Charles Hyatt

"The actor, comedian and broadcaster Charles Hyatt, who has died of lung cancer aged 75, derived his inspiration from the folkways of rural and inner-city Jamaica. And, like the poet and performer Louise Bennett-Coverley (obituary August 1 2006) - he became a cultural symbol of the island. Based in Britain from 1960 to 1974, Hyatt's lusty, ribald, live performances attracted large numbers of his compatriots - not least when he played with Bim & Bam (the Jamaican Morecambe and Wise) on British tours (1969-70) - giving Jamaicans a taste of home. In 1960 a British Council bursary took Hyatt from Kingston, Jamaica to the Theatre Royal, Windsor. He performed regularly at the Oxford Playhouse and the Leicester Phoenix. His TV and film performances began with a BBC Wednesday Play, Fable, and, also in 1965, an appearance in Public Eye and in the film A High Wind in Jamaica. Later television parts included Rainbow City and The Saint, (both 1967). From 1968 to 1971 he narrated (and also wrote) episodes of Jackanory. In 1973 he played Joe, father of Bill Reynolds (Rudolph Walker), in Love Thy Neighbour." https://www.theguardian.com/news/2007/feb/24/guardianobituaries.television

Tom Redcam

'Thomas Henry MacDermot was born in Clarendon Parish, Jamaica, of Irish ancestry, and spent much of his childhood in Trelawny. He was educated at the Falmouth Academy and at the Church of England Grammar School in Kingston, Jamaica. He was a teacher before taking up journalism, at The Jamaica Post, The Daily Gleaner and the Jamaica Times, of which he was editor for 20 years. He worked to promote Jamaican literature through all of his writing, starting a weekly short story contest in the Jamaica Times in 1899. Notable among the young writers he helped and encouraged are Claude McKay and H. G. de Lisser. In 1903, MacDermot started the All Jamaica Library, a series of novellas and short stories written by Jamaicans about Jamaica that were reasonably priced to encourage local readers. Alongside his work as a journalist, he wrote two novels. The first, Becka’s Buckra Baby, is said to mark the beginning of modern Caribbean writing. MacDermot's poems were not collected into a single volume until 1951. He was posthumously proclaimed Jamaica's first Poet Laureate for the period 1910-33 by the Jamaican branch of the Poetry League. MacDermot retired because of illness in 1922. He died in an English nursing home in 1933, aged 63.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_MacDermot

Henry Fowler

Henry Fowler's parents were Horace and Agnes Fowler, white planters from Moneague in central Jamaica. Henry was educated at Jamaica College in Kingston. An academic achiever, he went on to Worcester College, Oxford University in 1935, as a Rhodes scholar. Fowler became one of Jamaica's leading educationalists. He started his teaching career at Wolmer's Boys School in Kingston, specialising in English literature. In 1942, Henry Fowler opened his eponymous private school in Kingston, and then in 1944, launched the Priory School, remaining as headmaster until his retirement in 1973. He was appointed as Visiting Professor (Comparative Education) Western Carolina University in 1982, and President of the Inter-Regional Centre for Curriculum Development from 1985-90. He continued as a distinguished advisor on education, serving as Chairman of Jamaica Ministry of Education’s Committee for preparation of Youth for Independence and Chairman of the National Council on Libraries, Archives and Documentation Services. He was a Visiting Senior Associate at Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford and was a member of the Council of the University of the West Indies. Fowler became active in politics at Oxford, where he was chairman of the Oxford University Labour Club. A supporter of the League of Nations, he took part in international student delegations, including the Brussels International Peace Conference in 1936; the British delegation led by Lord Robert Cecil to the World Students Conference in Paris in 1937; and the 1937 British universities mission to Prague. At the outbreak of World War II, Fowler returned to Jamaica, where he joined Michael Manley's People's National Party (PNP). From 1939 to 1943, Fowler edited "Public Opinion". Fowler had a lifelong interest in theatre. He was active in the Oxford University Dramatic Society (OUDS) as a student. He founded the Little Theatre Movement (LTM) in Kingston in 1941 with his first wife, Greta Bourke. Together they set up the Jamaica Theatre School, now the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts and the Ward Theatre Foundation. The Fowlers were friends of Noël Coward. Fowler served as Chairman of the All-Island Art Exhibition Committee and Vice-Chairman of the Caribbean Arts Festival. He became founder Chairman of the Board of the Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation and also served as Jamaica's appointed ambassador to Unesco. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Fowler_(educator)

