William Robinson Clarke

William Robinson Clarke was born in Kingston, Jamaica, on 4 October 1895. With the outbreak of war, ‘Robbie’ Clarke paid his own passage to Britain and joined the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) on 26 July 1915. At first, he served as an air mechanic, but on 18 October he was posted to France as a driver with an observation balloon company. Clarke wanted to fly, however, and in December 1916 he was accepted for pilot training in England. On 26 April 1917, Clarke won his ‘wings’ and was promoted to Sergeant. On 29 May 1917, Sergeant Clarke joined 4 Squadron RFC at Abeele in Belgium and began flying R.E.8 biplanes over the Western Front. While on a reconnaissance mission on the morning of 28 July, he and his observer, Second Lieutenant F.P. Blencowe, were attacked by enemy fighters. He described the action in a letter to his mother: “I was doing some photographs a few miles the other side when about five Hun scouts came down upon me, and before I could get away, I got a bullet through the spine. I managed to pilot the machine nearly back to the aerodrome, but had to put her down as I was too weak to fly any more … My observer escaped without any injury.” Robbie recovered from his wounds, and after the war returned to Jamaica to work in the building trade. He was an active veteran and became Life President of the Jamaican branch of the Royal Air Forces Association. William Robinson Clarke, the first Black pilot to fly for Britain, died in April 1981. https://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/research/online-exhibitions/pilots-of-the-caribbean/heroes-and-sheroes/pioneer-sergeant-william-robinson-clarke.aspx

William Beckford

'William Beckford (19 December 1709 – 21 June 1770) was a well-known political figure in 18th-century London, who twice held the office of Lord Mayor of London (1762 and 1769). His vast wealth came largely from his plantations in Jamaica and the large numbers of slaves working on these plantations. He was, and is, often referred to as "Alderman Beckford" to distinguish him from his son William Thomas Beckford, the author and art collector. Beckford was born in Jamaica the grandson of Colonel Peter Beckford. He was sent to England by his family in 1723 to be educated. He studied at Westminster School, and made his career in the City of London....As a rich patron, he used his 'interest' in favour of William Pitt the Elder, sponsoring and encouraging his political rise, supporting the Whig cause in general and the West Indies sugar industry (from which his fortune came)in particular.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Beckford_(politician)

Peter Beckford the Younger

'Peter Beckford (junior), (1672/3 – 1735), was the son of Peter Beckford, founder of one of the most powerful families in colonial Jamaica. Peter joined the Jamaican House of Assembly and became the Speaker. In 1710, during a debate at the Assembly, things became extremely heated and some members drew their swords and threatened Peter, the Speaker. The Governor responded to shouts for assistance and the doors of the chamber were forced open. The Assembly was dissolved in the name of the Queen. The aged Peter Beckford senior was amongst those who had come to his rescue. In the general confusion, he slipped and fell down the long staircase. Suffering a mortal injury, he died soon after. Like his father, Beckford suffered a severe temper. As a young man, he was accused of killing the Deputy Judge Advocate of Jamaica in a fit of temper. He was finally acquitted after a lengthy court case. In 1720, he was one of the prominent people in Jamaica about whom the governor Sir Nicholas Lawes complained had "anarchical principles". He went into business with Alexander Grant, leasing a storehouse from which the partners sold supplies to other plantation owners. Peter married Bathshua Herring and they had thirteen children. He died in 1735. His will included a legacy of £2,000 to found a school in Spanish Town, which was started there in 1744. This school merged with another school started with £3,000 donated by Francis Smith forming the Beckford and Smith School in 1869. His son, William was born in 1709. William emigrated to England and had a prominent career in politics, defending the West Indian interest as a Member of Parliament and Lord Mayor of London.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Beckford_(junior)

Morris Cargill

Morris Cargill CD (10 June 1914 – 8 April 2000, Kingston) was a Jamaican lawyer, businessman, planter, journalist and novelist. Educated at Munro College, a prestigious Jamaican secondary school, and the Stowe School in England, Cargill was articled as a solicitor in 1937. During World War II, he worked for the Crown Film Unit in Britain. After the war, he played a role in the development of the coffee liqueur Tia Maria. Returning to the Caribbean he worked as a newspaper editor in Trinidad, and, having acquired a banana plantation in Jamaica, began a career as a columnist for the Gleaner newspapers in 1953 which was to last, with some interruptions, until his death. Until the late 1970s, his articles appeared under the pseudonym "Thomas Wright". In 1958, he was elected to the parliament of the Federation of the West Indies, as a candidate of the Jamaica Labour Party, and served as deputy leader of the opposition in that legislature for the next four years. In 1964 he persuaded his friend Ian Fleming to write the introductory article for a guidebook to Jamaica called Ian Fleming introduces Jamaica. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, he collaborated with novelist John Hearne, under the pseudonym 'John Morris', on a series of three thrillers -- Fever Grass, The Candywine Development, and The Checkerboard Caper—about an imaginary Jamaican secret service. Cargill makes an appearance, in the surprising guise of a high court judge, at the end of Fleming's novel The Man with the Golden Gun. For two years in the late 1970s, he left Jamaica because of his opposition to the government of Michael Manley, returning in 1980 to join the campaign against Manley. During this period he lived in the United States and worked for the publisher Lyle Stuart, editing a study of the Third Reich in Germany called A Gallery of Nazis, and writing a memoir called Jamaica Farewell (an expanded version of which was reissued in 1995). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_Cargill

Peter Beckford the elder

'Colonel Peter Beckford (1643–1710) was acting Governor of Jamaica in 1702. Peter was the son of another Peter Beckford, of Maidenhead. Sir Thomas Beckford, Sheriff of London was his uncle as was Captain Richard Beckford, who was trading in Jamaica from 1659. Peter emigrated there in 1662, afterwards becoming President of the Jamaican Council and acting Governor in 1702. He arrived in Jamaica with two or three enslaved Africans shortly after it became an English colony and engaged himself as hunter and horse catcher. When he died suddenly in a fit of passion in 1710, he was the wealthiest planter in Jamaica, and it was claimed he was "in possession of the largest property real and personal of any subject in Europe." Having served as a seaman, he was granted a thousand acres (4 km²) of land in Clarendon by Royal Patent on 6 March 1669. He took an active part in island politics, representing St. Catherine in the Assembly in 1675, and was later called to the Council where he was appointed President. He was appointed Chief Justice of Jamaica in 1703. He was the first Custos of Kingston, and a street was named after him there. He was renowned for being haughty with a strong temper and was involved in many heated debates. He was twice married - to Bridget who died in 1691, and to Anne Ballard in 1696. He had two sons. Peter was the elder. The death of Peter senior resulted from an accident when he rushed to the defence of his son, who had caused such a commotion in the House of Assembly that swords were drawn.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Beckford https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Jago_High_School

Robert Love

'After 10 years in Haiti, Love moved to Jamaica in 1889. There he started the Jamaica Advocate, which became an influential newspaper on the island. Love used the paper as a forum to express his concern for the living conditions of Jamaica's black population. He was a staunch advocate of access to education for the majority of the population. He believed that girls, like boys, should receive secondary school education. In 1906, Love won the St. Andrew Parish seat in Jamaica's general elections. He also served as chairman of the St. Andrew Parochial Board, as well as a justice of the peace in Kingston, the Kingston General Commissions and as a Wolmer's trustee. Love published two works, Romanism is Not Christianity (1892), and St. Peter's True Position in the Church, Clearly Traced in the Bible (1897). In 1906 Love's health began to deteriorate, and by 1910 he had been forced to end his political career. He died on 21 November 1914, and was buried in the parish church yard at Half Way Tree, near the city of Kingston. Love's activism in favour of Jamaica's economically depressed black majority influenced later Jamaican and Caribbean activists, including Marcus Garvey.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Robert_Love

Vivian Virtue

'Virtue was born in Kingston, Jamaica, was educated there and was employed by the Jamaican Department of Public Works. On his retirement from the civil service in 1960, he moved to London. He served as the assistant secretary, librarian and later vice-president of the Poetry League of Jamaica. He was a founding member and vice-president of the Jamaican Center of PEN International. He was also a member of the British Royal Society of Literature and a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Virtue translated poetry by José-Maria de Heredia from French into English as well as poems in Spanish by other Caribbean and Latin American poets. He received the Silver Musgrave Medal from the Institute of Jamaica in 1960. On the occasion of the Commonwealth Arts Festival in 1965, he was commissioned to write a poem in honour of Marcus Garvey. His work appeared in various journals, anthologies and the collection Wings of the Morning (1938). He frequently appeared on the BBC's Caribbean Voices radio programme. Virtue died in London in 1998 at the age of 87 after an extended illness from heart disease and bronchopneumonia.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivian_Virtue

William Anglin Scarlett

'Sir William Anglin Scarlett (1777-1831) was Chief Justice of Jamaica. Scarlett was the son of Robert Scarlett who owned property in Jamaica. His elder brother, James, was to become Attorney General. He was educated in Edinburgh and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1802. In 1809, Scarlett married Mary Williams of Luana estate in St. Elizabeth. Scarlett became Chief Justice of Jamaica in 1821. In 1823, Scarlett successfully descended a man against a charge of libel brought by the Duke of Manchester, the Governor of Jamaica. Scarlett was successful, but even as a Chief Justice, was abused as he left. He was involved again in another case where he opposed the governor. Scarlett released prisoners but they were rearrested and exiled from Jamaica. Scarlett's decision was in time upheld by the British Parliament. The case began when Louis Celeste Lecesne and John Escoffery were arrested on 7 October 1823 under the Alien Act by a warrant of the Duke of Manchester, the Governor of Jamaica. They were considered by the Attorney General, William Burge to be of a dangerous character and to be aliens as they were clained to be Haitians. Luckily they had time to raise a writ of Habeas Corpus in the Supreme Court of Jamaica. Scarlett released them, but it took Parliament to uphold his decision. Scarlett was knighted in 1829. Scarlett died in 1831. His obituary noted that he had been ill and that even his detractors noted his "love of justice". His wife died the following year.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Anglin_Scarlett

