When Voices Rise

January 2003 – 73 mins

This is the story of an island, a tranquil island, a lovely island. It’s name: Bermuda—tropical outpost in mid-Atlantic. Discovered by a Spanish explorer, Juan de Bermudez, in the early 1500s, British settlers came here in 1609 and Bermuda became a Crown colony seventy-five years later.

Quibo films
in association with Circuit Theatre Players
present
When Voices Rise …
Dismantling Segregation in Bermuda

So you’ve really decided to take that long-planned Bermuda trip. Have I ever told you about our Bermuda holiday? It was wonderful. How well I remember our first breath-taking view from Gibbs Hill Lighthouse, those enchanted isles spread out before us in the marvelous semi-tropical warmth and sunshine, the white-roofed coral-stone buildings of pastel pink, blues and greens.

I came to Bermuda quite a few years ago, just before America got into the war. Sixty years ago. And not only was it a very beautiful place, but it was like a paradise, really. I’d never seen anything quite so beautiful.

It’s always fun to get off the travelled road with a crowd like this for a swim and a picnic at some secluded beach. You’ll find this romantic spot on the southwest shore of the islands, below Gibb’s Hill. It’s an idyllic version of the old swimming hole.

Unfortunately, there were some aspects that weren’t quite as beautiful as the scenery.

Having grown up in Canada, I had never seen water that colour or sand, real sand, coral sand. Now, as far as the place is concerned, it was unlike Montreal in many respects. It was … first thing I was aware of, you see, racial segregation. It hits you like a very soft punch, but still, it was palpable.

I mean, at that time, everything was segregated—restaurants, movies, even some churches.

I remember the incident in Devonshire parish, the parish church, where black children went to Ash Wednesday services and all the little white children from the white elementary school went … went in and sat down. They … all the black children were standing outside to wait for these little pale-faced children. and ... to come in and take their seats. And then all the black children came in. And I thought that, hey, there’s something strange going on. And I was about seven-eight at that point, perhaps nine. And I thought, well, I’ll never come in here again.

In the workplace, in terms of civil servants and clerks in various government jobs, it was always—the Post Office, for example only hired white or Portuguese. It wasn’t uncommon to see an ad: Wanted: Secretary – White Only. That sort of thing was quite common.

A young girl—I was connected with her family—she went to the Berkeley and at that time they had just started a commercial course and she took a course, typing shorthand. And she looked in the paper one morning, Saturday morning, and they asked for a secretary or a typist—shorthand-typist. Without stating that they wanted white only. She went down to apply. I suppose she was around seventeen-eighteen, somewhere in there. Applied for this job and the lady looked her straight in the face and said, “Yes, we are looking for a shorthand-typist, but we’re not looking for your kind.” Okay? So she had to just leave. Knowing that, those facts, I decided something needs to be done aaround Bermuda.

Bermuda’s school system was a dual school system—one for the whites, one for the blacks. Dr. Gordon said it was bad for the whites and it was worse for the blacks.

We used to leave the Central School, Victor Scott it’s now called, and we would have to go all the way to Front Street to this domestic science class. And I used to really get irate because our class would have to clean up after the white children. And all the demeaning kinds of work that you could think of, our class was doing this under the guise of domestic science. And this was my first, I should say, inkling to the reality that this is not in the book any more. This is the real McCoy.

Tea-time is informal, like almost everything else in the open air. It was always a regular date with us. You’ll get the habit, too.

It was an extremely embarrassing period for Bermuda when black tourists came from abroad and they weren’t allowed to … to be guests in certain hotels.

We saw the enactment of the 1930 Innkeepers Act because we had people coming here, professional black people, who were insisting upon getting into the hotels for first class accommodation. And they were rejected. Blacks were not permitted to darken the doors of white establishments.

The Oligarchy

We were two communities, one black and one white.

Bermuda was distinctive in its set-up in that we had a large white minority and a much larger black majority. That was different from situations you found in, let’s say, the West Indies where you only had a small minority of whites. The oligarchy is a group of people who run the government as if it’s their own family affair. They had their tentacles in every aspect of Bermudian life.

The oligarchy maintained absolute control. You know, devolution of power to one’s self or to one’s group. This special group happened to be all white men. The people who were the judges and the juries and the people who were the policemen, the people who were responsible for the laws. The people who kept … who kept people in their place.

In order to vote, you had to own property, but then your property had to be assessed at a certain value. So you could own a lot of property, if it wasn’t assessed to vote, you wouldn’t be able to vote.

It was also limited in the sense that it affected white people. A large part of the white minority couldn’t vote at the polls ‘cause they were landless.

Some of these fellows had properties in nine different parishes and therefore voted for thirty-six different people. And of course, the balloting was designed to help them because, you see, they balloted over three days. You did the eastern parishes, the central parishes the next day and the other parishes the next, you know … Balloting over three days, a fellow could get to every poll.