Leonard P Howell

Leonard Percival Howell (June 16, 1898 – February 25, 1981), known as The Gong or G.G. Maragh (for Gong Guru), was a Jamaican religious figure. According to his biographer Hélène Lee, Howell was born in an Anglican family. He was one of the first preachers of the Rastafari movement (along with Joseph Hibbert, Archibald Dunkley, and Robert Hinds), and is sometimes known as The First Rasta. Born in May Crawle River, Jamaica, Howell left the country as a youth, traveling amongst other places to New York, and returned in 1932. He began preaching in 1933 about what he considered the symbolic portent for the African diaspora—the crowning of Ras Tafari Makonnen as Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia. His preaching asserted that Haile Selassie was the "Messiah returned to earth," and he published a book called The Promise Key. Although this resulted in his being arrested, tried for sedition and imprisoned for two years, the Rastafari movement grew. Over the following years, Howell came into conflict with all the establishment authorities in Jamaica: the planters, the trade unions, established churches, police and colonial authorities. He formed a town or commune called Pinnacle in Saint Catherine Parish that became famous as a place for Rastafari. Nevertheless, this movement prospered, and today the Rastafari faith exists worldwide. Unlike many Rastas, Howell never wore dreadlocks. Leonard Howell died February 1981 in Kingston, Jamaica. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Howell

Francis Williams

"Francis Williams was born around 1700 to John and Dorothy Williams, a free black couple in Jamaica. John Williams had been freed by the will of his former master and within ten years was able to acquire property. As free blacks the Williams family were increasingly in the minority as Jamaica's sugar industry, which relied on the labour of enslaved Africans, grew over the course of the 18th century. Even less common were educated black people. However, John Williams' independent wealth ensured that Francis and his brothers received an education....Contemporary sources report that for several years Francis kept a school in Spanish Town, Jamaica, where he taught reading, writing, Latin and mathematics. However, it is his writing and poetry on which his later reputation is based. The only surviving work by him is a poem in Latin addressed to George Haldane on his assuming the governorship of Jamaica in 1759 (a popular convention). Francis may also have written the words of the song 'Welcome, welcome, brother debtor'." http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/f/francis-williams-a-portrait-of-an-early-black-writer/

Juan de Serras

'The Karmahaly band under Juan de Serras is a Maroon group that deserves special attention, not only because they have nowhere else been systematically treated, nor because of their great skill in guerrilla warfare, but also because of their particular skill in negotiation and their diplomatic subtlety. From scanty data, Juan de Serras appears to have been a man of extraordinary ability, strongly seated in his leadership position, with a vigorous, disciplined organization based on a hierarchical ordering typical of Maroon communities....He governed his people with consensual authority, recognizing those with particular skills in his group and delegating functions accordingly. Thus some were used as emissaries, the specific qualifications for these delicate positions being tact, finesse, and bilingualism in Spanish and English....By June 1664 their harassment of plantations became so alarming to the planters that Captain Rutter and a party of volunteers were sent out against them, but with no success. By the following year reports of their plundering plantations, killing whites, and taking off slaves reached alarming proportions....About a year and a half after the posture of war we find a Karmahaly black, Domingo Henriques, suing for "peace". This peace overture, however, was nothing more than a ploy to gain time in order to consolidate their position, to select strategically new positions, and to lull the whites into a state of security. The ruse could not have been more successful. The astute Karmahaly chief, Juan de Serras, arranged to have Domingo "captured" by one of the parties sent out against them....The result of de Serras's ingenuity was that the whites were lulled into a state of false security, and as soon as the Maroons found themselves in a secure position, some took the offensive and resumed hostilities just two years after the charter....The activities of Morgan and his Buccaneers, as well as the rounding up and slave of the Spanish blacks and mulattoes, may have had some inhibiting effect on the Maroon bands, whether Karmahaly or others in their mountainous retreats.' Mavis Campbell, "The Maroons of Jamaica 1655-1796: A History of Resistance, Collaboration & Betrayal", pp. 25-34.

Henry Morgan

"Because the sack of Panama violated the 1670 peace treaty between England and Spain, Morgan was arrested and conducted to the Kingdom of England in 1672. He proved he had no knowledge of the treaty. When Spanish and English relations deteriorated, Morgan was knighted in 1674 before returning to Jamaica the following year to take up the post of Lieutenant Governor. By 1681, then-acting governor Morgan had fallen out of favour with King Charles II, who was intent on weakening the semi-autonomous Jamaican Council, and was replaced by long-time political rival Thomas Lynch. He gained considerable weight and a reputation for rowdy drunkenness. In 1683, Morgan was suspended from the Jamaican Council by the machinations of Governor Lynch. Also during this time, an account of Morgan's disreputable exploits was published by Alexandre Exquemelin, who once had been his confidante, probably as a barber-surgeon, in a Dutch volume entitled De Americaensche Zee-Roovers (About the Buccaneers of America). Morgan took steps to discredit the book and successfully brought a libel suit against the book's publishers William Crooke and Thomas Malthus, securing a retraction and damages of two hundred English pounds. The book nonetheless contributed much to Morgan's reputed fame as a bloodthirsty pirate during the time he was in Newport. When Thomas Lynch died in 1684, his friend Christopher Monck was appointed to the governorship and arranged the dismissal of Morgan's suspension from the Jamaican Council in 1688. Morgan's health had steadily declined since 1681. He was diagnosed with "dropsie", but may have contracted tuberculosis in London, and died on 25 August 1688. He is buried in Palisadoes cemetery, which sank beneath the sea after the 1692 earthquake." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Morgan