Tony McNeill

'Roy Anthony "Tony" McNeill (1941–1996) was a Jamaican poet, considered one of the most promising West Indian writers of his generation, whose career was cut short by his early death. McNeill was born in Kingston, Jamaica and educated at Excelsior School and St. George's College (where he was already known to his friends as a poet) before leaving to study in the United States. He studied creative writing at Johns Hopkins University and the University of Massachusetts Amherst, from which he graduated with a PhD. He returned to Jamaica in 1975, where he worked as a journalist and assistant editor of the Jamaica Journal (1975–81), as well as in a variety of other jobs, including civil servant, encyclopedia salesman, and janitor. While a student in the US, McNeill began writing seriously. His first major collection of poems, Reel from "The Life Movie", appeared in 1972 and immediately established his reputation in Jamaica alongside his contemporaries Dennis Scott and Mervyn Morris. This was followed by Credences at the Altar of Cloud (1979) and Chinese Lanterns from the Blue Child, published posthumously in 1998. Other significant work remains unpublished. McNeill was known for his experimental style, influenced by contemporary jazz as well as American poets like Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and E. E. Cummings. He once said, of his first collection, "I don't think I could write if my first concern wasn't for the aesthetic." He also claimed that his greatest ambition was to be a jazz pianist. He was recognised by his peers as a prodigious talent, but McNeill was plagued by alcoholism and drug abuse. In one of his later poems he wrote, "I realised very early I had no gift for conducting a life. So I shifted my focus and sang a wreath." He died while undergoing surgery at the University Hospital of the West Indies on 2 January 1996. In an obituary essay, poet and literary scholar Mervyn Morris wrote: "We have lost one of the finest of our West Indian poets, an extreme talent, recklessly experimental, awesome in commitment to his gift."' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_McNeill

Edward Long

'Edward Long (23 August 1734 – 13 March 1813) was a British colonial administrator and historian, and author of a highly controversial work, The History of Jamaica (1774). Long was the fourth son of Samuel Long (1700–1757) of Longville, Jamaica, son of Charles Long MP, and his wife Mary Tate, born 23 August 1734 at St. Blazey, in Cornwall. His great-grandfather, Samuel Long, had arrived on the island in 1655 as a lieutenant in the English army of conquest, and the family established itself as part of the island's governing planter elite. His sister, Catherine Maria Long, married Sir Henry Moore, 1st Baronet (Governor of Jamaica), and Long, in Jamaica from 1757, became his private secretary. In 1752 Long became a law student at Gray's Inn, and from 1757 until 1769 he was resident in Jamaica. During this period he explored inside the Riverhead Cave, the Runaway Bay Caves and the Green Grotto. He was judge in the local vice admiralty court, and briefly Speaker of the Assembly, elected 13 September 1768. Long was an influential and wealthy member of British society, as well as an established Jamaican planter and slave owner. He moved permanently to England, in 1769, for health reasons. Long died in 1813. He was a polygenist who claimed that the White race was a different species to the Black race. Long's History of Jamaica, first published in 1774 in three volumes but again in the 1970s, was his well-known work. This book gives a political, social, and economic account with a survey of the island, parish by parish from 1665 to 1774. It is comprehensive book, yet it contains some of the most virulent and rather best description of Jamaicans and Africans in general. The book contains a racist description of American black slaves during the Age of Enlightenment. In a similar fashion to his contemporaries, Long's description of race discussed it as a 'natural state' compared to the Romantic period. Long, in his rather shocking descriptions argues that American 'Negroes' were characterised by the same "bestial manners, stupidity and vices which debase their brethren" in Africa. He maintained that 'this race of people' is distinguishable from the rest of mankind in that they embody "every species of inherent turpitude" and imperfection that can be found dispersed among all other races of men. Unlike the most "abandoned villain" to be found in civilisation, argues Long these peoples have no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Such racist views were widespread among European writers at the time, some of whom used to write detailed descriptions of Africans and Africa based only on accounts of missionaries and Plantation owners. Long echoes Hume and Kant in his deeply racist descriptions of Africans and finds it astonishing that despite being subject to colonisation for a long time, the 'Negroes' have failed to demonstrate any appreciation for the arts or any inventive ability. He observes that throughout the entirety of Africa, there are few natives who "comprehend anything of mechanic arts or manufacture", and those who do, perform their work in the manner of some under-evolved ape. This is due to them being "void of genius". The book also contains descriptions of interracial marriage.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Long

Vere Johns

'Johns was born in Mandeville in 1893, and after working for the Post Office, served in the South Lancashire Regiment in World War I before finding success as a newspaper columnist in the United States in the 1920s. While in the US he divorced his first wife and married his second, actress Lillian May, known as "Lady Luck". He began running talent contests while in the US, and continued on his return to Jamaica in 1939. In the late 1940s he began a long-running "Vere Johns Says" column in the Jamaica Star newspaper, often on the topic of music. He made a major contribution to Jamaican music with his "Vere John's Opportunity Knocks Talent Show" on RJR Radio, which helped to launch the careers of several major recording artists including Lloyd Charmers, Hortense Ellis, John Holt, Bob Andy, Desmond Dekker, The Wailers, Alton Ellis, Jackie Edwards, Dobby Dobson, Boris Gardiner, Laurel Aitken, and Millie Small. His talent contests began as theatre shows held in downtown Kingston venues such as The Majestic, Palace and Ambassador theatres, with the winners judged by audience reaction, and going on to appear on his radio shows. Producers such as Clement "Coxsone" Dodd and Arthur "Duke" Reid scouted for talent at the shows, taking singers to record at Stanley Motta's studio to cut records to be played on their sound systems. Lloyd Bradley, in his book This is Reggae Music, described Johns as "the most influential man in Jamaican music in the second half of the 1950s", a period in which indigenous Jamaican styles were coming to the fore. Johns, despite his antipathy towards Jamaica's Rastafarians, also provided exposure for Count Ossie's group of drummers after singer Marguerita Mahfood refused to appear on his show unless she was backed by Ossie's Mystic Revelation group; The group proved popular with the audience and went on to perform regularly in Kingston. Johns also worked as an actor, performing in Shakespeare plays and solo recitations, and taught acting. Vere Johns died in September 1966.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vere_Johns

Jacob de Cordova

"Jacob Raphael de Cordova, Texas land agent and colonizer, was born in Spanish Town (near Kingston), Jamaica, on 6 June 1808, the youngest of three sons of Judith and Raphael de Cordova, British Jews of Spanish descent. Since his mother died at his birth, he was raised by an aunt in England. He was well educated and became proficient in English, French, Spanish, German and Hebrew. In 1834 Jacob moved back to Kingston, where he and his brother Joshua started a newspaper, the Kingston Daily Gleaner, which is still published today. In early 1836 Jacob went to New Orleans, where he shipped cargoes of staples to Texas during its struggle for independence. At this time he served a term as Grand Master of the Odd Fellows. After the Battle of San Jacinto he visited the Republic of Texas to install members in the Odd Fellows lodges, the first established outside the United States." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_De_Cordova

Lloyd Reckord

'Lloyd Malcolm Reckord was born in Kingston, Jamaica, on 26 May 1929. He began his theatrical career with the Little Theatre Movement (LTM) pantomime at Ward Theatre. As reported by Michael Reckord in the Jamaica Gleaner, "Reckord's first big role was as Tobias in a production of Tobias and the Angel at the Garrison Theatre, Up Park Camp, when he was in his late teens. Fired from his job at his uncle's hardware store because he insisted that he had to leave early to play his role in the LTM pantomime, Alice In Wonderland, Lloyd left Jamaica in 1951 when he was 21 to join his brother Barry, also a playwright and actor, in England." He auditioned and was accepted as a student at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, subsequently joining the Old Vic Company in London. He would also study theatre in the US, years later, at Howard University, Yale University and the American Theatre Wing. Reckord appeared in the Ted Willis play Hot Summer Night at the New Theatre, St Martin's Lane, London in 1958, with Andrée Melly as his white girlfriend; a later Armchair Theatre adaptation the following year concentrated on the couple's relationship. Reckord participated in the earliest known example of an interracial kiss on television, in You in Your Small Corner. a Granada Play of the Week broadcast in June 1962, in which he kissed actor Elizabeth MacLennan. This claim had earlier been made for Emergency – Ward 10, which post-dates Reckord and MacLennan's kiss. The play was written by Reckord's brother Barry, and directed by Claude Whatham. Reckord also acted in several television series, including four episodes of Danger Man (1960–61, 1964–65) and The Human Jungle ("Enemy Outside", 1964), but feeling typecast as an actor, he wanted to move into direction. With only limited funds, including a grant from the BFI, he made two non-commercial film shorts Ten Bob in Winter (1963, featuring Winston Stona, Bari Johnson, Peter Madden and Andrew Salkey, with a jazz soundtrack by Joe Harriott) and Dream A40 (1965). Reckord later returned to Jamaica, where he worked as a stage director, with rare screen appearances, as in The Lunatic (1991) and Third World Cop (1999). In 2011 his work featured in the Black London's Film Heritage Project, with the compilation Big City Stories including Reckord's 1963 film Ten Bob in Winter, as well an excerpt from the television play by his brother entitled You in Your Small Corner, in which Lloyd Reckord played the lead male character. His short film Dream A40 was shown at the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival (LLGFF) at the British Film Institute. Reckord died in Jamaica on 8 July 2015 after a short illness, aged 86, and his life was celebrated at a thanksgiving service on 29 July.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd_Reckord

Barry Reckord

'He was born Barrington John Reckord in Kingston, Jamaica, where he grew up in Vineyard Town with his three siblings: two brothers, Carol and Lloyd, and a sister Cynthia. He attended Kingston College and after matriculation went on to study theology at St Peter's College in 1948. He left the island in 1950 after winning an Issa Scholarship to Cambridge University, where he read for a degree at Emmanuel College, graduating in 1953. He began writing plays as a student and several of them were performed at London's Royal Court Theatre (he is claimed as the first Black Briton to have had a play on there), sometimes directed by his brother Lloyd Reckord. Della, Reckord's first play, which (as Adella) had been staged by his brother in a small fringe production in 1954, was produced under the title Flesh to a Tiger at the Royal Court in 1958, directed by Tony Richardson, with a cast that featured Cleo Laine, Pearl Prescod, Nadia Cattouse, Johnny Sekka and Lloyd Reckord, and choreography by Boscoe Holder. The play dealt with the attempts by a cult leader to enforce his wishes on a female member of his congregation. In 1961 the Royal Court also produced You in Your Small Corner, which transferred to the New Arts Theatre and was subsequently adapted for ITV's Play of the Week series in an episode that aired on 5 June 1962, directed by Claude Whatham. This broadcast is now thought to contain the first interracial kiss on television between Lloyd Reckord, the playwright's brother, and Elizabeth MacLennan. Reckord's most successful play Skyvers, first produced in 1963 at the Royal Court (directed by Ann Jellicoe, with an all-white cast that included David Hemmings), is considered by Guardian critic Michael Billington "one of the key plays of the 1960s", prefiguring Edward Bond's 1965 Saved. Skyvers, which deals with the alienation of a group of working-class south London boys in the last few days at their comprehensive school, was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in November 2012 as part of a series of plays curated by Kwame Kwei-Armah, after lobbying to ensure better recognition for black dramatists. Reckord wrote other television dramas, including for the BBC In the Beautiful Caribbean (1972) and Club Havana (1975), as well as a book about Cuba entitled Does Fidel Eat More Than Your Father (Praeger, 1971). In 1973 he received a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship to Assist Research and Artistic Creation. Also in 1973, Reckord was awarded the Silver Musgrave Medal by the Institute of Jamaica. After living most of his adult life in Britain, mostly with his companion Diana Athill, in the last few years of his life he returned to Jamaica, where he died in December 2011, aged 85.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Reckord

