COMMENTARY: BY OSWALD T. BROWN
WASHINGTON, D.C., February 16, 2021 – I received an email from a prominent Bahamian woman who asked a question that unlocked the vault to some painful memories from my early involvement in Bahamian politics. I shall not reveal her name, but her email really made me reflect on the costly mistakes I made in my life by being so totally committed to politics in The Bahamas as a Black Power advocate during the struggle for majority rule in the 1960s.
Here’s an excerpt from her email: “Obviously you are a very talented journalist who has been involved in Bahamian politics for many years. As someone who frequently boasts about being from Andros, how come you never offered yourself as a candidate to become a representative for Andros in the House of Assembly?”
Actually, when I became actively involved in politics in The Bahamas in the early 1960s, I had my sights set on becoming a representative in the House of Assembly for Andros, which was the first Out Island to send a strong message to the Bay Street Boys in 1956 that Black Bahamians were sick and tired of their racist policies by electing two Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) candidates – Cyril St. John Stevenson and Clarence A. Bain – to the House of Assembly.
The PLP had been formed just four years earlier, yet in addition to Stevenson and Bain, four other PLP candidates were elected to the House in 1956 for seats in New Providence — Lynden Pindling and Randol Fawkes, Southern District; Milo Butler, Western District; and Sammy Isaacs, Eastern District — despite the voting restrictions and questionable policies instituted by the Bay Street Boys, with the full support of The Bahamas’ British colonial masters.
This shocking accomplishment by the PLP prompted the group of white merchants who were allowed to control the political affairs of The Bahamas as if it were their personal fiefdom to hurriedly band together as the United Bahamian Party; however, it soon became patently clear to them that the Black descendants of slaves – mainly from the west coast of Africa – who comprised more than 70 percent of The Bahamas’ population were no longer content with being “second class” citizens in the Islands of The Bahamas.
The British reluctantly realized that their centuries-old slogan, “The sun never sets on the British Empire,” was gradually becoming archaic and set in motion a plan to divest itself of its colonies in Africa and the Caribbean, starting with Ghana in Africa in 1957 and Jamaica in the Caribbean in August of 1962. The Bahamas’ sister Caribbean nation Trinidad and Tobago followed Jamaica’s attainment of independence in December of 1962 and Barbados did likewise in November of 1966.
Because of the racist policies of the UBP, however, the minority white governing “party” in The Bahamas was able to forestall The Bahamas’ march towards becoming an independent nation until July 10, 1973, following the struggle for majority rule in the 1960s that culminated with the PLP’s historic victory in the January 10, 1967 general election that ushered in the first Black-led government in The Bahamas.
During the struggle for majority rule, I was an active participant as a Black Power Advocate as a result of my personal exposure to rank and raw racism while covering assignments as a young reporter at the Nassau Daily Tribune, where I started working as a trainee reporter in May of 1960. My immediate supervisor at The Tribune was Arthur A. Foulkes, who was The Tribune’s News Editor, and both Mr. Foulkes and Sir Etienne Dupuch, the then Publisher and Editor of The Tribune, took a special interest in my development as a journalist and are primarily responsible for whatever journalistic skills I currently possess.
Mr. Foulkes, however, also became my political mentor. Although he worked for Sir Etienne, who politically was a supporter of the UBP, Mr. Foulkes was a die-hard and active supporter of the PLP. Indeed, he was one the young activists in the PLP who formed the National Committee for Positive Action (NCPA) that strongly supported Lynden Pindling as leader of the PLP.
In the 1962 general election, when Foulkes and Arthur Hanna ran as a PLP candidates in the Eastern District of New Providence against the late Geoffrey Johnstone and Pierre Dupuch, under a voting system at the time that allowed for the election of a senior and junior member for a constituency, Hanna was elected as the senior representative and Johnstone as the junior representative.
Having ran against the son of his boss and lost, Mr. Foulkes did what he considered to be the honorable thing to do and resigned from The Tribune. Along with other members of the NCPA – including the late Warren Levarity, the late Jeffrey Thompson, the late Friday Butler, Eugene Newry, Roosevelt Godet, George Sands, among others – they founded Bahamian Times, a weekly newspaper with Mr. Foulkes as its editor that most political observers around that time convincingly argued was one of the major reasons why the PLP won the historic January 10 general election.