You could shout to high heaven, it didn’t matter too much. They would show the greatest sympathy towards what you were saying. They would go to any extent to set up a committee that would make you believe they’re working towards a compromise and they would come up with a report with recommendations they had no intention of implementing.

1948 Joint Select Committee:
Conditions of the Working Class in Bermuda

1953 Select Committee to Study
Interracial Relations

1957 Joint Select Committee
to Examine the
Hotel and Inn Keepers Act

1958 Committee to Study
the Franchise

The established hierarchy at the time had used the Joint Select Committee as a means of getting rid of legislation or they would give it what they called the “six-month hoist”. That is, they would vote to postpone debate or any discussion on it any … for six months and so you’d … even if you brought it back six months later, it really wouldn’t go anywhere.

Ira Philip
Journalist

The traditional thrust against prevailing conditions impacting adversely on the black people emanated from the pulpit, primarily the AME churches. And from Parliament, where there were any number of from two to seven and then eleven black members at any given time. And what differentiated that traditional approach from the Progressive Group, when those budding young intellectuals started to impact on the scene, was that they had—and they the young people—had an action plan.

The Progressive Group
Izola Harvey
Member of The Progressive Group

Stan Ratteray used to come here. He frequented our home and we’d talk a lot about things that were happening here. Stan is a dentist and he and lots of the other educated kids were coming home and they really were offended at the, you know, the way they were being treated.

Marva Philips
Member of The Progressive Group

I left Bermuda to attend teacher’s college at London University. On one occasion, we were invited to the theatre by the Queen to sit at her box. Of course, she wasn’t present, but these invitations came out all the time. And while we were in the box watching a play at this particular time, I said, here I am in the Queen of England’s royal box and you know that in my own country I cannot sit anywhere that I like in a little, measly cinema.

Erskine Simmons
Member of The Progressive Group

I got involved in social action because when I returned from college I realized that there were many things that we were wrong with life in Bermuda. And I realized that even before I went that there were things that were wrong. And we needed to make some changes.

Will Francis
Member of The Progressive Group

I was in a mainly white country, Canada. I mean, I was able to … I faced far, far less segregation over there in Canada. I was not … I could sit anywhere in a theatre. I could go to the best restaurant and … I mean, I didn’t face any of the kind of discrimination and that sort of thing that I found in my own home country.

Clifford Maxwell
Member of The Progressive Group

I got involved with the Progressive Group as a result of a meeting with a good friend of mine, Stan Ratteray. It was soon after I came home from my studies. And I was preparing to go to work. And he asked me whether or not I would be interested in joining a group which was concerned about the social ills. And I told him … I always said yes to almost … everything in those days. So I told him yes, I wouldn’t mind being involved.

Stanley Ratteray
Member of The Progressive Group

The members of that group were all friends. We would meet socially and obviously we would discuss the condition as we saw it in Bermuda. And the view was taken that we ought to do something about it.

There were always these cells who were talking about doing things. Talking incessantly, but when action came about, we got results.

An Early Protest
1951

There are no language barriers here, no need to adjust to anything but relaxed and carefree living.

Georgine Hill
Early Activist

Well, my sister-in-law had come back from Canada where she had studied at the University of Toronto and there was no theatre, live theatre, that we go could go to and since we were people who liked the theatre, she was the instigator of our little theatre group.

Carol Hill
Early Activist

We called it the New Theatre Guild and we rehearsed and did workshops at my brother’s studio on Burnaby Street. He had a photographic studio and at night we used that … his premises.

While we were having lots of fun doing this, the idea of being able to see the real thing, because some people had not been abroad to see the … New York or see the real shows. And we saw in the paper that a real group of well- known actors were coming in to Bermuda.

There was an organization called Bermudiana Theatre Club. And this club would … they were going to bring in professional actors and actresses. They advertised in the paper and we said, oh, great ‘cause, you know, I was really excited about this. But when we asked how we could buy tickets, they said, well, you can’t. I said why not. You have to be a member. Well, fine, we’ll be members. And in the end they said, well, you have to be “unmixed” European descent.

That was a subtle statement that coloured people, or those who had African blood, were not welcome. So we decided, now, this is the start of something, now this is ridiculous. So we got together at my husband’s studio in Hamilton. They made up these placards saying Ralph Bunche not admitted to theatre—Jews not admitted.

We dressed ourselves up. I can remember the coat I had on. I wore gloves. I looked great.

We asked for tickets and they sort of embarrassed. I mean, I … you know, they weren’t used to being confronted face-to-face, sort of thing. But they had to state that the tickets, it was a private club, limited to only those of European descent. So, we said, oh, I guess we’ll have to do something about it. So we walked out and I said, okay, so then we started walking up and down with our placards.