Philip Sherlock

'Among his many experiments, Sir Philip describes as "the biggest course in education" he ever took was his tenure as Education Officer with the Jamaica Welfare Limited. This was a philanthropic organization he joined in 1945 on the invitation of National Hero, Norman Manley where he was able to work at the grassroots to develop leadership in the community. His crowning achievement came in 1964 when he succeeded Sir Arthur Lewis as the Vice-Chancellor of the University of the West Indies, having previously served as Pro Vice-Chancellor. Under his brilliant leadership, the UWI grew in importance and prestige, and stands today as his lasting monument. In this capacity, Sir Philip had also brought with him several years of service to an institution that he had served since the time of its inception in 1948. He had been the first Director of Extra Mural Studies, Vice Principal and Acting Principal of the University College of the West Indies as it was called prior to 1962. He was the founding principal of the new campus at St. Augustine, Trinidad, and undertook the establishment of the Faculty of Engineering as well as transformed and incorporated the Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture into that Campus.' http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/culture/sherlock.htm

Prince Buster

"Cecil Bustamente Campbell OD (24 May 1938 – 8 September 2016), known professionally as Prince Buster, was a Jamaican singer-songwriter and producer. The records he released in the 1960s influenced and shaped the course of Jamaican contemporary music and created a legacy of work that would be drawn upon later by reggae and ska artists." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Buster

Louis Marriott

'Louis Marriott (22 May 1935-1 August 2016) was a Jamaican actor, director, writer, broadcaster, the executive officer of the Michael Manley Foundation, and member of the Performing Right Society, Jamaica Federation of Musicians, and founding member of the Jamaica Association of Dramatic Artists. Marriott was born on the Old Pound Road, Saint Andrew, Jamaica, the son of Egbert Marriott and Edna Irene Thompson-Marriott. He was educated at Jamaica College. He died in Kingston at age 81 on 1 August 2016.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Marriott

Christopher Gonzalez

'González was born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1943. He had a Puerto Rican father and Jamaican mother. González graduated from the Jamaica School of Art (The Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts) in 1963 where he majored in sculpture. He later became a faculty member at the school. González earned his Master's degree in Fine Arts from the California College of Arts and Crafts. He taught at schools and institutions in Jamaica, California, and Atlanta, Georgia, during his career. He was influenced by Edna Manley and Pablo Picasso. He lived and worked within the Saint Ann Parish area with his wife and family. González is, perhaps, best known for a 9-foot-tall (2.7 m) statue of Bob Marley, which is currently on display at a museum in Ocho Rios, Jamaica. The abstract stautue depicts Marley with a tree trunk for a lower body and a distorted face. The sculpture was pelted with fruit and rocks by angry Marley fans when it was unveiled in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1983 on the second anniversary of his death. González was also well known for creating two bronze reliefs that commemorate Jamaican independence from Great Britain. He also worked on the tomb of the former Prime Minister of Jamaica, Norman Washington Manley. Within Jamaica, examples of González's work is displayed at the Jamaica National Heroes' Memorial, the National Gallery of Jamaica, the residence of the Prime Minister and the Bank of Jamaica. He also held both group and solo art shows in Jamaica, the United States, Denmark, Cuba, Canada and Mexico. Christopher González died of cancer on 2 August 2008, in Cornwall Regional Hospital in Montego Bay, Jamaica, at the age of 65. He was survived by his wife, Champayne Clarke-Gonzalez, and six children Chinyere, Odiaka, Asha, Christina, Abenah, and Nailah Gonzalez.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Gonz%C3%A1lez

Madge Sinclair

'Following Roots, she starred in the 1978 film Convoy as the Widow Woman, and she played Leona Hamiltons in Cornbread, Earl and Me. Sinclair received an Emmy Award nomination for her role as Belle in the miniseries Roots. Also in 1978 she co-starred in the short-lived sitcom Grandpa Goes to Washington. Sinclair went on to a long-running stint in the 1980s as nurse Ernestine Shoop on the series Trapper John, M.D. opposite Pernell Roberts. She received three Emmy nominations for her work on the show, and critic Donald Bogle praised her for "maintaining her composure and assurance no matter what the script imposed on her". In 1988, Sinclair played Queen Aoleon alongside James Earl Jones' King Jaffe Joffer in the Eddie Murphy comedy Coming to America, which reunited her on screen with her Roots husband and co-star John Amos. Later, both Sinclair and Jones would reunite as Queen and King for the roles of Sarabi, Simba’s mother, and Mufasa, Simba’s father, in the blockbuster Disney animated film The Lion King (1994), respectively. The film became one of the best-selling titles ever on home video. It would also be her last film role. The two also collaborated on the series Gabriel's Fire, which earned Sinclair an Emmy in 1991 for Best Supporting Actress in a Dramatic Series, famously beating out the expected winner, L.A. Law's Diana Muldaur. Sinclair played the role of Lally in the 1991 Channel 4 television miniseries The Orchid House (based on Phyllis Shand Allfrey's novel of the same name), directed by Horace Ové, and also received critical praise for her supporting role in the 1992 television movie Jonathan: The Boy Nobody Wanted with JoBeth Williams. In 1993 Sinclair came to London to appear on stage at the Cochrane Theatre in The Lion, by Michael Abbensetts, directed by Horace Ové for the Talawa Theatre Company. In 1994, she played a supporting role in the short-lived ABC-TV sitcom Me and the Boys, which starred Steve Harvey. Sinclair, in her brief role as the captain of the USS Saratoga in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, is commonly cited as the first female Starfleet starship captain to appear in Star Trek. (Joanne Linville had appeared as a Romulan commander 18 years earlier.) Years later, Sinclair played Geordi La Forge's mother, captain of the USS Hera, in Star Trek: The Next Generation's "Interface". Her final acting role was on the sitcom Dream On just one month later before her death.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madge_Sinclair

Karl Marx on the Morant Bay Rebellion....

"The Jamaican business is typical of the utter turpitude of the ‘true Englishman’. These fellows are as bad as the Russians in every respect. But, says the good old Times, these damned rogues enjoyed ‘all the liberties of an Anglo-Saxon Constitution’. I.e. they enjoyed the liberty, amongst others, of having their hides taxed to raise money for the planters to import c*****s and thus depress their own labour market below the minimum. And these English curs with their sensibilities sent up an outcry about ‘beast Butler’ for hanging one man! and refusing to allow the former planters’ diamond-spangled yellow womenfolk to spit in the faces of the Federal soldiers! The Irish affair and the Jamaica butcheries were all that was needed after the American war to complete the unmasking of English hypocrisy!" Marx to Engels, 20 November 1865

Karl Parboosingh

'Karl Parboosingh was born in Highgate, St. Mary to Mr and Mrs Vivian Coy in 1923. He went to high school in Kingston, attending both the Calabar High School and the Wolmer’s School for Boys. In 1942, he left Jamaica to attend the Art Students League in New York. From there, he travelled worldwide, initially as a soldier in the US army during World War II in 1945, then to other international art centres to work and study, namely Rome and Paris (years later he was to name his son after the city). In 1952, he studied in Mexico, under the tutelage of Spanish painter, Jose Guttierez and Mexican muralist, David Alfaro Siquieros – the influence of socialist ideology is evident in some of his major works. Karl met and married his second wife Seya Parboosingh in New York, 1957 and credited himself as being instrumental to her, a creative writer, becoming a painter as well. They settled in Jamaica in 1958. Aside from his canvas works, he is additionally credited with the creation of several murals commissioned by the government and other entities – the social potential of public murals was being explored in Jamaica in the late 1950s and 60s. Such examples can be seen at the Norman Manley Law School at the University of the West Indies Mona Campus, the Church of the Resurrection in Duhaney Park and the Olympia International Art Centre in Papine where he was chosen as the centre’s first artist in residence. There he continued to live and worked until he took ill and died on May 18, 1975.' https://nationalgalleryofjamaica.wordpress.com/2010/10/03/jamaicas-art-pioneers-karl-parboosingh-1923-1975/

Peter Abrahams

'Abrahams' father was from Ethiopia and his mother was Coloured. He was born in Vrededorp, a suburb of Johannesburg, but left South Africa in 1939. He worked first as a sailor, and then as a journalist in London. Hoping to make his way as a writer, he faced considerable challenges as a South African, as Carol Polsgrove has shown in her history, Ending British Rule: Writers in a Common Cause (2009). Despite a manuscript reader's recommendation against publication, in 1942 Allen & Unwin brought out his Dark Testament, made up mostly of pieces he had carried with him from South Africa. Publisher Dorothy Crisp published his novels Song of the City (1945) and Mine Boy (1946). According to Nigerian scholar Kolawole Ogungbesan, Mine Boy became "the first African novel written in English to attract international attention." More books followed with publication in Britain and the United States: two novels —The Path of Thunder (1948) and Wild Conquest (1950); a journalistic account of a return journey to Africa, Return to Goli (1953); and a memoir, Tell Freedom (1954). While working in London, Abrahams lived with his wife Daphne in Loughton. He met several important black leaders and writers, including George Padmore, a leading figure in the Pan-African community there, Kwame Nkrumah of the Gold Coast and Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, both later heads of state of their respective nations. In 1956, Abrahams published a roman à clef about the political community of which he had been a part in London: A Wreath for Udomo. His main character, Michael Udomo, who returns from London to his African country to preside over its transformation into an independent, industrial nation, appeared to be modeled chiefly on Nkrumah with a hint of Kenyatta. Other identifiable fictionalized figures included George Padmore. The novel concluded with Udomo's murder. Published the year before Nkrumah took the reins of independent Ghana, A Wreath for Udomo was not an optimistic forecast of Africa's future. Abrahams settled in Jamaica in 1956. In 1994 he was awarded the Musgrave Gold Medal for his writing and journalism by the Institute of Jamaica. One of South Africa's most prominent writers, his work deals with political and social issues, especially with racism. His novel Mine Boy (1946), one of the first works to bring him to critical attention, and his memoir Tell Freedom (1954) deal in part with apartheid. His other works include the story collection Dark Testament (1942) and the novels The Path of Thunder (1948), A Wreath for Udomo (1956), A Night of Their Own (1965), the Jamaica-set This Island Now (1966, the only one of his novels not set in Africa) and The View from Coyaba (1985). He also wrote This Island Now, which speaks to the ways power and money can change most people's perspectives.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Abrahams

