Freedom's Children: The 1938 Labor Rebellion and the Birth of Modern Jamaica

ONE: Jamaica in 1938

7 one Jamaica in 1938 The spectacle of bonfires on the hills, fireworks at the National Stadium and other centres, dancing in the streets, donkey races, treats for school children and the aged, regattas, parties galore, brought Jamaicans of all races, all classes, and colours and creeds together to celebrate their independence and to symbolize the motto, Out of many, one people,” reported the Daily Gleaner, Jamaica’s principal daily newspaper. It was describing the scene on August 6, 1962, when Jamaica gained its independence from Britain. Twenty thousand Jamaicans had gathered in the National Stadium at midnight to witness the lowering of the Union Jack, the hoisting of the new nation’s flag, and the singing of its national anthem for the first time. In saluting his fellow Jamaicans, Sir Alexander Bustamante, the first prime minister, declared his “faith in my people” and conviction that “you all will respond to the challenge of this new era on which we now enter and to the difficult task and heavy responsibilities ahead of us.”1 Jamaica had a long history as a colony. It began in 1494 when Christopher Columbus disembarked on the island, encountered the indigenous peoples, andproclaimeditthepropertyofSpain.TheSpanishpresenceledtoadecline in the population of the native peoples as a consequence of violence and disease . In 1501, nine years after Columbus’s first arrival in the hemisphere, the Spanish crown authorized the importation of enslaved Africans to Hispaniola , inaugurating the Atlantic slave trade to the Americas. The institution of slavery spread to Jamaica in 1511, permanently altering the demographic configuration of the island. The English took possession of it in 1655 after a military conflict with the Spanish. Under English suzerainty, Jamaica experienced a significant expansion of the plantation system, with sugarcane as the principal crop, and a tremendous increase in the trade in enslaved Africans. Overall, as many as 900,000 African peoples were purchased in the island and became human property. Many of these enslaved Africans rejected their condition by escaping to the mountainous areas of the island. Their flights enabled them to claim a precarious freedom, demonstrating “ 8 | Jamaica in 1938 independence from the existing economic and political structures of oppression . Mostly African born, these people were not seeking to destroy or even to control the colonial state whose armed might protected the system of property in persons. Seen through their optic, they were escaping from an alien society that both defined and treated them as property. They wanted to live as free people in communities of their own making. These communities of freedom invited reprisals from the colonial state. But neither the state nor those who held property in persons could stanch the hemorrhaging of unfree laborers from the sites of their oppression. In spite of frequent military assaults on them, these communities of freedom were never annihilated. In 1739 the colonial state was forced to sign a treaty recognizing the freedom of those who had rejected their enslavement and acquiescing to the ownership of the land they occupied. The state was humiliated by having to sign such a treaty, effecting a fragile modus vivendi with those who were previously defined as human property. These maroons, as they were called, did not constitute a part of the Jamaican polity since they governed themselves. But they were the pioneers in the struggle for political autonomy and self-determination by the peoples of African descent in the island. After 1655, political power in the English colony of Jamaica was the preserve of a very small white minority. The colony was awarded its first constitution in 1663. There was a governor, jamaica Hanover Westmoreland St. James St. Elizabeth Manchester Trelawny St. Ann Clarendon St. Catherine St. Mary St. Andrew Portland St. Thomas Kingston Lucea Savanna-la-Mar Black River Montego Bay Falmouth St. Ann’s Bay Port Maria Port Antonio Morant Bay Mandeville May Pen Spanish Town J A M A I C A Parish boundary National capital Parish capital Jamaica in 1938 | 9 a legislative upper chamber nominated by the governor, and an elected House of Assembly. The franchise was restricted to men who owned freehold with a minimum value of £10, and membership in the Assembly was open to those men with freehold worth £300 or more. The Assembly enjoyed the power of the purse, but the governor could veto any bill of which he disapproved. This constitution lasted until...