We had to keep moving, keep moving. And visitors came and wanted to know what this was all about.

We would stand there and talk to them and they’d say I’m not going to that theatre—that sort of thing. A policeman came and he says, what’s going on and we explained to him and he said, oh. So he went off and stood at the edge of the curb with his back to us, hands crossed behind his back, as if he didn’t see a thing.

Of course, there is the story of the Canadian, the President of the Canadian University Women.

I believe her name was Evelyn MacLaurin, who was visiting … she was English and I think she was on her way to Canada. And she was passing by and saw us there. She’d been reading about it in the papers. She walked up and down with us, trying to find out what this was all about. And she went eventually back to Canada and she wrote many letters.

Because of the letters to the Colonial Secretary and the publicity in England, in London, the matter was brought up in the House of Parliament.

Letters were written also by Georgine. The Governor always went on the opening night, which was for club members only. Eventually, the Governor was informed by the powers that be in England that he would have to attend only on public nights. This didn’t go down very well, so in the end they decided to open it up for everybody.

Anonymity

We got together as a Progressive Group. Actually, we were known as the Johnson Literary Society.

The Johnson Literary Society was not really a society. It was the name that we gave the bank account that we had to be using at the Bank of N.T. Butterfield and Son. And so I don’t know whether there’s still any money in there or whether they’ve closed it and destroyed it.

We were looked at by the outside as a social group. We played croquet and other sorts of games.

It appeared to be a social group. In fact, a couple of our friends said they had only joined because they thought this would extend their social life.

But it was a type of society that young people just back from college might want to be a part of, you know. It had no revolutionary connotations and so that, again, was assisting anonymity, which we felt was important.

We were afraid at that time to do too much at Rosalind’s because we found out after a while that the police were watching her home and one Sunday afternoon we were there and we saw the police detectives actually coming up in that area. So we went outside and we started playing a game on the lawn.

We realized that in order to do this, we were putting ourselves at risk—not only ourselves, but our parents, too. Because we knew that in the past that any young person, upstarts as they called them, came to try to make any changes, they really tried to put the pressure on their parents by calling in the mortgage, at just the drop of a hat. Like give them a couple of days or something like that, to get all the money that they had outstanding in the mortgage. So we wanted this particular group to be anonymous.

And why we were anonymous? Because we took the view that people would probably not pay much attention to us in our suggestions if they knew who we were. Because essentially we were quite ordinary people without any, how shall I say, reputation in Bermuda. And therefore, you’ve heard the old saying in Bermuda: “Who do you think you are?” And on that basis, a lot of good ideas are rejected.

Late evenings, we used to go into meeting and discuss strategies for making change in Bermuda.

The Secret Document

Kingsley Tweed
Street Activist

Wilfred Allen, now that does bring back memories. He was an amazing man, an amazing personality. He was logical. He was loud, but he was prolific in his denunciation of the oligarchy. That was the one thing that set him off. And even though he regarded me as being logical, on several occasions he regarded me as being rather naïve and, indeed, illogical. But Wilfred was Wilfred. Now, I don’t mean that in a … naïve, sentimental kind of way. I’m trying to relate to you what he was in essence as a person to me. And not only to me, I suspect to many other Bermudians because he was a powerhouse. And I tell you something. They had nobody in the oligarchy who could stand up to him. In fact, there was no one in the … in the confines of the black Diaspora that is across all social strata of Bermuda. He was … he stood alone in terms of what he believed. He was diametrically opposed to racial discrimination. He was diametrically opposed to control and manipulation. He was … he was an out and out socialist and he knew his socialism. The man went down deep, deep, deep, deep, deep into the very subsoil of … of those things that he believed in.

Edward de Jean
Early Activist

We really saw eye-to-eye on most things and, of course, the topics that came up were segregation, political empowerment of people. And we moved right along and we became very, very close friends, buddies. And I learned so much of Bermuda’s struggle through him and then became associated with it through him.

Eddie and Wilfred became very friendly with a young man named David Critchley.

We became a trio—Wilfred Allen and David Critchley and myself.

We formed a sort of discussion group and one of the things that they pointed out which we realized was quite relevant, that no change comes before the idea is placed strongly enough in enough minds to make a difference.

We were successful in doing an analysis of the problem in Bermuda.

We were quite aware that most of those in the group, if not all, might suffer some kind of repercussions if they published something like a book or pamphlet.

It was a secret document, although, as Wilfred would say, “I don’t see why we have to be secret about any damn thing.” Anybody wants … in fact, there were rumours that we were being monitored and people would be planted in the group. He says, “Let them plant whoever they want. Anybody wants to know anything, I will tell them.”

We decided that since Mr. Critchley was going to Canada that he could have it printed up there.

While it was hidden and “secret”, in quotes, it did a lot.

