In Memory of a "Quality Black": Ralston Milton "Rex" Nettleford (1933-2010)

Photo source: The University of the West Indies.

Marcus Garvey, Father of Black Nationalism and Black Power and Jamaica's first National Hero holds a place of prominence in Jamaica and Black peoples' struggle against colonialism and the pernicious racism which anchored the system of slavery and later capitalism. His activism against racial oppression expressed in Black Nationalism, black pride, black dignity, black industry and self-reliance resonated throughout a world where Black people were constantly being denied humanity. Garvey's ideas were to live on in the minds of many ordinary people in Jamaica and the world and found continuity in the work and life of many advocates and adherents of the international Garveyite movement and beyond. This was to be expected because Garvey himself philosophised that "what you do today that is worthwhile inspires others to act at some future time" (Garvey 1986:1). One of those who were inspired "to act at some future time" was the late Ralston Milton "Rex" Nettleford who came to loathe racism and the plantation society in much the same way Garvey did. Like Garvey, Nettleford rejected Eurocentric ideologies of defining self and the social group, of which he was a part, and recognised and accepted Ethiopia as the cradle of Africa, and Ethiopians as the base of the colonial plantation society which had outlived slavery. Black Nationalism and self liberation were, therefore, the central themes running through much of Nettleford's intellectual output and practical involvement with his own people. No wonder, Garvey's rallying cry to the descendants of slaves, "Emancipate yourself from mental slavery" also became the cry of the renowned Nettleford who embodied the aspirations of generations of Black Jamaicans and black people the world over.

Ralston Milton "Rex" Nettleford, one of the Caribbean's finest intellects and creative artistes, was born in rural Jamaica on February 3, 1933. In Jamaica, as in the western world, the dichotomy between rural and urban pits growing up in the former as a handicap. For Nettleford who was to achieve the greatest success any human being could ever hope for, growing up in a rural Trelawny community and later Montego Bay (the country's second city, but still regarded locally as "rural") gave him strength of character. Born a little over 45 years after Marcus Garvey, Nettleford was the composed expression of Marcus Garvey's advice to black people the world over: "Up you mighty race; you can accomplish what you will". Rex, as he was affectionately called, did accomplish this, and over his 77 years, he danced to the "rhythm of Africa" while harmonising with "the melody of Europe," expressing, at the same time, his anxiety for the cooperation of all social groups in Jamaica towards the common good. Nettleford wrote:

There must be the liberation of the Jamaican black, whether he (sic) be peasant, proletarian or struggling middle class, from the chains of self-contempt, self-doubt and cynicism. Correspondingly, there will have to be the liberation of Jamaican whites, real and functional, from the bondage of a lop-sided creole culture which tends to maintain for them an untenable position of privilege.

(Nettleford 1998:210-211)

With the gift of knowledge and the ability to create knowledge coupled with a commitment to the development of humankind, particularly to improve the quality of life of the racially and economically oppressed in his native Jamaica through education, this creative genius was to spend the greater part of his academic life as Director, Extra-Mural Department/Department of Extra-Mural Studies, University of the West Indies (UWI) and Head, Trade Union Education Institute. The Extra-Mural Department was later to become the School of Continuing Studies. In 1996, he was appointed Deputy Vice Chancellor and Vice Chancellor on the retirement of Sir Allister McIntyre. At the time of his death, he was Vice Chancellor Emeritus, a well deserved title.

With an emphasis on self-liberation and social transformation, Nettleford constantly urged all Jamaicans and by extension, the black world to...