Nicholas Lawes

'He was Chief Justice of Jamaica from 1698 to 1703 and Governor from 1718 to 1722. In his capacity as Governor during the Golden Age of Piracy he tried many pirates, among them "Calico Jack" Rackham, Anne Bonny, Mary Read, Robert Deal, & Charles Vane. He signed an arrangement with Jeremy, king of the Miskito, to bring some of his followers over to Jamaica to hunt down runaway slaves in 1720. Lawes married five widows in succession. No children survived from the first three marriages. James and Temple Lawes were the sons of his fourth wife Susannah Temple whom he married in 1698. She had previously been married to Samuel Bernard. Her father, Thomas Temple, is said to have given Lawes his Temple Hall, Jamaica estate as a dowry. Lawes later married Elizabeth Lawley (1690-1725). Their youngest surviving daughter, Judith Maria Lawes, married Simon Luttrell, 1st Earl of Carhampton and so became both wife and mother of the Earls of Carhampton. At Temple Hall Lawes experimented with a variety of crops and introduced the very lucrative coffee growing into the island in 1721 according to some sources or 1728 according to others. He is also credited with setting up the first printing press in Jamaica. He died 18 June 1731 in Jamaica.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Lawes

Louis Lecesne

'Louis Celeste Lecesne (c. 1796 or 1798 – 22 November 1847), also known as Lewis Celeste Lecesne, was an anti-slavery activist from the Caribbean islands. Lecesne was on a committee to improve the rights of free men of colour. He was arrested twice, and transported for life from Jamaica with John Escoffery. Their case was taken up by Dr. Stephen Lushington. Lecesne was compensated after successfully having the case reversed by the British government. Lecesne became an activist against slavery and attended the world's first anti-slavery convention. He named his son after the British Member of Parliament who had fought for his case. Lecesne was a supporter when the 1839 Anti-Slavery Society was formed.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Celeste_Lecesne

Namba Roy

'Born in Accompong Jamaica, Namba Roy settled in South London after World War Two where he established himself as both a writer and artist. Despite migration, Namba Roy was always conscious of his Caribbean-African heritage especially the tradition of rebellion and courage that was a part of the runaway slaves, maroon history and settlement in his home town, Accompong. His novels Black Albino and No Black Sparrows written in the 1950s recreate this history and are a testament to black culture. The Jamaica Maroons were among the earliest of the black men in the West Indies to achieve and hold their freedom from slavery. They established themselves in remote communities in the mountains. Namba Roy was a Maroon descendant. His novel Black Albino is set in a Maroon community in the Jamaican hills in the eighteenth century. This historical novel imaginatively reconstructs the Jamaican Maroon world. The early Maroons had fresh memories of Africa and Africa appears in the novel in the Maroons' organizational life and language. In the same way, Roy’s paintings and sculpture are suggestive of African themes and a proud past. Many of his images suggest the princely heritage of ancient Africa and whether mythical or otherwise, they serve to uplift the race. Although Namba Roy was self-taught, he was well read with a keen interest in developing his own talents as a painter and sculptor. In this way, he documented his technical understanding of his work, in his book Ivory as the Medium in 'Studio (1958) as well as formulating his own material for sculpting (or moulding) images involving a mixture of plastic resin and wood chippings. His proficiency in this medium is evidenced in works such Accompong Madonna (1958) currently on show in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Jamaica. He is best known, however for his ivories such as Spirit of the Black Stallion (c. 1952) and Jesus and his Mammy (1956), delicately hewn forms that also pay homage to Africa.' http://petrinearcher.com/namba-roy-1910-1961

Francis Barber

'Francis Barber (c. 1742/3 – 13 January 1801), born Quashey, was the Jamaican manservant of Samuel Johnson in London from 1752 until Johnson's death. Johnson made him his residual heir, with £70 a year to be given him by Trustees, expressing the wish that he move from London to Lichfield, in Staffordshire, Johnson's native city. After Johnson's death, Barber did this, opening a draper's shop and marrying a local woman. Barber was also bequeathed Johnson's books and papers, and a gold watch. In later years he had acted as Johnson's assistant in revising his famous Dictionary of the English Language and other works. Barber was also an important source for Boswell concerning Johnson's life in the years before Boswell himself knew Johnson.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Barber

Cicely Williams

'Cicely Delphin Williams (2 December 1893 – 13 July 1992) was a Jamaican physician, most notable for her discovery and research into kwashiorkor, a condition of advanced malnutrition, and her campaign against the use of sweetened condensed milk and other artificial baby milks as substitutes for human breast milk. One of the first female graduates of Oxford University, Dr Williams was instrumental in advancing the field of maternal and child health in developing nations, and in 1948 became the first director of Mother and Child Health (MCH) at the newly created World Health Organization (WHO). She once remarked that "if you learn your nutrition from a biochemist, you're not likely to learn how essential it is to blow a baby's nose before expecting him to suck."' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicely_Williams

Dennis Scott

'Scott was one of the most significant poets writing in the early post-independence period in Jamaica, and his first published collection, Uncle Time (1973), for which he won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, is marked by an effective literary use of the vernacular, or "nation language". He has been regarded as one of the main influences for modern Jamaican poetry. His other poetry collections are Dreadwalk: Poems 1970–78 (1982), Strategies (1989) and After-Image (2008). His plays include Terminus (1966), Dog, and An Echo in the Bone (1974); the latter was published, together with a play by Derek Walcott and one by Errol Hill, in Plays for Today (1985), edited by Hill. Scott's dramatic work is acknowledged as a major influence on the direction of Caribbean theatre. Who lives in a pineapple by Dennis Scott.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Scott_(writer)

Byron Lee

'Lee was born in Christiana, Manchester Parish, Jamaica, to an Afro-Jamaican mother and a Chinese father (a language teacher) originally from Kowloon, Hong Kong. His mother was from Auchtembeddie, where mento and junkanoo were popular musical forms, and his family actively upheld the cultural and musical traditions of their African ancestors. The family moved to the Mountain View Gardens area of Kingston when Lee was around 8 or 9 years old. He learned to play piano at a convent school in Mandeville, but put music on hold when he became a member of the Jamaican national football team. He taught himself to play bass on a homemade instrument, and around 1950, along with his friend Carl Brady, he formed the first incarnation of the Dragonaires, named after the college football team that they played for, at that time concentrating on mento. The band turned professional in 1956 and went on to become one of Jamaica's leading ska bands, continuing since and taking in other genres such as calypso, Soca, and Mas. According to Michael E. Veal in his book Dub: soundscapes and shattered songs in Jamaican reggae, Wesleyan University Press, 2007), Byron Lee is known to have introduced the electric bass guitar to Jamaica in late 1959 or 1960. However, the reason Lee began to use the electric bass as opposed to the double bass had nothing to do with sound. Rather, it was a way for Lee to avoid carrying the large and heavy double bass to the truck to move from gig to gig. The bass guitar soon gained popularity throughout the country and soon became the standard. The electric bass's louder, clearer, and more in-your-face sound soon changed the entire sound of Jamaican music entirely, especially after Skatalites bassist Lloyd Brevett took a liking to it. Lee also worked as a producer, producing many of the ska singles by The Maytals, and his entrepreneurial skills led to him setting up the Byron Lee's Spectacular Show tour, which involved several Jamaican acts (including The Maytals) touring the Caribbean. He also became the head of distribution in Jamaica for Atlantic Records. Lee purchased the West Indies Records Limited (WIRL) recording studios from Edward Seaga after fire had destroyed the pressing plant on the same site, and renamed it Dynamic Sounds, soon having a new pressing facility built on the site. It soon became one of the best-equipped studios in the Caribbean, attracting both local and international recording artists, including Paul Simon and The Rolling Stones, who recorded their famous song "Angie" there. Lee's productions included Boris Gardiner's Reggae Happening, Hopeton Lewis's Grooving Out on Life, and The Slickers' "Johnny Too Bad". Dynamic also acts as one of Jamaica's leading record distributors. In 1990, Lee inaugurated what became an annual event, the Byron Lee Jamaica Carnival, held on Constant Spring Road, and attended by hundreds of thousands of people that united the "uptown" and "downtown" residents of Kingston, an event that Lee called "the happiest moment in my life". Lee had performed with the Dragonaires at carnivals around the Caribbean since the mid-1970s, and chose the location for the carnival to attract revellers from all of Jamaica's classes, stating: "The biggest problem was that most Jamaicans said it wouldn't work, that it isn't a carnival country, but I persisted 'cause I believed in it. I wanted carnival to go to the public. You always had other carnivals that were held mostly indoor, where persons had to pay to get in. I went to the people and choose Half-Way Tree where uptown and downtown meet. That is where the route will remain". While in the early days of ska, Lee was credited in taking it from the ghettos and giving it appeal among Jamaica's "uptown" middle- and upper-classes. He has also been credited with taking soca in the opposite direction, popularising a genre that had previously only been enjoyed in Jamaica among the upper classes, with the island's working class.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byron_Lee

Perry Henzell

'Henzell, whose ancestors included Huguenot glassblowers and an old English family who had made their fortune growing sugar on Antigua, grew up on the Caymanas sugar cane estate near Kingston. He was sent to Shrewsbury School in the United Kingdom at 14 and later attended McGill University in Montreal in 1953 and 1954. He then dropped out of this school, choosing instead to hitchhike around Europe. He eventually got work as a stagehand at the BBC. He returned in the 1950s to Jamaica, where he directed advertisements for some years until he began work on The Harder They Come with co-writer Trevor D. Rhone. In 1965 he married Sally Densham. Henzell also shot some footage for what was planned as his next film, No Place Like Home, in Harder's aftermath, but he went broke before he could finish the film. Fed up by this, and the lack of finance for further production, he went on to become a writer, publishing his first novel, Power Game, in 1982. Both were meant to complete a planned trilogy of films centring on Ivanhoe Martin. The footage for No Place Like Home was lost. Years later, he came across editing tapes in a lab in New York. Just to have a sense of completion, he worked on the project. When he showed it to a few friends, their response was enthusiastic. He eventually was able to retrieve the original footage. No Place Like Home was screened for the public at the 31st annual Toronto International Film Festival in September 2006 at the Cumberland Theatre; it was sold out. Film leads Carl Bradshaw (The Harder They Come, Smile Orange, Countryman) and Susan O'Meara attended and answered audience questions with Henzell after the screening. The film was scheduled to be screened at the Flashpoint Film Festival at the beginning of December 2006 in Negril. Henzell died of cancer on 30 November 2006, aged 70, and is survived by his widow Sally and three children: Justine, Toni-Ann and Jason.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_Henzell

