GUEST COMMENTARY: BY ROSEMARY CLARICE HANNA
(EDITOR’S NOTE: My Facebook friend Rosemary Clarice Hanna on Saturday, January 2, 2021, re-posted this excerpt from her book “PICTORIAL HISTORY AND MEMORIES OF NASSAU’S OVER-THE-HILL,” which was originally published in February of 2013. It is of such tremendous historical significance that I decided to publish it as a Guest Commentary in BAHAMAS CHRONICLE.)
NASSAU, Bahamas — Claudius Roland Walker, MD, was an extraordinarily brilliant man who was born and lived most of his life in Bain Town. He was born on 6th May 1897, and he was an only child. His parents were Claudius F. and Patience Walker (nee Robinson). He was an accomplished musician, who played the organ, piano and double bass, and he was a linguist who spoke Spanish, French and German. He also taught mathematics and established the Bahamas Technical Institute, an evening school for adults. Classes were held at St. Agnes Schoolroom.
He attended the Boys’ Central School in Nassau and he furthered his education at the Rhodes Preparatory School and College of Liberal Arts in New York. He obtained a Bachelor of Science Degree from Howard, Washington, D.C. It was in a German class at Howard University that he met Mabel Holloway of Greensville, South Carolina. He subsequently entered Meharry Medical School in Nashville, Tennessee and graduated in 1929.
Juliette Walker-Barnwell describes her parents as romantics because they were married for two years before they told anyone. When he returned to The Bahamas in 1930, Dr. Walker opened his private practice on Meeting Street. After the first daughter was born and passed away, Mrs. Hattie Holloway came to visit and she wanted to take her daughter back to the United States from what she described as “this God forsaken place”, but Mabel stayed.
As did most families in those days, the Walkers had a large family of six children — namely, David (deceased), Roland, Reinhard (deceased, and after whom the Reinhard Hotel was named), Juliette, and twins Linelle and Lillian. Roland is a psychologist, Reinhard was a mechanic, Juliette is a retired teacher and Public Officer, David was a police officer, Lillian is a retired Public Officer and Linelle is a physician and surgeon.
During their childhood the Walker children all had to do chores and they worked hard. In those days everyone grew their own fruits and vegetables, and during the summer holidays the Walker children got up early to tend the garden. The land South of Wulff Road was undeveloped or farmland and the Walkers’ farm was located on their property on Blue Hill Road, where the Bahamas Electricity Corporation now parks its vehicles. When they went to the farm, the children had to stop to collect water from the public pump on Blue Hill Road for watering the plants. In addition to working in the yard, they all were taught how to cook. The girls were also taught how to sew, smock, knit and crochet, and all of the children went to music lessons. David went to tailor trade. In 1943 Roland and Reinhard went to the US to attend high school.
The Walkers were friendly with the Marshalls who lived around the corner on King Street. Mrs. Katrina Marshall was the daughter of well-known straw worker, Bertha Brown, and through her association with the Marshalls, Juliette also learnt how to plait straw and decorate handbags with raffia.
On the wall in the hallway of her home, there is a picture of young Juliette presenting a poem to the Duchess of Windsor upon the arrival of the Royal Couple in The Bahamas. Juliette recalls that she was upset because her hair was plaited, and she had a ribbon bow on top of her head while the other little girl who took part in the ceremony had candy curls. Juliette also remembers that had she followed the instructions to curtsy and then walk backward she surely would have fallen off the platform because there was little room for that maneuver.
Childhood entertainment in the Walker home included programmes put on in the hallway between the living room and dining room, with Juliette and her siblings and neighbourhood children doing skits, reciting poems, singing and playing the piano. Juliette says that she loved to sing and play the piano, but one day when Dr. Walker passed by he said, “Oh, my poor child cannot sing.” Then when she went off to college and wrote home to say that one of her music teachers offered to give her voice lessons, Dr. Walker responded that she should forget it, because the teacher probably only wanted her money.
On their visit to the United States in 1943 it was difficult to return to The Bahamas because Mrs. Walker was an American and the United States Government was not allowing its citizens to leave the country during World War II. So the younger Walker children remained with their mother and went to school in Florida until permission was granted for Mrs. Walker to leave. The other children were enrolled in Western Senior School. Juliette tells the story of why she was sent home by then Headmaster, Mr. Ted Glover. Mabel Walker did not agree with children being required to wear uniforms and sent her daughter to school in coulottes (which looked like a skirt), something that was not done in those days. Dr. Walker did not take kindly to Juliette being sent home and he took her with him when he went to the Board of Education office and pointed out that he did not see anywhere in the law where it was mandatory for children to wear school uniforms. Juliette returned to school in her coulottes and was most embarrassed when Mr. Glover called a special assembly to tell the whole school what had happened.
