WASHINGTON, D.C., March 13, 2020 – Allan S. Blondell was born at The Bahamas General Hospital, now known as Princess Margaret Hospital, on March 6, 1947. Although he uses the last name Blondell, he is a member of the well-known Bahamian Benjamin family. His late father, Allan J. Benjamin, fathered two children with Yvonne Duplessy Blondell after her divorce in the 1940s from Trinidadian George Blondell, with whom she moved to The Bahamas from Haiti when he was assigned to be valet to the then Anglican Archbishop Spence Burton.
Allan and his sister Stephanie Blondell spent their early childhood on Hawkins Hill, Mount Royal Avenue, and attended Eastern Prep. No. 1 on Shirley Street before transferring to Sacred Heart Roman Catholic School on Shirley Street.
The family migrated to Miami, Florida, in 1958 when Allan was 11 and Stephanie was 10, and they attended Holy Redeemer Catholic School on N.W. 71st Street in the Liberty City, a thriving suburb of the then rigidly segregated Miami populated by middle and upper-income Black Americans that was also a favourite area to live for Bahamian migrants moving to South Florida.
After graduating from Holy Redeemer in 1961, Allan was among the first Black students to Integrate Miami’s all-boys Archbishop Curley High School, and Stephanie was enrolled in St Francis Academy Boarding School in Baltimore, Maryland.in 1962.
Even before his family moved to Miami, Allan recalls that he had his “first experience with American Apartheid in 1956 as a nine-year-old.”
“I was going to spend the summer of 1956 in New York City with my father’s sister Olivia Benjamin James, and was travelling with an adult friend of my Mum,” Allan said, in a recent online interview. “We went from Nassau to Miami on an overnight cruise on The Yarmouth Castle (one of the cruise ships that made regular trips to Nassau) and we took a Greyhound Bus from Miami to New York City. We were unable to obtain a cab from the port to the Greyhound Bus Station in downtown Miami, and I was introduced to White and Colored Water Fountains in upstate Florida and had to order my meal outside at a window near garbage cans and eat my hamburger outside.”
Noting that his aunt in New York was “a women of means,” Allan added, “I had a wonderful time in New York City.”
He said his family’s move to Miami December of 1958 “was my first introduction to my color having some significance,” as the American racist system continuously attempted “to paint me as being ‘Less Than’ because of race. My self-confident Bahamian upbringing, however, was more than a defense for the things I experienced and witnessed.”
“In 1963 , when I was 16 and a tenth grade student at Archbishop Curley, I obtained my driver’s license and My Aunt Olivia sent me a 1955 Buick Roadmaster as a gift,” Allan recalls. “My most traumatic racist experience was to take place with my car. After studying and doing homework at the newly integrated Central Library in downtown Miami on Biscayne Boulevard, I left the library closing time at 9 p.m. I was one of very few black kids with a car, and two white police officers approached me as I was unlocking my car and asked, ‘Is this your car?’ and requested to see my driver’s license and registration. I provided my license, but did not have the registration. I was arrested, fingerprinted and put in a holding cell at the police station on N.W. 12th Avenue.”
When he appeared before a Judge, Allan said he was fined $19 and ordered to bring in his car’s registration.
Some years later, after having obtained Undergraduate and Graduate Degrees, Allan said, he was questioned about the 1963 arrest while “being interviewed for American Citizenship in 1988 at the Federal Courthouse in Baltimore, Maryland.”
“That experience informed me that being Black in America is one thing, but do not be in the Criminal Justice System and be Black,” Allan said. “The interviewer accepted my response and I was sworn in as a U.S. citizen.”
After graduating from Archbishop Curley High School in 1965, Allan went on to Miami- Dade Community College, from where he received an AA Degree 1967, and subsequently received his BA degree from Howard University in Washington, D.C., in 1971.
Allan had planned to become a lawyer, but after completing his BA Degree at Howard, he began his career as a teacher in The Alternative High School in Arlington County Virginia Public Schools Adult Education Program, and during his tenure in Arlington he completed my Master’s Degree, which provided him with the opportunity to become an Alternative High School Administrator.
After eight years in the Virginia school system, he embraced the opportunity to attend Nova University Law in South Florida and moved back to Florida, but while attending Law School, an opportunity presented itself to enter The lucrative K-12 Textbook Publishing Industry, in which he had a very successful career that included, according to his Facebook page: Former Sales at Savin Business Machines, Inc.; Former VP Business Development at Science Weekly; former VP Strategic Initiatives, Great Source Division at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; former Sales Account Manager at Simon & Schuster; former Sales at McGraw-Hill.
Allan and his wife Helena Duhart Blondell — a 1965 graduate of historic Booker T. Washington High School in Miami, who was among the first seven Black stewardess hired and trained by United Airlines in 1968 — were married May 31, 1969 at historic Mount Zion Baptist Church, Overtown Miami. They live in Ellicott City, Maryland, have one son, Allan St. Johnn II; and three grandchildren, 18-year-old Allan St. Johnn Blondell III, and 7-year-old twins, Lucy and Benjamin Blondell.
Helena celebrated 50 years flying with United Airlines in 2018.
Meanwhile, Allan’s sister Stephanie Blondell Stubbs has been married since 1967 to Bahamian Architect Chris Stubbs, who practiced in Nassau until 1975 when he moved to Columbia, Maryland, where his company, Custom Contemporary Homes & Development, was well established until the 1990s.They are now retired and live in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Allan, who celebrated his 73rd birthday on March 6, says that he has “been spending my retirement connecting with my Benjamin Family in The Bahamas, England, Japan and the USA.”
(NOTE: BAHAMIANS IN THE DIASPORA was introduced by Oswald T. Brown as a regular feature when he was Press, Cultural Affairs and Information Manager at The Bahamas Embassy in Washington, D.C. prior to the change of government in The Bahamas in May of 2017. Mr. Brown is now President of THE BROWN AGENCY LLC, a Public Relations and Marketing company in D.C., which publishes an online publication, BAHAMAS CHRONICLE, aimed at keeping Bahamians and nationals from other Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries up-to-date with events in their respective countries.)