A good number of years later, it was seen by some of the powers that were and they thought there was going to be some kind of uprising. They were quite concerned about it. And we just laughed because we knew it had been out for several years.

The Plan

Eugene Woods
Member of The Progressive Group

The Progressive Group, in actual fact, had long-term and short-term objectives. The short-term objectives were to assemble a protest against the … the theatres and restaurants. The long-term objectives were to get into various groups and also ultimately into government, to influence government policies, certainly those policies that related to race in Bermuda.

It was started really as the development of a political force. We thought, in the absence of any political party in Bermuda, that the way to make change is through political action.


Each of the members had a portfolio. I had to worry about education. Somebody had fisheries. Somebody had whatever—public works. And at each meeting we would put together a paper on some aspect of a specialty.

Gerald Harvey
Member of The Progressive Group

They used to have their meetings, to arrange their meetings down at Rosalind and Ed’s house mostly. And in those days I was in the taxi business and I know I would leave here and go as far as Flatts, The Aquarium, park my car and walk up to Town Hill, you see, for fear that they … someone up there might see the taxi, give the number and they’d get to know who this chap is. So that’s what I used to do.

Despite the fact that I was enrolled those days in so many things—I was teaching at the base, I was teaching night school at the college, the Tech those days it was called, and so I spent a lot of time with the group preparing for the various activities that the group was involved in.

Florenz Maxwell
Member of The Progressive Group

We began courting. And he would come to visit me and I noticed that he was coming late at night and late on weekends.

I could tell her I was at the college. I could tell her I was at the base. We didn’t have classes Sundays and Saturdays and therefore I had to make up some reason why I was unable to be available.

And it was beginning to get on my nerves because the first thing that I thought that this fellow had someone else and I’m playing second fiddle to that someone else. And that didn’t go down with me. And as much as I found myself falling in love with him, I wanted to break this thing off before I just fell head over heels and he made a fool of me. So every time he came late, I built myself up to tell him I’m giving you your walking papers. But I couldn’t. I kept putting it off. And then one day he came and he said, “I’ve got something to tell you.” And I thought to myself, oh goodness me, now, he’s going to be the one to break the news to me instead of my having the pleasure to tell him goodbye. And he said to me, to my surprise, I want to take you some place, but I can’t tell you where it is or what’s it about until we get there.

The group was very careful about whom they took in. And very selective. And so that because of the situation I was in I put it to them to ask if my fiancée could be a part of the group. Now, just because I was a member, that wasn’t an automatic thing. The group was very disciplined. We couldn’t accomplish what we did if it was any other way. So therefore, it had to be discussed in a meeting.

Now, I was so surprised, I should say, by the fact that it’s not walking papers time that I went along with him and found out that I was a member, I was asked to join the Progressive Group. But when I think of this, if he hadn’t come forth on time, well, it would have been history. I don’t think that … well, we would not have been married. I would have dropped him, which would have been most unfortunate. On the other hand, he claims that he would have gone on with the Progressive Group and he thinks I would have accepted it. No.

Early Cinema Protest

Perhaps you’ll fly to Bermuda in a few brief, luxurious hours. By air, you’re in Bermuda almost before you know it.

I returned home from school for holiday from Canada. And of course, by that time I knew everything. My mother didn’t, as far as I was concerned, and one day I decided I was going to go to the theatre. Not the theatre, the moving … we call the moving picture theatre. And she looked at me as if to say what’s wrong with you. Why would you go there? It was the Playhouse Theatre. The Playhouse Theatre segregates. And she says, they segregate. Don’t you go there. And I said I want to see “Intermezzo” and I am going to the theatre. She was very disturbed. But I went anyway. This I will never forget because of the way I felt. I walked in. I’d been used to Canada. In Canada, I felt free. Canada was such a different place. But when I walked into this theatre, there were the blacks sitting on the side, blacks right down in the front and blacks nowhere else. The middle all white. I felt so uncomfortable. I was trying to stay there because I wanted to show my mother I was going to do what I wished to do. But I learned a great lesson: Don’t do things when you know that what you’re doing is wrong.


The theatre problem was one that people experienced all the time, partly because frequently there were more people to occupy the coloured section than there were seats in the coloured section and the white section would be left empty.

Comrade Richard Lynch
Street Activist

Somebody would come to the door and would say “Two upstairs” and a white person who had just come they could go upstairs. Now you’ve been in the line maybe about fifteen-twenty minutes and that person would go ahead of you. That irked me.

