By OSWALD T. BROWN
WASHINGTON, D.C., October 9, 2023 – On this National Heroes Day, I would like to pay a special tribute to the most preeminent hero in my life whom I first met when I was 18 years old and walked into the newsroom of The Nassau Daily Tribune on a Monday morning in May of 1960.
It is no secret to those who were regular readers of my column OSWALD BROWN WRITES, which I introduced when I worked with BAHAMIAN TIMES in the 1960s, that I have a great deal of love and admiration for Sir Arthur Alexander Foulkes. He is one of two individuals — the other being the late Sir Etienne Dupuch, the then Editor and Publisher of The Tribune — who were responsible for laying the foundation for whatever I have accomplished in my more than 60 years as a journalist.
When I first met Mr. Foulkes, he was the News Editor at The Tribune, which was a remarkable accomplishment at the time for a young black man. What was even more remarkably was the fact that Mr. Foulkes was not university-trained, but learned to write as a linotype operator setting copy for The Tribune.
The Linotype machine was “a hot metal typesetting system” that “became one of the mainstay methods to set type, especially small-size body text, for newspapers, magazines, and posters from the late 19th century to the 1970s and 1980s, when it was largely replaced by phototypesetting and computer typesetting,” as documented by Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia.
Mr. Foulkes was born in Mathew Town, Inagua, on May 11, 1928, son of the late Dr. William A. Foulkes and the late Mrs. Julie Foulkes nee Maisonneuve. He was educated at public schools in Mathew Town and in Nassau and first worked at The Nassau Guardian as a linotype operator. He subsequently joined The Tribune at the age of 20 as a linotype operator in 1948.
Sir Etienne always wrote his editorials by hand and Mr. Foulkes became his favourite linotype operator to typeset what he wrote. In the process, Mr. Foulkes not only learned to write, but became a proficient wordsmith. Indeed, there was a story “floating around” The Tribune’s newsroom during my early years there that Mr. Foulkes changed the construction of a sentence in one of Sir Etienne’s editorials and was later promoted from being a linotype operator to the newsroom.
I never found out whether that story was true or not, but I have first-hand knowledge of Mr. Foulkes’ erudition as a wordsmith. He took a special interest in my journalistic training and always encouraged me to read, noting that “reading is the basis of all knowledge.” Shortly after I read James Baldwn’s “Another Country” for the first time, I used the word “metamorphosis,” which was newly added to my vocabulary, in a story I submitted to Mr. Foulkes as News Editor.
Mr. Foulkes summoned me to his desk, and asked, “What does metamorphosis mean?”
I responded, “It means change.”
He then advised me, “Well, why don’t you say change? Who are you trying to impress?”
I sheepishly returned to my seat around the rectangular work station where reporters sat.
Mr. Foulkes also provided me with some wise counselling when my sometimes-questionable behavior outside of the work environment suggested that I needed his sage advice. I am indeed a much better human being today because of the special interest he invested in my personal development.
It is indisputable that he was strongly committed to the progressive struggle; indeed, a point that I often made in the past when discussing this issue is that no one individual in this country made a greater sacrifice to the struggle that led to the Progressive Liberal Party’s victory in the 1967 general election than Arthur Alexander Foulkes did. No one individual put as much as he did on the line in 1962 when he agreed to offer himself as a candidate for the PLP in the general election.
Several of those who in later years basked in the glory of the PLP’s eventual victory in 1967 and became very wealthy because of their involvement in the PLP government flatly declined to run in 1962 when they were approached by the party because they did not want to jeopardize their comfortable jobs.
Not so with Mr. Foulkes. At the time, he had a very financially rewarding job as News Editor of The Tribune and a huge family to support, including six or seven children at the time, but he nonetheless made a decision that very few people in his position would have had the courage to make, especially considering the area where the PLP had chosen for him to run.
Arthur Foulkes and Arthur Hanna were the two PLP candidates in the Far Eastern District. Their United Bahamian Party (UBP) opponents were Jeffrey Johnstone and Pierre Dupuch, the son of his boss, Sir Etienne. Surely, Sir Arthur must have considered the prospect that his future employment at The Tribune would be jeopardized by his decision to run against the son of his boss. It took a special brand of courage for a young man with six or seven children to put his job on the line for a cause in which he believed.
In examining the pros and cons of making such a decision, he obviously had to think of how it would affect his family, but the PLP had made tremendous strides politically and, with women voting for the first time, the party appeared to be on the brink of defeating the UBP at the polls, if it could field a good slate of candidates.
As it turned out, the PLP did not win that election, and Sir Arthur lost his bid for a seat in the House. The results may have been different for him, however, if some supporters of the PLP had not been hoodwinked into thinking that both PLP candidates would win their seats, but it was important for Arthur Hanna to be elected as the senior representative. The voting process at the time allowed for the election of a senior and junior representative in some districts. Under this system, voters in areas where two candidates were running for a party could give each candidate a vote or to “plumper” one candidate by giving him both votes, but the two votes would only count as one.
Arthur Hanna tallied the highest number of votes, including more than 100 plumper votes, to be elected as the senior member, while Mr. Johnstone finished second to be elected as the junior member. However, his margin of victory over Mr. Foulkes was less than 50 votes, which meant that if 51 of those who gave Mr. Hanna a plumper vote had supported Mr. Foulkes, he would have been the junior member.
After he failed in his bid for a House seat in 1962, Mr. Foulkes resigned from The Tribune to become the founding editor of The Bahamian Times, the official organ of the PLP. No one who was involved in the progressive struggle at the time can honestly dispute the fact that The Bahamian Times played a key role in the PLP’s victory on January 10, 1967.
By the time I joined Mr. Foulkes at Bahamian Times in 1965, because of the racist policies of the United Bahamian Party (UBP), I had become an avowed Black Power advocate who adhered to the “by any means necessary” philosophy of Malcolm X to remove the UBP as the government of The Bahamas.
There is no question that my rebellious behavior would have landed me in jail if Mr. Foulkes had not at one point intervened and scolded me severely, admonishing me that I could more effectively make my contributions to political change through my writing as a journalist.
Beyond the journalistic contributions Mr. Foulkes made in promoting the PLP and its message, he was one of the most sought-after speakers in the party because of his dynamic oratory. In the historic 1967 elections, which ended centuries of white minority rule, he was the PLP’s candidate for the Grants Town constituency and emerged victorious.
Over the subsequent years, he served his country in various capacities politically and in the diplomatic arena. It was, therefore, more than a well-deserved honour when he was Knighted and sworn in as the eighth governor general of The Bahamas on April 14, 2010.
Yes, Sir Arthur Alexander Foulkes is unquestionably my preeminent Hero.
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