I resigned from The Tribune in 1965 and joined Mr. Foulkes at Bahamian Times, where he became more than my journalistic mentor, but also a wise and sage advisor after concerns were raised by Mr. Pindling and other party leaders about the radical nature of my involvement in the Black Power Movement. Mr. Foulkes’ intervention in my personal life at the time surely is one of the main reasons why I did not end up spending a “forced vacation” at Fox Hill Prison.
After the PLP won the January 10, 1967 general election, during one of his visits to London, Mr. Pindling arranged for me to go to London on a one-year training course in journalism at the London Evening Standard, one of the newspapers owned by Lord Beaverbrook, and although I considered myself to be a very good journalist when I went to London in November of 1968, there are aspects of my craft that the year I spent at the Evening Standard really enhanced my journalistic career.
I was no ordinary student, however. I was paid a very good union-sanctioned salary, which made it possible for me to rent a one-bedroom apartment (flat) in West Brompton, and many Bahamians who were students in London at the time know about the week-end social events I frequently held at 3 Seagrave Road, West Brompton.
I have provided all of this background information to properly answer the question posed by the prominent Bahamian lady as to why I never ran for the House of Assembly. The truth is, when I returned from London in November of 1969, there were reports that I was being considered to replace Clarence Bain as the House of Assembly member for Central Andros. However, a month earlier, Sir Lynden had fired Arthur A. Foulkes as Minister of Tourism, and when I asked him in a meeting in the Prime Minister’s Office why Foulkes was fired, he gave me an answer that totally did not believe and I responded with an expletive-laced comment that I later regretted.
I had been appointed Editor of Bahamian Times on my return from London, but I was eventually fired in March of 1970. When the Dissident Eight — Cecil Wallace Whitfield, Arthur A. Foulkes, Warren J. Levarity, Maurice Moore, Dr. Curtis McMillan, James “Jimmy” Shepherd, Dr. Elwood Donaldson and George Thompson – broke away from the PLP, I joined them as a founding member of the Free National Movement (FNM) and I was the founding Editor of the FNM’s newspaper, The Torch of Freedom.
The FNM officially became a political party in October of 1971, with Sir Cecil as its founding leader, but after the PLP’s landslide victory in the general elections held on 19 September19, 1972, in which the PLP won 29 of the 38 seats in the House of Assembly, funding for The Torch was not a priority and I had not worked in The Bahamas for more than a year when I met my first wife, Camille Brannum, while she was vacationing in Nassau. We were married in Washington, D.C. on June 12, 1973, and my good friend and fellow journalist Cordell Thompson, who was working with Jet Magazine at the time, attended the wedding and published a photo in Jet of us “cutting the cake” at our wedding reception.
Camille had a Master’s Degree from Howard University and when she returned with me to Nassau, she was employed as a teacher at C.C. Sweeting High School for a year before my insane jealousy forced her to decide that she could no longer live in The Bahamas. She gave me an option to try save our marriage by relocating to Washington, D.C. Since I was still unemployed because of what I determined was because of political victimization, I relocated to Washington, D.C. in January of 1975.
Unfortunately, my marriage did not survive and Camille and I were divorced in June of 1976. Rather than return to The Bahamas, I decided to remain in D.C., where I stayed for more than 20 years before returning to The Bahamas “permanently” at the time in 1996. I returned to D.C. for an extended stay as the Press, Cultural Affairs and Information Manager at the Embassy of The Bahamas in May of 2013, but my diplomatic appointment was rescinded when there was change in Government in May of 2017.
Nowadays, I have a lot of time to reflect on the mistakes I made in my life as I struggle to meet my pressing financial commitments that could have dire consequences if I am unable to make a substantial payment on my overdue rent before the moratorium on evictions put in place because of COVID-19 is lifted. Given thE fact that there are so many “bandwagon jumpers” who have benefited from the PLP’s historic victory on January 10, 1967, and are now very wealthy individuals, I long ago reached the conclusion that “cussing out” Pindling was a stupid thing to do.
So to the prominent lady who wanted to know why I never ran for a seat in the House of Assembly, since my current problems are already fodder for the gossip mill in The Bahamas, I hope the additional personal information I have provided adequately answers your question.