In the fifties, we decided, a group of us—my brother … he was in the House of Assembly and he was always speaking about segregation in the House of Assembly—and we decided that we were going to get together and go to a sit-in at the Playhouse Theatre. And we walked … we went there. We didn’t let certain of our group go because certain of our group had family—had a family, there were children. And the children would suffer because they had a mortgage and the mortgage would have been … the bank would have called in the mortgage sure enough. And so those of us who felt that we were secure enough thought we were going to go and sit in the centre at the Playhouse Theatre. We had one thing that we wanted to happen. We wanted to be arrested. We wanted to have headlines in the newspaper saying Such-and-Such a group were thrown out of the theatre and arrested because they would not sit where they were supposed to sit. So I can see us now, walking into the theatre and into the centre section. There were white people sitting there. They wouldn’t move. We pushed in. We’d say, “Excuse me”. We were very polite. We pushed in, “Excuse me, excuse me.” They kept their knees quite where they were. And we sat and we waited. We waited and waited to be arrested. The manager at the bank—I think he knew us—and he knew he wasn’t going to have any trouble. And he gave a signal: Leave them alone. So we weren’t arrested.

The Boycott – 1959

At one of the meetings, Rudy Commissiong reminded us that we had discussed somewhere along the line a boycott and that perhaps now was the time to do it.

First of all, we determined that we would have a boycott and then, following that, we were lucky enough to have people capable of getting the address lists for the Somerset cricket Club and the St. George’s Cricket Club, which was pretty vast by anybody’s judgement, and therefore we could send letters to every one of those people on the mailing lists.

Although we had sent out thousands of letters, but we were still concerned about it not reaching the majority of the people. But we didn’t have to worry about that because the Royal Gazette printed the letter to jeer us, but they didn’t realize they facilitated our particular objective of reaching the masses.

The idea was that we had to get a message across through the media on the appointed day that in order to destroy or disrupt this business of segregating people in the principal theatres in Hamilton, the way to do it was to boycott them.

It just so happened that while I was in St. FX, as part of the co-operative movement, all of the techniques that I needed for the Progressive Group I learned at college. When it came to putting posters together, when it came to how to stick them on the walls, when it came to mimeographing, when it came to doing these things efficiently and quickly. I learned all those techniques whilst at college.

Once the group decided to have a boycott, they realized that they needed a mimeograph machine to make up the posters.

Well, nobody in the group wanted to go out and purchase this machine for fear it could be traced to them.

We used to take in guests at that time and there was two Canadian ladies that were here. They came here for a week.

I approached these two ladies and I told them, listen, I explained to them what is happening here in Bermuda and they saw the need of this … yes, you really need one because that is not right for black people to be treated in this manner.

I took them to town, really, in my taxi then, purchased this machine and then we were able to take it to our meeting.

I used to write the handbills and the posters and on this it just said do not attend the cinema. If you want to desegregate, do not go to the cinema.

As it drew closer to the time, we posted notices on the various telephone poles and the trees and that sort of thing.

When it came to the night before the event was to start, we did it in a very precise manner. We divided the island into zones with at least a couple in charge of each zone and at specific time—ten-thirty, as a matter of fact—we put up all the posters on the electric light pole.

The man who was due to go with Stan did not show and Gerald, of course, had just come out of the hospital and I, of course, was very pregnant at that time. Nobody wanted me to go. Stan said no. Gerald said no. I said no, I’m going. So I went with Stan and the posters were … we started here at Scaur Hill and went right over to Boaz. And every time we saw a car coming, you know, we were … Stan would dash back to the car and … just so no one would know who was putting these posters out.

Bermuda was a quieter time then and at ten-thirty people were starting to go to sleep. So, you know, it was not too difficult to put them up without people seeing us do it.

The Street Protestors

We were swimming down Richardson’s swimming pool, swimming hole down Dock Hill. A Brother came down with this poster thing saying this is put out by the Progressive Group. I said well who the hell, somebody’s trying to imitate the Brotherhood Associa … the Black Brotherhood, which was my organization which most people didn’t know about anyhow because it was a secret organization. Not a witchcraft secret society type of organization. It was just an organization that had all of the … all of the structure of an organization of black men who were seeking ultimately to take power in Bermuda. And we had eighty-ninety guys together and we met and we kept it among ourselves and it remains so to this day.

Black people are going to boycott the theatre. That was big stuff in ’59. Big stuff. Even an election probably wasn’t even bigger than that because this probably involved more people, more younger people in particular.

Monday
June 15

Well, we went to town and there was a good congregation of people. They were quite excited and quite serious. There … it caused a certain amount of anxiety—probably a great deal of anxiety—among the powers, if I can call it that, who felt they were already discussing these things.

That particular Monday night I take for granted that if you’re boycotting you stay away. That’s my interpretation of boycott. But when I read the newspaper the next day, which was Tuesday, which said that all these people were around by the theatre seeing who went in, who was going in. I said, my God, that’s where I should have been.

