COMMENTARY: BY OSWALD T. BROWN
WASHINGTON, D.C., December 9, 2019 — I am currently working on my memoirs, which when completed will be a fact-based account of my life from I was a boy growing up at Stanyard Creek, Andros, with my grandparents Ben and Mabel Elliott and will include — to the best of my recollection — details of my more than 50 years on the front-line of political developments in The Bahamas.
I had initially planned to do a follow-up to my novel WOES OF LIFE, which was published in August of 2017, and the closing chapter was purposely crafted to set the stage for a continuation of that story entitled “ATHOL ISLAND: THE ROAD TO INDEPENDENCE,” but I was extremely disappointed in the overall sales of WOES OF LIFE, so I have decided to put writing a follow-up on hold until I have completed my memoirs.
There are, I am sure, many Bahamians who still do not appreciate the valiant efforts of the Band of Brothers who defied the vicious ramifications of racism that existed in pre-1967 Bahamas to engage in the struggle for majority rule that culminated with the Progressive Liberal Party’s momentous political victory at the polls on January 10, 1967, ushering in the first Black-majority government in The Bahamas.
My recollections of the prevailing racist conditions that Black Bahamians had to endure during the struggle for majority rule are clear, vivid and intact; hence my decision to write my memoirs before the passage of time negatively influences the clarity of my thought process, and I decided that the opening chapters should be about my idyllic childhood at Stanyard Creek, Andros.
My grandfather, Benjamin Elliott, was a giant of a man — or so it seemed to me as a six-year-old boy clutching his hand as we walked through a narrow track road from the Elliott estate leading to a cove called “Pa Ben Landing” on the Western Ridge of a tranquil creek that separates the West and East ridges of Stanyard Creek, which was often referred to as the Garden of Andros.
I have told the story on more than one occasion in columns and commentaries I have written about the loving care my grandparents provided for seven grandchildren who grew up with them at Stanyard Creek. In addition to myself, the other six grandchildren were Sylvia Elliott, a daughter of my Uncle Clarence Elliott; cousins Agnes, Beryl and John, children of Uncle Lee; my late sister Elthreada Brown McPhee; and my cousin Alphonso “Boogaloo” Elliott, a son of my late Uncle Audley.
Although she was my first-cousin, I grew up calling Sylvia Elliott-Ross, who died in 2012, Aunt Sylvia because she and Papa and Mama’s youngest daughter — Aunt Maria Elliott-Forbes, who died in August of this year — were around the same age and they grew up like sisters.
Consequently, all of the other grandchildren who were left in the care of Papa and Mama, while our parents were on “The Contract” in the United States or working somewhere else in The Bahamas, were fortunate to have two very gifted and imaginative persons like Aunt Sylvia and Aunt Maria as mentors. Both were “monitors” at Stanyard Creek All-Age School, which meant that us younger grandchildren had the benefit of two “teachers” living in the same house with us. They both ended up choosing teaching as their life-long careers, and there are unquestionably many of their former students in The Bahamas who can vouch, as I certainly can, for the fact that Maria Elliott Forbes and Sylvia Elliott Ross were two excellent teachers.
We all grew up in a very strict Roman Catholic family. My grandfather was the catechist at St. Rita’s Roman Catholic Church, where I was baptized and christened, and attending church every Sunday was mandatory. In fact, in addition to Sunday morning Mass and Evening Service, the grandchildren also went to Sunday School in the afternoon when the teachings of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ were nurtured by Bible study, prayer and other spiritual disciplines.
The various settlements of Andros were not easily accessible by roads back then, and we had a priest named Father Alto who used to make the rounds of the various settlements by sea in a sailboat called The Star. Because Andros is the largest of the Bahama Islands, Father Alto visited Stanyard Creek once every three weeks or so, and on those Sundays when he was not there, Papa was responsible for conducting church services; however, because he was not an ordained priest he could not give Holy Communion.
My early childhood growing up at Andros will be well-documented in the opening chapters of my memoirs and will set the stage for my teenage years growing up in Nassau and my subsequent introduction to politics after I joined the staff of the Nassau Daily Tribune in May of 1960 when I first met Sir Arthur Foulkes, who was then the City Editor at The Tribune.
I have noted on more than one occasion that Sir Arthur has been as influential in my life as a young adult as my grandfather Benjamin Elliott was in my youthful years. Aside from being my journalistic mentor, Sir Arthur was also my political mentor and one of a cabal of young Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) members in the late 1950s and the 1960s who were members of an activist group within the PLP known as the National Committee for Positive Action (NCPA) that in my view was one of the main reasons for the PLP’s historic victory at the polls on January 10, 1967.
I think it is vitally important that this era of The Bahamas’ political development be historically documented because many current young political activists do not fully understand the significance of The Bahamas’ political evolution since the formation of the PLP in 1953. In fact, prior to the formation of the PLP, there were no political parties in The Bahamas and the “internal political affairs” of this former colony of Great Britain were ostensibly controlled – under the supervision of a British Governor – by a group of white men known as the Bay Street Boys, who only decided to organize themselves as the United Bahamian Party (UBP) after the PLP’s impressive performance as a political party in the 1956 general election.
Of course, as an Androsian, the fact that in 1956 PLP candidates Clarence A. Bain and Cyril St. John Stevenson soundly defeated two Bay Street Boys who had been long-time representatives for Andros — signaling the likelihood that a similar political warning was on the horizon for the other Out Islands, as the Family Islands were called at the time – will be fodder for my literary excursion into historical facts while writing my memoirs.
Hopefully, current personal problems that have created some “mountains to climb” in my life will soon dissipate and I can get back to doing some serious work on my memoirs.