V.S. Reid

'Victor Stafford Reid (1 May 1913 - 25 August 1987) was a Jamaican writer born in Kingston, Jamaica, who wrote with an intent of influencing the younger generations. He was awarded the silver (1950) and gold (1976) Musgrave Medals , the Order of Jamaica (1980) and the Norman Manley Award for Excellence in Literature in 1981. He was the author of several novels, three of which were aimed towards children, one play production, and several short stories. Two of his most notable works are New Day - "the first West Indian novel to be written throughout in a dialect form" - and The Leopard. As a writer, Reid aimed to instil an awareness of legacy and tradition among the Jamaican people. His writings reflected many of the social and cultural hardships that pervade the time periods illustrated in his literary works. As literary critic Edward Baugh has stated, "[Reid’s] writing shows a fondness for the rebel with a cause… he wanted people to learn about their heritage through his writing." Reid was one of a handful of writers to emerge from the new literary and nationalist movement that seized Jamaican sentiment in the period of the late 1930s. From this "new art" surfaced many of Reid’s literary contemporaries, including Roger Mais, George Campbell, M. G. Smith, and H. D. Carberry. A common objective among this new generation of writers was an inclination to "break away from Victorianism and to associate with the Jamaican independence movement." Reid’s emphasis on resistance and struggle is reaffirmed in a 1978 lecture he delivered at the Institute of Jamaica on the topic of cultural revolution in Jamaica post-1938. In the address, Reid contended that the collective discontent of the working class majority was the public assertion of a "new brand of loyalty" that situated itself not only beyond, but more importantly, in direct resistance to imperial rule.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Stafford_Reid

Trevor Rhone

'Trevor Rhone, was the last child of twenty-one, grew up in a tiny town of Bellas Gate in Jamaica. After seeing his first play at the age of nine he fell in love with theatre. Educated at Beckford & Smith High School now known as the St. Jago High School, , He began his theatre career as a teacher after a three-year stint at Rose Bruford College, an English drama school, where he studied in the early 1960s on scholarship. He was part of the renaissance of Jamaican theatre in the early 1970s. Rhone participated in a group called Theatre '77, which established The Barn, a small theatre in Kingston, Jamaica, to stage local performances. The vision of the group that came together in 1965 was that in 12 years, by 1977, there would be professional theatre in Jamaica. His prolific work includes the films The Harder They Come (1972), co-author; Smile Orange (1974), based on his play of the same name; Top Rankin′; Milk and Honey (1988), winner; One Love (2003), Cannes Film Festival favorite. He was awarded the Musgrave Gold Medal in 1988 for his work by the Institute of Jamaica.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trevor_Rhone

John Figueroa

'Figueroa was born in Jamaica, where he was educated at St George's College. He won a scholarship to attend Holy Cross College, Massachusetts, graduating in 1942, after which he taught at St George's College and at Wolmer Boys' College in Jamaica. In 1946 he went on a British Council fellowship to London University to study for a teaching diploma and a master's degree in education. He subsequently taught in some London schools, and spent six years as an English and philosophy lecturer at the Institute of Education. He also contributed criticism, stories and poetry to the BBC's Caribbean Voices radio programme produced by Henry Swanzy. In Jamaica Figueroa became the first West Indian to be appointed to a chair at the University College of the West Indies, and the first Dean of the Faculty of Education. Between 1964 and 1966 he was a visiting professor first at Rhode Island University and then Indiana University. In the early 1970s he became Professor of Humanities leading the Department of Education of the Centro Caribeno de Estudios Postgraduados, Puerto Rico. He later spend time as a professor at the University of Jos in Nigeria. In the 1980s he moved to the UK, where he worked for the Open University, was a Fellow at the Centre for Caribbean Studies, University of Warwick, and an adviser in multicultural education in Manchester. He edited the pioneering two-volume anthology Caribbean Voices (vol 1: Dreams and Visions and vol 2: The Blue Horizons, 1966 and 1970 respectively), comprehensive landmark collections of West Indian poetry. He was also the first general editor of the Heinemann Caribbean Writers Series. He also played an important role in the development of Caribbean studies as a founder member of the Caribbean Studies Association and the Society for Caribbean Studies. His own poetry "reflects his origins as a Jamaican of [Hispanic] descent and a Catholic who, whilst deeply committed to the Caribbean, was concerned to maintain [the diversity of its] heritage without apology. He insisted that drums were not the only Caribbean musical instrument (no doubt a dig at Kamau Brathwaite) and championed Derek Walcott's relationship to the classical and European literary tradition. Ironically, one of Figueroa's most effective poems is in Nation language." In the words of Andrew Salkey, "The phrase 'cosmopolitan poet' does not really adequately describe him or the impact that he has had on Anglophone Caribbean poetry, but it certainly goes some way in defining a part of his concern in not being tagged as regional or provincial. This is so because he is absolutely free from national limitations."' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Figueroa

Gregory Isaacs

'International stardom seemed assured in 1978 when Isaacs signed to the Virgin Records offshoot Front Line Records, and appeared in the film Rockers, in which he performed "Slavemaster". The Cool Ruler (which became one of his nicknames) and Soon Forward albums, however, failed to sell as well as expected, although they are now considered among his best work. In 1981, he made his first appearance at the Reggae Sunsplash festival (returning annually until 1991), and he moved on to the Charisma Records offshoot Pre, who released his The Lonely Lover (another nickname that stuck) and More Gregory albums along with a string of increasingly successful singles including "Tune In", "Permanent Lover", "Wailing Rudy" and "Tribute to Waddy". He signed to Island Records and released the record that finally saw him break through to a wider audience, "Night Nurse", the title track from his first album for the label (Night Nurse (1982)). Although "Night Nurse" was not a chart hit in either the UK or US, it was hugely popular in clubs and received heavy radio play, and the album reached number 32 in the UK. This success for Isaacs coincided with drug problems with cocaine that saw him serve a six-month prison sentence in Kingston in 1982 for possession of unlicensed firearms. Isaacs claimed that he had the weapons only for protection, but it emerged that this was his 27th arrest and that he had become involved in drug dealing and was addicted to crack cocaine. He celebrated his release from prison with his second album for Island, Out Deh! (1983). He was featured in the 1982 documentary Land of Look Behind. When his contract with Island ended, Isaacs returned in 1984 with the "Kool Ruler Come Again" single, and began a period of prolific recording, working with producers including Prince Jammy, Hugh "Redman" James, Bobby Digital, Tad Dawkins and Steely & Clevie, maintaining a consistent standard despite the volume of work produced. Isaacs then built a strong relationship with Gussie Clarke of the Music Works label. They began with Isaacs' 1985 album Private Beach Party, and had a massive hit with "Rumours" in 1988, which was followed by further popular singles including "Mind Yu Dis", "Rough Neck", "Too Good To Be True" and "Report to Me". The association with Clarke continued into the early 1990s, teaming up with singers including Freddie McGregor, Ninjaman and J.C. Lodge. He dueted with Beres Hammond on the 1993 Philip "Fatis" Burrell-produced "One Good Turn", Burrell also producing Isaacs' 1994 album Midnight Confidential. In the 1990s the African Museum label continued to release all of Isaacs' music, and that of artists he produced. In 1997 Simply Red covered "Night Nurse" and had a hit with it. Isaacs continued to record and perform live in the 2000s. In 2005 Lady Saw produced another version of "Night Nurse" with her toasting over the original lyrics. Isaacs' drug addiction had a major impact on his voice, with most of his teeth falling out as a result. Isaacs said of his addiction in 2007: "Drugs are a debasing weapon. It was the greatest college ever, but the most expensive school fee ever paid – the Cocaine High School. I learnt everything, and now I've put it on the side." He also performed at the ICC Cricket World Cup 2007 Inauguration at Jamaica. In 2007 he collaborated with the Spanish rap group Flowklorikos / Rafael Lechowski album Donde Duele Inspira. In 2008, after some 40 years as a recording artist, Isaacs released a new studio album Brand New Me, which was nominated for the Grammy Awards for 2010. The album received positive reviews from critics, such as this review from Reggae Vibes: "Gregory is back, and how! 'Brand New Me' is a very suitable album title for the cool ruler's new album. He is back in a different style, more or less like we were used to from this great 'lovers & roots' artist" This was followed in 2009 by the album My Kind Of Lady. In 2010, Gregory Isaacs put out the last of his albums to be released while he was still living; Isaacs Meets Isaac, with Zimbabwean reggae singer King Isaac. In November 2010, Isaacs Meets Isaac was nominated for Best Reggae Album for the 2011 Grammy Awards, giving Gregory Isaacs his fourth Grammy nomination, and Zimbabwe's King Isaac his first.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_Isaacs

William James Gordon

"William James Gordon VC (19 May 1864 – 15 August 1922) was a West Indian recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces. He was 27 years old, and a Lance-Corporal in the West India Regiment, British Army during the Second Gambia Campaign when, on 13 March 1892 at Toniataba, Gambia, the major who was in command of the troops was superintending a party of 12 men who were trying, with a heavy beam, to break down the south gate of the town. Suddenly a number of musket-muzzles appeared through a double row of loopholes, some of them being only two or three yards from the major's back and before he realised what had happened, Gordon threw himself between the major and the muskets, pushing the officer out of the way. At the same moment the NCO was shot through the lungs. He later achieved the rank of sergeant. The medal is on display at the Jamaica Defence Force Museum." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James_Gordon http://www.kaiserscross.com/188001/246843.html

Desmond Dekker

"Desmond Dekker (16 July 1941 – 25 May 2006) was a Jamaican ska, rocksteady and reggae singer-songwriter and musician. Together with his backing group the Aces (consisting of Wilson James and Easton Barrington Howard), he had one of the earliest international reggae hits with "Israelites" (1968). Other hits include "007 (Shanty Town)" (1967), "It Mek" (1969) and "You Can Get It If You Really Want" (1970)." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desmond_Dekker

Carl Abrahams

'Abrahams was born in Kingston, Jamaica and began his career in commercial art at the age of 17 as a cartoonist and an illustrator for The Daily Gleaner and the Jamaica Times. In 1937, while on a working holiday in Jamaica, Augustus John, the iconic British artist, encouraged Abrahams to begin painting professionally. Abrahams taught himself to paint through self-study courses and manuals and by copying masterpieces from art books. In 1944, during World War II Abrahams served in the Royal Air Force in England. By the mid-1950s he had found his calling as a painter of religious subjects. The National Gallery of Jamaica said of his monumental series of 20 paintings of The Passion of Christ that "the devout sentiment of a true believer marked Abrahams as Jamaica and the Caribbean's finest religious painter." He was awarded the Musgrave Gold Medal for his work by the Institute of Jamaica in 1987. His final decades saw few new developments in his style and he often repeated or created variations on many of his earlier paintings. Abrahams died peacefully at his home in 2005 of cancer and a brain tumor.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Abrahams