Tuesday
June 16

Tuesday night I was … I said, well, I’m going down to see what it’s all about and do a bit of picketing, you know, do a bit of walking up and down. But it wasn’t until, you know, things started … you know, things were a little easy. So I saw what the opportunity … public speaking, there wasn’t something ‘cause I didn’t … I think I … I don’t know where it was I … in trade unions, but you know, I was pretty good so I could take care of a crowd. A crowd didn’t mean anything to me. And I think I used it up … seeing the crowd, I started to address the crowd spontaneously, nothing actually planned and, you know, the people took to it. And it was a good thing. It kind of galvanized people. People, you know, the interest that I’m saying as far as being overly concerned about … now who’s going in the theatre, that wasn’t the concern. It was concern that, oh, what’s the message here, what’s the plan? How things are being planned.

Wednesday
June 17

We had a meeting. We had a meeting down in Doc Allen’s mama’s horse stable that was eventually turned into a house. Living accommodation, a fixed abode. And he said, Tootie … Doc Allen, oh God, I remember it now. He had one of these recording machines. You know, the ones that went around and around counter-clockwise and … clockwise and counter-clockwise. And he said Tootie, you’ve got to speak. Tootie, you’ve got to speak, he says, ‘cause last night Doc Lynch spoke, you know, but Tootie, you’ve got to get out there.

The Mysterious Speaker

I knew that it kind of needed a more powerful kind of shouting preacher’s voice. That’s where I came into the picture. But we couldn’t hear Doc and it was wholly due to the fact that Jungle Bunny and all those guys, why they had this technical expertise and it was that.

Kenneth “Pres” Ebbin
Street Activist

He said, listen, we would use Reid’s car the battery. I’ll take my biggest speaker down there, take my mike and everything down and set it up. So that’s what we done.

The next night, these brothers, Jungle Bunny, I knew him by another name. We didn’t always call him Jungle Bunny. Robert. Robert. Guys brought a car up there on the top of the steps and they had a thing hooked up to a car battery. This is Jungle Bunny’s invention. And Doc Allen and all those boys and Kingsley Simmons and Porky Weeks, you know, and Buster Samuels, the guy that used to … wha, wha wha you you bbbboy’s doing, you know, and all of those brothers were out there, man. Then they pushed this microphone in front of me and there was this booming sound that kind of overwhelmed the crowd and there was this tremendous clapping.

I called the Managing Director of the Board the Honourable James Pearman, better known as Jim Pearman, and asked him his reaction to the boycott. And I was trying to be … not to appear as if I was happy about what was taking place. And he said, oh well, you know, it’s just a storm in a teacup. Those black people need their entertainment. It will be over. In a day or two it will blow over. So as soon as he said storm in a teacup I knew I had him. So I went along with him. I saw my headline story right there and then. Came out “Storm in a Tea Cup”.

Hell, they don’t know what a teacup is. They think a storm is a hurricane. A storm is a tornado, hurricane and a typhoon and a fire. You understand, Brother? And I mean a forest fire all wrapped up into one. Now, that’s a storm. And you can’t set that into no damned teacup.

Thursday
June 18

I was down there with Hilton and my sister-in-law Carol and our cousin Eva Robinson. We were sort of always in on these things. And we started listening and we realized that the words were quite familiar, particularly in the form in which they were being delivered. And we realized that somebody was reading from the book which we had planted several years before.

It was Kingsley Tweed who had the courage and the heroism at the time to go public, to read this actual document to the people gathered on Church Street, et cetera. And it was a really very unusual development. He read from the document because the document dealt with the limited franchise, segregation and discrimination.

It was an almost religious, deep spiritual matter with me ‘cause I thought that it was inhuman to deny me the right to vote when I possessed such immense capacity as an individual and, in a broader sense, as a people. And so any protest movement in Bermuda that was seeking to alter the status quo would not have been a proper, if you like, meaningful, sensible public or private discussion without the sentiment that I suspect most Bermudians felt with regarding the voting rights issue.

He was the man who really actually held up the document. It was no longer secret when he had it. And so there was a continuing linking of what we had done. And that took years. But then when the right individual, Kingsley Tweed, came along, he had in hand something he could show the people. It was not Marc Anthony reading Caesar’s will, but it was a very important act and produced terrific results.

Friday
June 19

He had a call for the ministry. He’s a reverend gentleman now, for that matter, and this natural ability to address a crowd, to bring in some scripture and some down-to-earth quotes excited the crowd. He talked and he talked and he invited interpolations. You know, he’d tell the people. People would say, yeah, yeah, like you get an Amen in a church and that sort of thing. And they just egged him on. Actually there was greater entertainment outside of the theatres for all comers than you could have gotten inside the theatre. It was live, unrehearsed and it was good.

It’s not just about the cinemas. It’s about a larger entity, where you can quantify your protest into a political reality, into a social, economic reality and take control of your lives, our lives. Take control of Bermuda. Not just about … so it was entertainment, but it was serious entertainment.