Not long after that Juliette was in a tamarind tree in the yard when three Roman Catholic nuns passed by and asked her where she went to school and asked if she would like to attend St. Francis Xavier Academy. The matter was later discussed with her parents and they agreed for Juliette to attend the Academy, which was at that time located at the Sisters of Charity Convent on West Hill Street opposite what is now the Graycliff Restaurant. There were only a few black students and they were taught by the nuns. When asked if she wore a uniform to St. Francis Xavier Academy, Juliette replied, “Yes, because it was a private school.”
Aside from all of his professional and academic accomplishments, Dr. Walker was also a builder, and he constructed the Reinhard Hotel at the corner of Blue Hill Road to accommodate black visitors who were not allowed to stay in the established hotels because of race discrimination. In the late thirties he moved his medical office, which was located in rooms on the South side of his home. He later moved his practice to the ground floor of the hotel where there was also a pharmacy.
The Reinhard Hotel was also the venue for wedding receptions and other social events. David and Annette Cartwright, who were married at St. Agnes Church, are pictured at left at their wedding reception at the Reinhard Hotel in 1961. The hotel was also the headquarters for the Progressive Liberal party (PLP) leading up to the historic 1967 elections. I was working in the office as a volunteer and this is where I first met Arthur Foulkes and Oswald Pyfrom, who were in charge of the headquarters office.
In the aftermath of the Burma Road Riot on 1st June 1942, Dr. Walker was chosen by The Bahamas Federation of Labour to be its spokesman to address the Duke of Windsor’s Committee on behalf of the Bahamian workers. In his book, “The Faith That Moved the Mountain”, Sir Randol Fawkes quotes Dr. Walker as he spoke on 3rd June 1943:
“We Bahamians are the sons and grandsons, the daughters and granddaughters of those who arrived. We seek to reclaim that which was snatched from us over 300 years ago – our dignity and self-respect as human beings.
“During the interval between then and now, we have become the most brainwashed people in the world. You see, teachers and missionaries did not tell us that there was a period in ancient history when Rome was barbarous and Greece slept but Africa flourished with its own governments, economic systems, and military forces, religious and social organisations. Indeed, in the very beginnings of mankind, the African nation of Egypt occupied a central role in world history.
“We were taught that our ancestors contributed nothing to the advancement of civilization. Yet it was common knowledge that Africans were the first to practice agriculture – the first of the cultures – along the banks of the Niger River. Neither did they tell my people, Gentlemen, that the earliest known pottery was created in Africa more than thirty thousand years ago, during the Paleolithic (stone) age.
“…It is a psychological truism that an oppressed and rejected people soon come to see themselves through the eyes of the oppressors. As a result, the black man soon learned to hate himself and others in his own race.”
A.D. Hanna describes Dr. Walker as the bravest man he ever knew, considering the fact that during the darkest days of discrimination, he fought alone against Bay Street in his efforts to improve the condition of blacks in The Bahamas. He kept the people informed by producing his newspaper, The Voice, and gave it away if they could not afford to pay. In hindsight, AD thinks that the PLP should have embraced Dr. Walker.
During the forties and fifties, Dr. Walker was one of the representatives for the Southern District of New Providence in the House of Assembly. He pushed for the establishment of the Southern Public Library, which took place in 1951. The library is now located on the North side of the Southern Recreation Grounds. In 2004 the name was changed to The Lillian G. Weir-Coakley Public Library in honour of the long-time librarian who assisted generations of Bahamians in their quest for knowledge.
Mrs. Walker, who was a trained social worker, was the Headmistress at Woodcock Primary School. When the Board of Education wanted to change the name of the school she resisted and continued to refer to the school as Woodcock because Father John Woodcock had left his money to the school for the education of the children of Grant’s Town. After a long time, Mrs. Walker won the struggle to retain the name. The modern Woodcock Primary School stands opposite the Walker home on Hospital Lane, where Juliette still resides. (She died in 2017)
© 2013 Rosemary C. Hanna