John Hearne

'Hearne's first published work was the novel Voices under the Window, issued in 1955. Set in Jamaica in the late 1940s or early 1950s, it uses the framing device of a progressive politician's injury and death in a riot to narrate the story of a man who, born into racial and economic privilege, decided to cast his lot with the underprivileged. Hearne followed this with four novels written between 1956 and 1961 -- The Faces of Love, Stranger at the Gate, The Autumn Equinox and Land of the Living—set in the imaginary island of Cayuna which is a fictionalized Jamaica (the map of Cayuna included with the novels bears a remarkable resemblance to Jamaica), and which referred to issues relating to Jamaican life at the time, such as the beginning of the bauxite industry and the Rastafari movement, or to events in nearby territories such as the Cuban Revolution. He also wrote a number of short stories, one of which, "At the Stelling", set in Guyana, was included in the Independence Anthology of Jamaican Literature. Hearne then turned to the academy and journalism—writing a regular column for the Gleaner newspaper, first under the pseudonym "Jay Monroe", and later under his own name, and administering the Creative Arts Centre (now the Sir Philip Sherlock Centre for the Creative Arts) at the University of the West Indies. In the late 1960s and early 1970s he collaborated with planter and journalist Morris Cargill on a series of three thrillers -- Fever Grass, The Candywine Development, and The Checkerboard Caper—involving an imaginary Jamaican secret service. These were written under the pseudonym "John Morris".' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Edgar_Colwell_Hearne

Alexander Bedward

'After spending time in Panama, he returned to Jamaica and was baptized by a local Baptist preacher. He became not merely leader of a Revival branch but of a new movement, the Bedwardites, with affiliated groups all over Jamaica and in Panama. In the 1880 he started to gather large groups of followers by conducting mass healings services. He identified himself with Paul Bogle, the Baptist leader of the Morant Bay rebellion. In this connection he stressed for changes and developments in the race relations in Jamaican society. He supposedly said ”There is a white wall and a black wall. And the white wall has been closing around the black wall: but now the black wall has become bigger than the white.” Bedward was arrested for sedition but sent to a mental asylum. On release he continued his role as a Revival healer and preacher. He stressed his followers to be self-sufficient and at its height the movement gathered about 30,000 followers. He told his followers to sell their possessions including owned land and give him all the profits. Some of these followers did just that. On one occasion, he told his followers that they all would fly back to Africa, however to do so they had to climb up into a breadfruit tree in August Town while wearing bed sheets for the liftoff. However, they told him to go first and it resulted in him breaking his legs where he was submitted to the university hospital of the West Indies. He led his followers into Garveyism by finding the charismatic metaphor: Bedward and Garvey were as Aaron and Moses, one the high priest, the other prophet, both leading the children of Israel out of exile. Garvey's middle name was considered by people to be a mix of the two names Moses and Messiah. Later Bedward proclaimed that he was a reincarnation of Jesus Christ and that, like Elijah, he would ascend into heaven in a flaming chariot. He then expected to rain down fire on those that did not follow him, thereby destroying the whole world. In 1921 he and 800 followers marched in to Kingston “to do battle with his enemies.” This however didn’t result in him flying to heaven. Bedward and his followers were arrested and he was sent to mental asylum for the second time where he remained to the end of his life. His impact was that many of his followers became Garveyites and Rastafarians, bringing with them the experience of resisting the system and demanding changes of the colonial oppression and the white oppression. Rastafari has taken the idea of Garvey as a prophet, while also casting him in the role of John the Baptist, by virtue of his "voice in the wilderness" call taken as heralding their expected Messiah, "Look to Africa where a black king shall be crowned."' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Bedward

Dennis Brown

'Dennis Brown was an inspiration and influence for many reggae singers from the late 1970s through to the 2000s, including Barrington Levy, Junior Reid, Frankie Paul, Luciano, Bushman, and Richie Stephens. In July 1999, a group of UK-based musicians and more than fifty vocalists working under the collective name The British Reggae All Stars (including Mafia & Fluxy, Carlton "Bubblers" Ogilvie, Peter Hunnigale, Louisa Mark, Nerious Joseph, and Sylvia Tella) recorded "Tribute Song", a medley of six of Brown's best-known songs, in memory of Brown. He was honoured on the first anniversary of his death by a memorial concert in Brooklyn, which featured performances from Johnny Osbourne, Micky Jarrett, Delano Tucker, and Half Pint.[38] In 2001, a charitable trust was set up in Brown's name. The Dennis Emanuel Brown Trust works to educate youngsters, maintain and advance the memory of Dennis Brown, and help to provide youngsters with musical instruments. The trust awards the Dennis Emanuel Brown (DEB) bursary for educational achievement each year to students between the ages of 10 and 12 years. In 2005, George Nooks, who had worked with Brown in the mid-1970s in his deejay guise as Prince Mohamed, released an album of Brown covers, George Nooks Sings Dennis Brown: The Voice Lives On, with Nooks stating: "I was always inspired by his talent and I used to sing like him. Dennis had a large influence on me. To me he was the greatest. He was my number one singer." In the same year, Gregory Isaacs paid a similar tribute with the album Gregory Isaacs Sings Dennis Brown. In February 2007, a series of events were staged in Jamaica in celebration of the lives of both Brown and Marley (both would have had birthdays that month). In 2008, the Dennis Brown Trust announced a new internet radio station, dedicated solely to the music of Dennis Brown, and in the same month a tribute concert was staged by the Jamaican Association of Vintage Artistes and Affiliates (JAVAA) featuring Dwight Pinkney, Derrick Harriott, Sugar Minott, George Nooks, and John Holt. Songs about or dedicated to Brown include "Song for Dennis Brown" by The Mountain Goats, "If This World Were Mine" by Slightly Stoopid, "Drive" by Pepper (band), and Whitney Houston's "Whitney Houston Dub Plate" on The Ecleftic: 2 Sides II a Book album by Wyclef Jean. On 26 April 2010, Brown was featured on NPR Morning Edition news program as one of the "50 Great Voices - The stories of awe-inspiring voices from around the world and across time". The NPR "50 Great Voices" list includes Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Mahalia Jackson and Jackie Wilson among others. On 6 August 2011, being the 49th anniversary of the country's independence, the Governor-General of Jamaica posthumously conferred the Order of Distinction in the rank of Commander (CD) upon Brown, for his contribution to the Jamaican music industry.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Brown

H.G. de Lisser

'Herbert George de Lisser CMG (9 December 1878 – 19 May 1944) was a Jamaican journalist and author. He has been called "one of the most conspicuous figures in the history of West Indian literature". De Lisser was born in Falmouth, Jamaica, to parents who were of Afro-Jewish descent, and attended William Morrison's Collegiate School in Kingston. He started work at the Institute of Jamaica at the age of 14. Three years later he joined the Jamaica Daily Gleaner, of which his father was editor, as a proofreader, and two years later became a reporter on the Jamaica Times. In 1903, De Lisser became assistant editor of the Gleaner and was editor within the year. He wrote several articles for the paper every day. In 1909 he published a collection of essays, In Cuba and Jamaica, and 1912 saw the publication of his second book, Twentieth Century Jamaica. He went on to produce a novel or non-fiction book every year. His first work of fiction, Jane: A Story of Jamaica, is significant for being the first West Indian novel to have a central black character. Another famous novel of his, The White Witch of Rosehall (1929), is linked to a legend of a haunting in Jamaica. De Lisser also wrote several plays. In December 1920 he began publishing an annual magazine, Planters' Punch. De Lisser devoted much time and effort to the revival of the Jamaican sugar industry and represented Jamaica at a number of sugar conferences around the world. He was also general secretary of the Jamaica Imperial Association, honorary president of the Jamaica Press Association, and chairman of the West Indian section of the Empire Press Union. He was appointed Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) in the 1920 New Year Honours.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._G._de_Lisser

Anthony Winkler

'Winkler's literature has been published and sold all over the world. More famous for his novels and two screenplays, he has also contributed to a number of post-secondary English textbooks for almost four decades. Writing textbooks has been his full-time job, writing fiction has been his second job. Along with the series of novels that Winkler published throughout his career, there are also a few autobiographical works, but none more important than Going Home to Teach. This book is about the experiences Anthony and his wife, Cathy, share when returning to Jamaica to work at a teacher trainer college in 1975. Winkler wrote a number of novels, though his very first — called The Painted Canoe — took more than 10 years to get published. His next book, The Lunatic, was published in 1987, just a year after his first novel. The Lunatic received great success, propelling the book to be adapted into a movie in 1991. In 2004, Winkler published a collection of short stories, The Annihilation of Fish and Other Stories, from which the story "The Annihilation of Fish" was made into a film starring James Earl Jones, Lynn Redgrave and Margot Kidder. Winkler also wrote two plays: The Burglar, produced at the Little Theatre in May 2003 had a Canadian premier in Toronto in 2005 with the help of fellow Jamaican Paul Harrington-Smith, as well as in Kingston with the help of another good friend Maxine Walters, and The Hippopotamus Card in 2004. Winkler's last novel was The Family Mansion, about Europe's colonisation of Jamaica that he started in his previous novel God Carlos, which won the Townsend Prize for Fiction. In 2014 he was awarded a Gold Musgrave Medal by the Institute of Jamaica for his contribution to literature.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_C._Winkler