Non-violence
We have issued placards urging people not to use violence.
A Progressive Group

Monday
June 22


Had we gone a step further, we would have had a burn-down situation in Bermuda. But you know, we … it was controlled. And I … and the people with the posters, well, hell, they almost paled away into insignificance because we started making our own damn posters. There wasn’t as … there wasn’t as professionally done, as accomplished in terms of printing material or readable material, but they were there. And we put them up in broad daylight. It was a defiance. It was a rebellion against this kind of absolute power control freakery, the oligarchy.

Parliament was sitting and things had intensified. And Jim Pearman, who was also a member … forty thieves were everywhere and they were into everything. So he was a member of parliament. And when the black members called for some action, he said, “I will not be coerced by a bunch of hoodlums into doing something that I intend to do anyhow.” He said he intended to open up a new theatre which would be totally desegregated, but nobody believed him. So that was more fodder for Kingsley Tweed. Kingsley said, oh, you call us a hoodlum, huh. Well, I’ll let you know that it takes one to know one.

We knew that if we burned Front Street down tonight, you know, then we would have lost our cause. It would have been detrimental to our cause. We were sensible. We weren’t stupid. You know. And so all that crap there about hooligans and jailbirds and hoodlums and people trying to force us to relinquish control, it didn’t matter to us because we knew that he had to relinquish control and we knew that ultimately, that eventually, ultimately, that he would have concede now ‘cause we had nothing to concede.

Kenny Ebbin and those boys were able to, you know, able to kind of control the crowd, get the crowd … you know, getting the crowd more … ‘cause you didn’t want people to start misbehaving and those boys were able to do that.

Those three nights were very civil in the sense they had no type of events that was disruptive. It was nothing like that. It was very orderly. And as a matter of fact, Kingsley was prone to emphasis, right, that this is a peaceful demonstration. Right? The people just come out to show support, right, for the idea of desegregating all of the segregated places that was in Bermuda.

There was also an interesting thing happening. Somebody had organized a group of young men who didn’t have a reputation for the most gentlemanly or gentle manners and they were proudly walking up and down with the placards saying, “No Violence, Please”. Which was quite something to laugh about.

I knew that there was this core of black men, this solid mass of black strength and sweat and stink … this almost emasculated eunuch who had no political power or influence. I knew that he was there but I knew that he had big muscles in John Beaver and Sonny Boy Paul and all those boys, Whoopy Nisbett and Piggy Dale and Barley Bop and Poncey Goater, Poncey Manchester. They were all there, you know. And somebody eventually said, here comes Marsh. And somebody said, Marsh, if you touch Tootie Tweed tonight, you know, they kick your black son of a bitch in a mango box straight back to Bridgetown, Barbados. You know what I mean? And Marsh disappeared with the white guys, English policemen and they all disappeared into this … and they stood on the periphery and it became peripheral people on another orbit. Because we were in our element.

From Boycott to Protest

The people did show their solidarity and they came out in force to see what was happening. Then finally, after about three or four days, they had to close down the cinemas. Oh, we were most jubilant at that time, along with the people of Bermuda because we had at least achieved one goal.

The Recorder, and my office there, a nest for all commers, including some of the theatre, Forty Thieves establishment people, one of whom came to me and tried to strike a deal. We want to set up a committee or we have a committee set up. We want some dialogue. You know who these people are. Let’s see if we could get somebody to come over to the home of Attorney General in Fairylands and see if we could work something out.

There is nothing to negotiate The solution to the problem is immediate Desegregation of all Theatres.

They didn’t have anything to negotiate. Our objective was clear—desegregate the cinemas.

And so when he came up and said, well, we want to negotiate, we said go to hell. Negotiate? You didn’t negotiate with us when you wanted to segregate the theatres and the churches. Why the hell do you want to negotiate now? You know? You know, make the concession. We said that publicly.

There was always somebody in the background giving directions, you know. Somebody saying, look, why don’t you do this, look, we’re going to do this here. But those people in the background, their advice was good and we just followed their advice.

Wednesday night the boycotters, determined not to be knocked off-side by the closing of the movie houses, staged their biggest ever demonstration – a 200 vehicle motorcade to St. George’s.

We sat down and drew up all the plans for this, for these motorcades and made the information public. Well, we didn’t go to the press on that occasion. We just had a … our drop man, who was Gerald Harvey.

I left Rosalind’s with a bundle of posters and they were having a meeting up at the city hall parking lot and there were so many people, hundreds of people, and the only way I could get rid of those posters was to get in the centre and just quietly drop them to my feet and then walk off. And I heard someone say, ”What is this? What is this?” And everyone went in that direction and they picked them up and before I knew it they were just passing all these posters out. And that worked.

