Alfred Dawes | The world of a hero

History, as we are taught, throws facts at us in a vacuum. There is seldom any room for context. What was the world of historical characters like when they embarked on their path to greatness? How difficult was that decision, when heroes rose up against injustice, and how ground-breaking were their teachings then that are now self-evident?

Reciting historical facts simply does not capture the magnitude of the courage and daring of heroes the way they inspired those who lived then. So, it is worth a trip back in time to see the world of blacks when the story of one of the greatest sons of Jamaica was being written.

We never really learned that much about him in school. We were taught that he was a pan-Africanist and black empowerment advocate. Yet, summarising his life’s work as that of black empowerment fails to convey how significant his movement was to blacks all over the world in that era. It is an abstract concept within our modern frame of reference that takes so much, that so many sacrificed to achieve, for granted.

The Jamaican society in which he was born was rigidly divided into colour-based classes, with blacks like him at the lowest tier. There were no Common Entrance or PEP exams to open up the gates of higher education. Very few schools educated blacks, and the first university would not be founded until eight years after his death. To be born poor in Jamaica meant you were to be a peasant farmer or labourer with very little scope for upward mobility. Opportunity for most meant travelling overseas for work in Costa Rica and Panama. The greater part of Costa Rica’s present-day black population tracing their roots to Jamaica, and speaking a version of our Patois, is as much proof of this as our folk song paying homage to the ‘Colon Man’. Voting rights were restricted by literacy, male gender and taxes, excluding the greater part of the local black population. No economic or political power, no opportunities, and the unchecked power of the ruling planter class, defined blackness in Jamaica.

TWO INDEPENDENT NATIONS

There were only two independent black nations in the world after Africa had been carved up by European powers in the scramble for Africa, Liberia and Ethiopia. Native Africans were reduced to second-class citizens after their lands were stolen and they were forced into toiling for their new masters under brutal conditions. As he grew up, the last great African kingdoms of Ashanti and Benin had been crushed and their capitals looted of gold and art that remain displayed in European museums. King Leopold II of Belgium reigned over the slaughter of the last of his 10 million genocide victims in the Congo Free State as he came of age, and, in South Africa, Mahatma Gandhi bristled at the idea of Indians being treated the same as the non-Aryan race natives. Africa was not for Africans, and, with no armies remaining to fight back, all hope of expelling the colonisers was lost.

When he travelled to England, only a few thousand blacks lived in London, performing the most menial jobs. However, life in the United States was noticeably better for blacks. At least for some. America was home to the wealthiest population of blacks in the West, despite the black middle class being a small minority. The majority of American blacks were sharecroppers, labourers and hustlers, barely eking out a living. Despite greater opportunities for education, only a minority were able to climb the social ladder. Even those who were able to escape abject poverty were constantly reminded of their inferiority through lynchings, Jim Crow laws and devastating race riots. He reported on the East St Louis race riots that took the lives of approximately 150 blacks and left 6,000 homeless through arson and vandalism. The trigger, increased employment of blacks in factories.

NOT ISOLATED INCIDENT

This was not an isolated incident. In Springfield, Illinois, a mob of about 5,000 whites destroyed the homes and businesses of blacks in that town, murdering some with the complicity of the authorities. The destruction of the ‘Black Wall Street’ in Tulsa, Oklahoma resulted in an affluent black community being razed to the ground, the deaths of about 300 blacks, and injury of roughly 800. It destroyed one of the wealthiest black communities permanently. Laws made it illegal to mix with whites or even hold certain jobs. Institutional racism covered any cracks in the laws through which blacks could rise. In popular culture, blacks were caricatured in minstrel shows, complete with blackface and exaggerated stereotypes of buffoonery, dancing and singing. Africa was cast as the dark continent, full of savages and cannibals. There was no positive black imagery to inspire. None.

What hope could there then be for the black man in that world? They were beaten into submission over 400 years and trapped in a mental form of slavery where they thought so little of themselves that they accepted their place in the world as children of a lesser god. The whites knew that, once that fate was an accepted and entrenched belief, there would no longer be a need for shackles. And it worked. Until a man from St Ann landed in Harlem, New York and awakened the consciousness of an entire race, with rousing speeches that echoed through the ages to inspire generations of freedom fighters. His name was Marcus Mosiah Garvey.

- Dr Alfred Dawes is a fellow of the American College of Surgeons, and CEO of Windsor Wellness Centre. Follow him on Twitter @dr_aldawes. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and alfred.dawes@gmail.com