Roger Mais

'Mais published more than a hundred short stories, most appearing in Public Opinion and Focus. Other stories are collected in Face and Other Stories and And Most of All Man, published in the 1940s. Mais' play, George William Gordon, was also published in the 1940s, focusing on a politician and martyr of the Morant Bay Rebellion of 1865. It played an important role in the rehabilitation of the eponymous character. In conventional colonial history Gordon was described as a rebel and traitor, but on the centenary of the rebellion, he was declared to be a Jamaican National Hero. On 11 July 1944, Roger Mais published, "Now we Know", a stinging denunciation of British colonialism in Public Opinion, in which he explained that it was now clear that World War 2 was not a fight for freedom but a war to preserve imperial privilege and exploitation: "That the sun may never set upon privilege, repression and exploitation and upon the insolence and arrogance of one race to all others ...That the sun may never set upon the great British tradition of Democracy which chains men and women and little children with more than physical chains, chains of ignorance and the apathy of the underfed, and the submissiveness, which is a spiritual sickness in the thews and sinews of a man; chains them in dungeons of gold mines and silver mines and diamond mines, and upon sugar plantations, and upon rubber plantations and tea plantations. For the great idea of Democracy which relegates all “n*****s” of whichever race, to their proper place in the scheme of political economy" For writing this denunciation of Churchill's declaration that the end of World War 2 would not mean the end of the British Empire, the Jamaican novelist was tried for sedition and imprisoned for six months. This period was instrumental in his development of his first novel, The Hills Were Joyful Together (1953), a work about working-class life in 1940s Kingston. "Why I Love and Leave Jamaica", an article written in 1950, also stirred emotions in readers. It characterized the bourgeoisie and the "philistines" as shallow and criticized their influential role on art and culture. In addition, Mais wrote more than thirty stage and radio plays. The plays Masks and Paper Hats and Hurricane were performed in 1943, Atlanta in Calydon in 1950; The Potter's Field was published in Public Opinion (1950), and The First Sacrifice in Focus (1956). Mais left Jamaica for England in 1952. He lived in London, then in Paris, and for a time in the south of France. He took an alias, Kingsley Croft, and showcased an art exhibition in Paris. His artwork also appeared on the covers of his novels. In 1953, his novel The Hills Were Joyful Together was published by Jonathan Cape in London. Soon afterwards, Brother Man (1954) was published, a sympathetic exploration of the emergent Rastafarian movement. The next year Black Lightning was published. While Mais' first two novels had urban settings, Black Lightning (1955) featured an artist living in the countryside. In 1955 Mais was forced to return to Jamaica after falling ill with cancer; he died that same year in Kingston at the age of 50. In 1968 he was posthumously awarded the Musgrave Gold Medal by the Institute of Jamaica. His short stories were collected in a volume entitled Listen, The Wind, thirty-two years after his death. Mais' novels have been republished posthumously several times, an indication of his continuing importance to Caribbean literary history. He also had an influence on younger writers of the pre-independence period, notably John Hearne. Many of Mais' manuscripts have been deposited in the library of the University of the West Indies, Jamaica.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Mais

Mikey Smith

'Smith was educated at Kingston College and the St George's College Extension School. He also studied at the Jamaican School of Drama with Jean "Binta" Breeze and Oku Onuora. Linton Kwesi Johnson released some of Smith’s work on his LKJ label. Smith appeared on the BBC television series Ebony and the BBC also broadcast a documentary based on his association with Johnson. "Mi Cyaan Believe It" is most remembered for Smith’s heartfelt phrase: "Laaawwwd - mi cyaan believe it - mi seh - mi cyaan believe it." In 1982, Smith released his debut album and performed extensively in Europe supporting such acts as Gregory Isaacs. He recorded a session for John Peel, which was broadcast by the BBC on 4 May 1982. He continued to work as a social worker representing prisoners in Gun Court. His outspoken commentary on the "isms and schisms of ‘politricks"’ in Jamaica led to his life being cut short. Linton Kwesi Johnson, during a presentation on Smith’s life and work at the second Caribbean Conference on Culture at the University of the West Indies, Mona campus, had the following to say: "The late Jamaican poet, Michael Smith, was to my mind one of the most interesting and original poetic voices to emerge from the English-speaking Caribbean during the last quarter of the 20th century." Johnson, who produced Smith's first and only album in London, also wrote the following in an article for the Jamaica Observer: "In 1978, Michael Smith represented Jamaica at the 11th World Festival of Youth and Students in Cuba. That year saw the release of his first recording, a single titled, 'Word', followed by perhaps his most famous piece 'Mi Cyaan Believe It' and 'Roots'." In 1981, Smith performed in Barbados during CARIFESTA and was filmed by BBC Television performing "Mi Cyaan Believe It" for the documentary From Brixton To Barbados. In 1982, Smith took London by storm with performances at the Camden Centre for the International Book Fair of Radical Black and Third World Books, and also at Lambeth Town Hall in Brixton for "Creation for Liberation". While in Britain, together with Oku Onoura, Smith also did a successful poetry tour and recorded the Mi Cyaan Believe It album for Island Records.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikey_Smith

Dudley Thompson

'Born in Panama, to Daniel and Ruby Thompson, he was raised in Westmoreland, Jamaica, where he was a student at The Mico (now Mico University College) in the 1930s. After a short period as headmaster of a rural school, he joined the Royal Air Force during the Second World War - one of Britain's first black pilots - and saw active service (1941-5) as a flight lieutenant in RAF Bomber Command over Europe, being awarded several decorations. Thompson married Genevieve Hannah Cezair in 1945; they had a son and two daughters. In 1946, he went to England to attend Merton College, Oxford, where he studied jurisprudence, as a Rhodes Scholar, obtaining degrees as a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Civil Law. From his university days he was a close associate of pan-Africanists such as Kwame Nkrumah, George Padmore and C.L.R. James. After qualifying as a barrister at Gray's Inn in the early 1950s, and doing tutelage with Dingle Foot, QC, Thompson went on to practise law in Africa - in Tanganyika and Kenya, where he became involved in the nationalist movements. He assembled the international legal team that defended Jomo Kenyatta in his trial after he had been seized by the British colonialists in 1952 and subsequently charged with treason, accused of being an instigator of the Mau Mau rebellion. Later as President of Kenya, Kenyatta memorably placed his hand on Thompson sitting beside him and said: "This man saved my life." In Tanzania, where he was a friend of Julius Nyerere, Thompson is remembered as a founder of the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU). In 1955 he returned to Jamaica, and continued to educate people about furthering the links between Africa and the Caribbean, visiting schools to deliver inspirational addresses about the continent (Jamaica-born writer Lindsay Barrett was inspired to decide to live in Africa by one such visit that Thompson paid to his school, Clarendon College, in 1957). He practised law in Trinidad, Barbados, St. Kitts, Dominica, Bermuda, Grenada, The Bahamas, Belize and elsewhere in the West Indies, playing a role in the independence movements of both Belize and the Bahamas. He was appointed a Queen's Counsel in 1963. He served as a member of the Jamaican Senate from 1962 to 1978, and a member of the House of Representatives from 1978 to 1983. In the People's National Party (PNP) administration under Prime Minister Michael Manley, he was Minister of State for Foreign Affairs (1972-7), Minister of Mining and Natural Resources (1977-8), and Minister of National Security and Justice (1978–80). He was also a vice-president and later chairman of the PNP.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dudley_Thompson

Hugh Shearer

'Shearer was elected to the House of Representatives of Jamaica as member for Western Kingston in 1955, an office he retained for the next four years until he was defeated in the 1959 elections. He was a member of the Senate from 1962 to 1967, at the same time filling the role of Jamaica's chief spokesman on foreign affairs as Deputy Chief of Mission at the United Nations. In 1967 he was elected as member for Southern Clarendon and, after the death of Sir Donald Sangster, appointed Prime Minister on 11 April 1967. Thanks to his work with the Jamaican Worker earlier in his life, Shearer managed to stay on generally good terms with the Jamaican working class, and was generally well liked by the populace. However, he did cause an outcry of anger in October 1968 when his government banned the historian, Walter Rodney from re-entering the country. On 16 October a series of riots, known as the Rodney Riots broke out, after peaceful protest by students from the University of the West Indies campus at Mona, was suppressed by police; rioting spreading throughout Kingston. Shearer stood by the ban claiming that Rodney was a danger to Jamaica, citing his socialist ties, trips to Cuba and the USSR, as well as his radical Black nationalism. Shearer was generally uncomfortable with notions of pan-Africanism or militant black nationalism. He was also insecure about the stability of newly independent Jamaica in the late 1960s. His term as Prime Minister was a prosperous one for Jamaica, with three new alumina refineries were built, along with three large tourist resorts. These six buildings formed the basis of Jamaica's mining and tourism industries, the two biggest earners for the country. Shearer's term was also marked by a great upswing in secondary school enrolment after an intense education campaign on his part. Fifty new schools were constructed. It was by pressure from Shearer that the Law of the Sea Authority chose Kingston to house its headquarters. In the 1972 elections, the JLP was defeated and the People's National Party leader, Michael Manley, became Prime Minister. Between 1980 and 1989, during the prime ministership of Edward Seaga, who had succeeded him as leader of the JLP in 1974, Shearer was deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Shearer

Peter Tosh

'Tosh began recording and released his solo debut, Legalize It, in 1976 with CBS Records company. The title track soon became popular among endorsers of marijuana legalization, reggae music lovers and Rastafari all over the world, and was a favourite at Tosh's concerts. His second album Equal Rights followed in 1977. Tosh organized a backing band, Word, Sound and Power, who were to accompany him on tour for the next few years, and many of whom performed on his albums of this period. In 1978 the Rolling Stones record label Rolling Stones Records contracted with Tosh, on which the album Bush Doctor was released, introducing Tosh to a larger audience. The album featured Rolling Stones frontmen Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, and the lead single – a cover version of The Temptations song "Don't Look Back" – was performed as a duet with Jagger. It made Tosh one of the best-known reggae artists. During Bob Marley's free One Love Peace Concert of 1978, Tosh lit a marijuana spliff and lectured about legalizing cannabis, lambasting attending dignitaries Michael Manley and Edward Seaga for their failure to enact such legislation. Several months later he was apprehended by police as he left Skateland dance hall in Kingston and was beaten severely while in police custody. Mystic Man (1979), and Wanted Dread and Alive (1981) followed, both released on Rolling Stones Records. Tosh tried to gain some mainstream success while keeping his militant views, but was only moderately successful, especially when compared to Marley's achievements. That same year, Tosh appeared in the Rolling Stones' video Waiting on a Friend. In 1984, after the release of 1983's album Mama Africa, Tosh went into self-imposed exile, seeking the spiritual advice of traditional medicine men in Africa, and trying to free himself from recording agreements that distributed his records in South Africa. Tosh had been at odds for several years with his label, EMI, over a perceived lack of promotion for his music. Tosh also participated in the international opposition to South African apartheid by appearing at Anti-Apartheid concerts and by conveying his opinion in various songs like "Apartheid" (1977, re-recorded 1987), "Equal Rights" (1977), "Fight On" (1979), and "Not Gonna Give It Up" (1983). In 1987, Peter Tosh seemed to be having a career revival. He was awarded a Grammy Award for Best Reggae Performance in 1987 for No Nuclear War, his last record.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Tosh

