent officers", and provided succour for wounded servicemen on the battlefield. She was posthumously awarded the Jamaican Order of Merit in 1991. In 2004 she was voted the greatest black Briton. She acquired knowledge of herbal medicine in the Caribbean. When the Crimean War broke out, she applied to the War Office to assist but was refused. She travelled independently and set up her hotel and assisted battlefield wounded. She became extremely popular among service personnel who raised money for her when she faced destitution after the war. After her death, she was forgotten for almost a century, but today is celebrated as a woman who successfully combatted racial prejudice. Her biography, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands (1857), is one of the earliest autobiographies of a mixed-race woman, although some aspects of its accuracy have been questioned. It has been claimed that Seacole's achievements have been exaggerated for political reasons. The erection of a statue of her at St Thomas' Hospital, London on 30 June 2016, describing her as a "pioneer nurse", has generated controversy. Further controversy broke out in the United Kingdom late in 2012 over reports of a proposal to remove her from the country's National Curriculum. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Seacole

Cedric Titus

'"Cedric "Sugar Boy" Titus emerged in the parish of Trelawny which was the centre of sugar-cane operations in Jamaica. It was a time when sugar was supreme and ruled by the plantocracy—a ruling class formed by the White owners of the sugar-cane industry. Sugar Boy brought fundamental change to the industry. Speaking truth to power, he secured a better deal for the Black cane farmers who grew sugar cane on their small plots.Sugar Boy was a giant who played a major role in breaking down mental slavery and building the new Jamaican nation in the early part of the 20th Century. The untimely death of this trailblazer in a bizarre traffic accident blighted the bright promise of even greater achievement for the country he loved. But, thanks to his family, his legacy is secure, captured for posterity in this book."' http://www.libroslatinos.com/cgi-bin/libros/154148.html

Tacky

'In 1760, some fifteen hundred enslaved black men and women— perhaps fewer but probably many more— took advantage of Britain’s Seven Year’s War against France and Spain, to stage a massive uprising in Jamaica, which began on April 7 in the windward parish of St. Mary’s and continued in the leeward parishes until October of the next year. Over the course of eighteen months the rebels killed as many as sixty whites and destroyed many thousands of pounds worth of property. During the suppression of the revolt over five hundred black men and women were killed in battle, executed, or committed suicide. Another 500 were transported from the island for life. Colonists valued the total cost to the island at nearly a quarter of a million pounds. “Whether we consider the extent and secrecy of its plan, the multitude of the conspirators, and the difficulty of opposing its eruptions in such a variety of places at once,” wrote planter-historian Edward Long in his 1774 History of Jamaica, this revolt was “more formidable than any hitherto known in the West Indies.”' http://revolt.axismaps.com/project.html