By OSWALD T. BROWN
NASSAU, Bahamas — Prime Minister Philip E. Davis on Tuesday, February 7, paid tribute to “The Sunshine Boys” during remarks delivered at the celebration of the 50th anniversary of Sunshine Holdings Limited, whose foundation as one of the most successful business conglomerates in The Bahamas was established by a group of young Black entrepreneurs the same year The Bahamas became an independent nation 50 years ago.
“Today, we celebrate the 50th anniversary of Sunshine Holdings Limited and pay tribute to The Sunshine Boys, who dared to dream and brought their vision to life. We acknowledge the company’s continued commitment to excellence and its impact on the development of The Bahamas,” The Prime Minister said in a post by the Office of the Prime Minister on Facebook on Wednesday, February 8.
By any yardstick or measuring rod, the evolution of Sunshine Holdings Ltd. to the major diversified business entity it is today is a remarkable story that has its roots in the struggle for majority rule in the 1960s, which spawned a coterie of well-educated young Black men who were inspired by the political accomplishments of leaders of the “Black Revolution” like Lynden O. Pindling, Arthur A. Foulkes, Warren Levarity, Jeffrey Thompson, George A. Smith, Clement Maynard, A. Loftus Roker, and Dr. Eugene Newry, among others, who were members of the National Committee for Positive Action (NCPA), an activist group within the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP).
A split in the PLP in May of 1970 led to a group known as the Dissident Eight subsequently forming a coalition with moderate members of the former United Bahamian Party (UBP) government, whose brutal racist policies had kept Black Bahamians subjected to second-class citizenship in the country of their birth.
Naturally, this political development was harshly criticized by many young Black political activists, who could not comprehend how some of their “political heroes” could join forces with their former white oppressors while the sting of the UBP’s unbridled racism was still a painful memory and, in many respects, ongoing.
Included in this group was Franklyn Wilson, who was a 21-year-old business and commerce student at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, when the PLP won the January 10, 1967 general election.
After graduating in 1968, prior to becoming one of the most accomplished businessmen in The Bahamas, Wilson was one of the most promising young politicians in The Bahamas. While he was still a student at Dalhousie, he and his older brother, Stanley Wilson, along with “Maddison (Maddy) McDonald, Hervis Bain, Kendolyn Cartwright, Sheila Taylor, George Bethel and Micheal Turner, formed an ideological group of aspiring young Bahamians. They named their new organisation – Unicoll,” according to an article in the Nassau Guardian on Thursday, September 7, 1967.
In 1972, Franklyn Wilson ran as a PLP candidate for Grants Town and became one of the youngest persons to have ever been elected to the House of Assembly, after the PLP won 29 of the 38 seats in the House. For whatever reason, Wilson did not seek reelection in the general elections held on July 19, 1977, which the PLP again won by a landslide, capturing 30 of the 38 seats.
Having put politics on the “backburner”, Wilson decided to concentrate on his professional development, for which he had received a first-class education at Dalhousie University. He joined forces with a group of young entrepreneurs and established Sunshine Holdings Ltd. on February 7, 1973. Their first venture was Sunshine Theatres Ltd., a movie theatre on Baillou Hill Road, just south of St. Barnabas Anglican Church.
“Sunshine Holdings Ltd. itself was incorporated on November 17, 1975, to be the corporate vehicle to concretize the commitment to diversification,” according to information gleaned from the Internet, which also notes that Media outlets “called these founders ‘The Sunshine Boys’ and did so in a way which invoked racial and other comparisons with The Bay Street Boys, who had a long history of being the pillars of the overall economy.”
The rest is history.