Michael Garfield Smith

'Born in Kingston, Jamaica, M.G. Smith was always a brilliant scholar. As a schoolboy at Jamaica College, one of the island's leading secondary schools, his schoolmates claimed him as their "intellectual hero." In 1939 at age seventeen, Smith achieved the highest marks of all Higher Schools Certificate candidates in the entire British Empire. More than a student scholar, he later emerged as a published poet of very considerable promise. His scholarly feats earned him the prestigious Jamaica Scholarship, which did not bring him to Bombay as he had wished, but to Canada, where he went to study English Literature at McGill University. Joining the Canadian army during the war, he served briefly on the frontline in Europe, in France, Holland and Germany. Demobilized in London in 1945, he turned from literature to law, which he studied for a year before the fateful switch to anthropology. As his wife Mary reported, Smith found the law "an ass" and not, as he had hoped, about justice. He took to anthropology quickly and anthropology to him. Soon he became a prize student in Daryll Forde's department at University College London, completed his undergraduate work in short order, and after very successful field research in Northern Nigeria, was awarded the Ph.D. in 1951. He subsequently carried out extensive field research in Northern Nigeria, Jamaica, Grenada, and Carriacou. Smith served as the Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Social and Economic Research University of the West Indies (Jamaica); Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles; Senior Research Fellow, Research Institute for the Study of Man, New York City; Franklin M. Crosby Professor Emeritus, Human Environment at Yale University; and as Professor and Head of the Department of Anthropology, University College, London.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._G._Smith

G.C. Foster

"Gerald Claude Eugene Foster (30 November 1885 – 25 February 1966), best known as G. C. Foster, was a Jamaican sportsman who excelled at sprinting, cricket, and tennis, and later became a well-known athletics coach and cricket umpire. Born in Spanish Town, Foster was educated in Kingston, and participated in organised sport from an early age. Aged 19, he set a national record for the 100-yard dash, becoming recognised as one of Jamaica's top sprinters. Foster unsuccessfully attempted to participate at the 1908 Summer Olympics, and subsequently defeated several competitors at post-games meetings. On return to Jamaica, he concentrated more on cricket, playing irregularly at first-class level until the mid-1920s. Foster would go on to become one of Jamaica's foremost athletics coaches, helping to train athletes for both the Summer Olympics and Commonwealth Games. He died in 1966, with Jamaica's principal sporting college, the G. C. Foster College of Physical Education and Sport, later being named after him." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._C._Foster

Barry Watson

"Watson was born in Lucea, Hanover in 1931 . He was educated at Kingston College, the Royal College of Art, London (1958-1960) and continued his study of the works of European masters at the Rijksacademie, Amsterdam, the Academia de las Bellas Artes in Madrid and other major European art schools. He returned to Jamaica in 1962 to become the first director of studies at the Jamaica School of Art (now part of the Edna Manley College) and spearheaded a new curriculum which allowed graduating artists to filter into the areas of teaching, advertising and television, as well as the conventional fine and applied arts. As a founding member of the Contemporary Jamaican Artists Association in 1964, along with his fellow painters Karl Parboosingh and Eugene Hyde, he quickly became one of the leading artists of the post-Independence period in Jamaica, whose work represents a turning point in the development of Jamaica's cultural and artistic aesthetic and professionalised the local artistic practice. His many accolades include the Institute of Jamaica's Gold Musgrave Medal and the Order of Jamaica." http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/Barrington-Watson-has-died

Foggy Burrowes

'Sydney Ignatius (Foggy) Burrowes attended Kingston College (K.C.) between 1943 and 1947. Many believe that he was the most influential student to wear the school’s colors. As skipper (captain) of athletics and cricket, and a key member of the football (soccer) forward line, he was involved in every phase of school life. On joining the teaching staff he became sports master, while studying for the Inter-B.A. Degree of London University. He represented Lucas Club at cricket and football until polio ‘struck him’ in 1954. He returned to teach at KC aided by metal braces and a motorcar fitted with manual controls. It was for many students their first object lesson in adversity and how one may deal with it. He then sold insurance and finally published “Sports Life Magazine”, along with Errol Townsend. Many stories are told and written about him and his theories, among them: Jamaicans should regard any Olympic finalist as a hero; G. B. Grant (the Flying Farmer – School of Agriculture Athlete) and G. C. Foster were the best ever athletes; Jamaican women would be the future bearers of our Olympic hopes. He encouraged his students to write poems and plays praising K.C. and Jamaica. But it was his motivational talks, attitudes and schemes that affected every boy at KC in his time. He organized the “Faculty” of old boys who coached the Inter Scholastic Track Athletics Championship Team to its remarkable fourteen (14) year run, and “never ceased convincing boys that each one had a kernel of greatness in them”.' https://kcobausa.org/2016/02/remembering-foggy-sydney-ignatius-burrowes-by-errol-g-lecky/

Una Marson

'Una Marson was born on 6 February 1905, in Santa Cruz, Jamaica, in the parish of St Elizabeth. She was the youngest of six children of Rev. Solomon Isaac (1858–1915), a Baptist parson, and Ada Marson (d. 1930). Una had a middle-class upbringing and was very close to her father, who influenced some of her fatherlike characters in her later works. As a child before going to school she was an avid reader of available literature, which at the time was mostly English classical literature. At the age of 10, she was enrolled in Hampton High, a girl's boarding school in Jamaica of which her father was on the board of trustees. However, that same year, Rev. Isaac died, leaving the family with financial problems, so they moved to Kingston. Una finished school at Hampton High, but did not go on to a college education. After she left from Hampton, she found work in Kingston as a volunteer social worker and used the secretarial skills, such as stenography, she had learned in school. In 1926, she was appointed assistant editor of the Jamaican political journal Jamaica Critic. Her years there taught her journalism skills as well as influencing her political and social opinions and inspired her to create her own publication. In fact, in 1928, she became Jamaica's first female editor and publisher of her own magazine, The Cosmopolitan. The Cosmopolitan featured articles on feminist topics, local social issues and workers' rights and was aimed at a young, middle-class Jamaican audience. Marson's articles encouraged women to join the work force and to become politically active. The magazine also featured Jamaican poetry and literature from Marson's fellow members of the Jamaican Poetry League, started by J. E. Clare McFarlane. In 1930, Marson published her first collection of poems, entitled Tropic Reveries, that dealt with love and nature with elements of feminism. It won the Musgrave Medal from the Institute of Jamaica. Her poems about love are somewhat misunderstood by friends and critics, as there is no evidence of a romantic relationship in Marson's life, although love continued to be a common topic in her work. In 1931, due to financial difficulties, The Cosmopolitan ceased publication, which led her to begin publishing more poetry and plays. In 1931, she published another collection of poetry, entitled Heights and Depths, which also dealt with love and social issues. Also in 1931, she wrote her first play, At What a Price, about a Jamaican girl who moves from the country into the city of Kingston to work as a stenographer and falls in love with her white male boss. The play opened in Jamaica and later London to critical acclaim. In 1932, she decided to go to London to find a broader audience for her work and to experience life outside of Jamaica.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Una_Marson

Edna Manley

'Her move to Jamaica had a profound impact her work. She abandoned studying zoology back in London, and her work took on a more "inshespired formal elegance", according to Boxer. Manley's materials consisted mostly of native woods—she used yakka, mahogany, Guatemalan redwood, juniper cedar, and primavera. Some work dating from her first year on the island are "Beadseller", and "Listener". In describing "Beadseller", Boxer said, "It was as if in one fell swoop, nearly a hundred years of sculptural development had been bridged: in this, her first work done in Jamaica, Edna seems to have given expression to her ideas about contemporary British sculpture with which she had saturated herself prior to leaving England." Both pieces exhibited Manley's more progressive and cubist style. Between 1925 and 1929, Manley softened some of her geometric forms, replacing them with more massive, rounded ones. Her son Michael was born during this time. "Market Women", a study of two voluptuous women sitting back to back, and "Demeter", a carving of the mythical Earth Mother, are indicative of Manley's late-1920s influence. The 1930s saw another change in her sculptural style. She tamed her early-1920s cubist lines with rounder influences, and a new, definitive style that lasted into the 1940s. Jamaica was facing many political changes during the late 1930s and early 1940s. Members of the African diaspora were looking to do away with the aging colonial system that remained on the island. They were ready for a new social order, and voiced their displeasure with the colonial system by incurring strikes (along with riots), instigating food shortages, and promoting protest marches. Manley's work of the time reflected this civil unrest. Works like "Prophet", "Diggers", "Pocomania", and "Negro Aroused" "caught the inner spirit of our people and flung their rapidly rising resentment of the stagnant colonial order into vivid, appropriate sculptural forms," wrote poet M. G. Smith. Her works were exhibited very frequently in England between 1927 and 1980. Her first solo exhibition in Jamaica was in 1937. The show marked a turning point in Jamaica's undeveloped art movement, and it prompted the first island-wide group show of Jamaican artists. Manley was also one of the founders of the new Jamaica School of Art. After premiering in Jamaica, her show opened in England, where it was received with much fanfare. It was the last time Manley's work would be shown in London for nearly 40 years. Active for much of her life as an artist, she also taught at the Jamaica School of Art, now a component of the Edna Manley College of Visual and Performing Arts.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edna_Manley

Rex Nettleford

'Born on 3 February 1933 in Falmouth, Jamaica, Nettleford attended Unity Primary School in Bunkers Hill, Trelawny, and graduated from Cornwall College in Montego Bay, Jamaica, before going to the University of the West Indies (UWI) to obtain an honours degree in history. As a child he sang and recited in school concerts, sang in the church choir, danced, and began working as a choreographer at the age of 11 with the Worm Chambers Variety Troupe, which helped to fund his studies. At Cornwall College he acted in productions of the college's drama club, and was published as a poet. He was a recipient of the 1957 Rhodes Scholarship to Oriel College, Oxford where he received a postgraduate degree in Politics, and returned to Jamaica in the early 1960s to take up a position at UWI. At UWI he first came to attention as a co-author (with M. G. Smith and Roy Augier) of a groundbreaking study of the Rastafari movement in 1961. In 1962, Nettleford and Eddy Thomas co-founded the National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica, an ensemble which under his direction did much to incorporate traditional Jamaican music and dance into a formal balletic repertoire. For over twenty years, Nettleford has also been the artistic director for the University Singers of the University of the West Indies, Mona campus in Jamaica. The combination of Nettleford as artistic director and Noel Dexter as musical director with the University Singers has seen the creation of what is referred to as "choral theatre". Beginning with the collection of essays, Mirror, Mirror, published in 1969 and his editing and compiling of the speeches and writings of Norman Manley, Manley and the New Jamaica, in 1971, Nettleford established himself as a serious public historian and social critic. In 1968, he took over direction of the School for Continuing Studies at the UWI and then of the Extra-Mural Department. In 1975, the Jamaican state recognized his cultural and scholarly achievements by awarding him the Order of Merit. He also received the Gold Musgrave Medal (1981) and 13 honorary doctorates, including one in Civil Law from Oxford University. In 1996, he became Vice-Chancellor of the UWI, and held that office until 2004, when he was succeeded by E. Nigel Harris.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rex_Nettleford