The voice of the man known now as “Mysterious Speaker” – a voice becoming well known in Bermuda—repeated the arguments that have been shouted through Hamilton recently.

I sat in the car for about fifteen minutes, speaking through this microphone. And I had papers in my hand and I got out of the car and then I became more open and more robust, more vigorous, rigorous, you know, more to the point. And reminded the people of St. George’s and St. David’s that this boycott and the protests were here to liberate them from the political indiscretions of the rulers of Bermuda. And that’s how that went. It was a rather successful meeting.

Friday
June 26

Big motorcade set out, as directed by the street corner crowd. Went to Somerset. It was held at the Royal Naval Cricket Field.

Last night a similar motorcade wended its way to Somerset, where a crowd in the neighbourhood of 1,000 turned out to hear the protest.

We eventually got to Somerset. We emerged in front of the street where there was a Portuguese gentleman having kind of a supermarket thing. And they were all there, these Portuguese, with the shop windows barred ‘cause the word reached

The speaker drew laughter when he said he had read a letter in yesterday’s “Royal Gazette,” telling the motorcade to stay out of Somerset.

… got there before that it was coming to break up Somerset, you know. No, we were simply inviting the people of Somerset to come and join part of this progressive movement, you know, of protests and demand, you know, to come and share in our aims and objectives.

Tonight it is understood that an appeal for 8,000 persons to meet in Hamilton to protest has been made.

Then they went back to Hamilton and they said we are going to St. George’s the next time. Five thousand people we want to get to St. George’s. That was what they had hoped for, but they certainly would have got twice as many.

Saturday
June 27

They knew that they had no alternative to desegregate. So rather than make it appear as if they had yielded to the protestors by opening the theatres desegregated from a given date, they decided they were going to have a circuitous route towards the same objective. They decided that they were going to open up the hotels. Pre-emptive move. Which worked. So it came out. The news came out. We had a stop press out of … in our paper. Stop press. Castle Harbour Hotel management have instructed their people not to turn away anybody and so on, et cetera. So the word went out that the hotels had desegregated, restaurants had desegregated and that all public places in Bermuda would open up desegregated.

A People’s Victory

Wednesday
July 1

I think it’s important to add also that the whites did not realize just how much the blacks of this island hated the segregated system and how much they were just looking for someone to take the lead, such as was done by the theatre boycott.

We certainly proved that we were able to influence the public. And it also started the domino effect.

It advanced the cause of the working class movement into a solid mass organization. Came out of the boycott. People would deny that, you know, but it came out of Mazumbo. Do you know what I’m saying? I don’t want to deny anybody the huge contributions. It came out of Ira Philips’s pen of protest at the Bermuda Recorder. It came out of Hilton Hill, you know, speaking with a sense of purpose and decency about the possibilities where Bermuda could or could not go.

So there’s one thing that Kingsley said that was very significant. He said the people who draw the plan, the architects of the building, aren’t necessarily the ones who build the building. So he was projecting himself and prayers and among Jungle Bunny, the Doc Lynches and everybody who had the courage of their convictions to speak up as the builders of the building.

Publicly members of the
Progressive Group joined
the fight for Universal
Adult Suffrage.

As much as we were publicly a lot of other things and privately the Progressive Group, at least it felt to me that this was our organization and I felt that we could preserve it better if we remained a secret.

The Progressive Group
remained secret
for 30 years

The people who got up and spoke also did a sterling job because they produced the spontaneity that we had not anticipated, a level that we had not anticipated and they could take the heat off of us because we felt, at one point we felt that we might have been exposed, they might have caught onto us and so the sort of thing they went looking in the wrong direction. And the other thing is that all of those persons who spoke publicly, you know, suffered economically. And that’s a reality. That’s the reality of the time.

The thing I regret most is that I didn’t stay in Bermuda. Perhaps I was too much of a coward. I ran for my life. I was running for my life. The man said we got a bullet with your name on it and I thought, well hell, I ain’t going to let you shoot me.

Kingsley Tweed left
Bermuda in 1961 after
receiving threats
against his life.
He now lives in London
And has not returned to Bermuda.

But I regret not having stayed in Bermuda, for that one principal reason, that I never cast a vote in a general election in Bermuda. But I applaud all those who did.

Universal Adult Suffrage
was granted in 1968
We were Bermudians and we had brought about our own changes, that this was important for the youth to see that the changes that took place was not something that occurs, not something that was imposed, not something that came from abroad. It was simply a group of students, people who’d just come from school, who decided that they wanted to make changes. And therefore, I was finally convinced to make the activities of the group fully public.

They picked up the spirit of the entire movement and kept it going in a most effective and controlled way, which made a tremendous impression on everybody. And it wasn’t long after that, because of the tremendous support, the whole affair turned out to be one which brought people together like they’d never been brought together before. And it really became a people’s victory.


End Credits
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